In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 1984, Michael Taborsky presented a cost-benefit analysis of helping behaviour in the cichlid fish Lamprologus brichardi. In this species, individuals of earlier broods stay on in their parents' territories and contribute to the care of the current brood....
Evolution
Revisiting Meyer et al. 1990
In a paper published in Nature in 1990, Axel Meyer, Thomas Kocher, Pereti Basasibwaki, and Allan Wilson, using mitochondrial DNA sequences, provided evidence in support of a monophyletic origin of the cichlid diversity in Lake Victoria. Whats more, they found that the genetic variation among these...
Revisiting Vermeij 1977
In a paper published in Paleobiology in 1977, Geerat Vermeij examined the Mesozoic reorganisation of shallow water marine communities using gastropod skeletal geometry and other kinds of data. Based on the evidence, Vermeij argued that predation and grazing had grown stronger and become more...
Revisiting Rainey & Travisano 1998
In a paper published in Nature in 1998, Paul Rainey and Michael Travisano showed that identical populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluroescens diversify morphologically when provided with ecological opportunity, but show no divergence when opportunity is restricted. Further, the morphs...
Revisiting Kessler & Baldwin 2001
In a study published in Science in 2001, Andre Kessler and Ian Baldwin quantified and characterised the volatiles emitted by Nicotiana attenuata when attacked by herbivores and mimicked their release to see if they reduced herbivory by attracting egg predators inhibiting herbivore oviposition....
Revisiting Nosil et al. 2002
In a paper published in Nature in 2002, Patrik Nosil, Bernard Crespi and Cristina Sandoval showed, using a combination of morphological measurements and mate choice experiments, that parallel evolution of sexual isolation in the walking-stick insect, Timema cristinae, was promoted by divergent...
Revisiting Peterson et al. 1999
In a paper published in Science in 1999, A. Townsend Peterson, Jorge Soberón and Víctor Sánchez-Cordero presented strong evidence for niche conservatism in 37 sister taxon pairs of mammals, birds and butterflies on either side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. These results suggested that...
Revisiting Gavrilets 2000
In the late 1990s, mounting experimental evidence for rapid evolution of traits related to fertilisation seemed paradoxical given that matching of male and female traits is required for successful reproduction In a paper published in Nature in 2000, Sergey Gavrilets showed, through a simple mode,...
Revisiting Davies & Brooke 1988
In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 1988, Nick Davies and Michael Brooke unraveled, using a mix of natural history observation and clever experiments, the nature of the interaction between the brood-parasitic common cuckoo and its host the reed warbler. Their experiments showed that many...
Revisiting Felsenstein 1985
In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1985, Joseph Felsenstein proposed a new method – phylogenetically independent contrasts – that allowed the incorporation of phylogenetic information into comparative analyses. Using Felsenstein’s method, biologists could overcome the statistical...