Revisiting Moran 1996

In a paper published in PNAS in 1996, Nancy Moran showed that endosymbiotic bacterial lineages showed faster rates of evolution of 16S rDNA and increased rate of fixation of deleterious mutations, compared to free-living lineages. These results, Moran concluded, were...

Revisiting Frank 1995

In a paper published in Nature in 1995, Steven Frank proposed a simple model to show how “mutual policing” can suppress competition and ensure “fairness” in reproduction, in the evolution of cooperative groups. Twenty-two tears after the paper...

Revisiting Fahrig and Merriam 1985

In a paper published in Ecology in 1985, Lenore Fahrig and Gray Merriam presented a model for changes in population sizes in a set of interconnected patches, which predicted that populations in isolated patches will grow at a slower rate and are thus morel likely to...

Revisiting Bascompte et al. 2003

In a paper published in PNAS in 2003, Jordi Bascompte, Pedro Jordano, Carlos Melián and Jens Olesen investigated the structural organisation of 52 mutualistic networks and found them to be highly nested, resulting in communities centred around a smaller core of...

Revisiting Shine 1980

In a paper published in Oecologia in 1980, Richard Shine presented the results of his field and laboratory studies on the “costs” of reproduction in six montane Australian lizards. While there had been many theoretical models of trade-offs between current...