Fertilization functions describe how the number of realized fertilizations depends on gamete numbers or density. They provide insight into the fertilization process, and are important components in models on the evolution ...

Resource partitioning is well known along food and habitat for reducing competition among sympatric species, yet a study on temporal partitioning as a viable basis for reducing resource competition is not empirically ...

A well-known characteristic of chondrichthyans (e.g. sharks, rays) is their covering of external skin denticles (placoid scales), but less well understood is the wide morphological diversity that these skin denticles can ...

Giraffidae are represented by many extinct species. The only two extant taxa possess diametrically contrasting cervical morphology, as the okapi is short-necked and the giraffe is exceptionally long-necked.Samotherium ...

Reproductive proteins are among the most rapidly evolving classes of proteins. For a subset of these, rapid evolution is driven by positive Darwinian selection despite vital, well-conserved, reproductive functions. Izumo1 ...

Tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs) help regulate the extracellular matrix (ECM) in animals, mostly by inhibiting matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). They are important activators of mutable collagenous tissue ...

Biological invasions offer unique opportunities to investigate evolutionary dynamics at the peripheries of expanding pop-ulations. Here, we examine genetic patterns associated with admixture between two distinct invasive ...

The eggs of amniotes exhibit a remarkable variety of shapes, from spherical to elongate and from symmetrical to asymmetrical. We examine eggshell geometry in a diverse sample of fossil and living amniotes using geometric ...

Evolution is presumed to proceed by random mutations, which increase an individual’s fitness. Increased fitness produces a higher survival rate for those individuals within populations and drives the variants to fixation ...