Todiramphus chlorisis the most widely distributed of the Pacific’s ‘great speciators’. Its 50 subspecies constitute a species complex that is distributed over 16 000km from the Red Sea to Polynesia. We present, to our ...

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 ...

The exploration of Earth’s biodiversity is an exciting and ongoing endeavour. Here, we report a new species of seadragon from Western Australia with substantial morphological and genetic differences to the only two other ...

Ricinulei are among the most obscure and cryptic arachnid orders, constituting a micro-diverse group with extreme endemism. The 76 extant species described to date are grouped in three genera:Ricinoides, from tropical ...

The relationship between rates of diversification and of body size change (a common proxy for phenotypic evolution) was investigated across Elapidae, the largest radiation of highly venomous snakes. Time-calibrated ...

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 ...

Archaic toothed mysticetes represent the evolutionary transition from raptorial to bulk filter feeding in baleen whales. Aetiocetids, in particular, preserve an intermediate morphological stage in which teeth functioned ...

Social parasites exploit the brood-care behaviour and social structure of one or more host species. Within the social Hymenoptera there are different types of social parasitism. In its extreme form, species of obligate ...