Throughout an organism’s early development, variations in physiology and behaviours may have long lasting consequences on individual life histories. While a large part of variation in critical life-history transitions ...

The Omura’s whale (Balaenoptera omurai)was describedas a new species in 2003 and then soon after as an ancient lineage basal to a Bryde’s/sei whale clade. Currently known only from whaling and stranding specimens primarily ...

Tropical rainforests are known for their extreme biodiversity, posing a challenging problem in tropical ecology. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain the diversity of tree species, yet our understanding of this ...

The adaptive significance of zebra stripes has thus far eluded understanding. Many explanations have been suggested, including social cohesion, thermoregulation, predation evasion and avoidance of biting flies. Identifying ...

The species flocks of cichlid fishes in the East African Great Lakes are the largest vertebrate adaptive radiations in the world and illustrious textbook examples of convergent evolution between independent species ...

Assessing the enormous diversity of Southern Ocean benthic species and their evolutionary histories is a central task in the era of global climate change. Based on mitochondrial markers, it was recently suggested that the ...

The rich fossil record of Crocodyliformes shows a much greater diversity in the past than today in terms of morphological disparity and occupation of niches. We conducted topology-based analyses seeking diversification ...

Climate change has a strong impact on marine ecosystems, including temperate species. Analysing the diversity of thermotolerance levels within species along with their genetic structure enables a better understanding of ...

Colonizations of islands are often associated with rapid morphological divergence. We present two previously unrecog-nized cases of dramatic morphological change and niche shifts in connection with colonization of tropical ...

For anthropologists, meat eating by primates like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) warrants examination given the emphasis on hunting in human evolutionary history. As referential models, apes provide insight into the evolution ...