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...
Evolution
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...
Revisiting Gurevitch et al. 1992
In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1992, Jessica Gurevitch, Laura Morrow, Alison Wallace and Joseph Walsh presented the results of what was, arguably, the first meta-analysis in ecology, of field competition experiments published in six leading ecology journals over a 10-year...
Revisiting Jiggins et al. 2001
In a paper published in Nature in 2001, Chris Jiggins, Russell Naisbit, Rebecca Coe and James Mallet showed that divergence in mimicry of colour pattern was responsible for the origin of two Heliconia butterfly species. Using experiments, Jiggins and colleagues showed that differences in mimicry...
Revisiting Ohta 1973
In a paper published in 1973 in Nature, Tomoko Ohta extended Motoo Kimura's neutral theory of molecular evolution to include slightly deleterious mutations, and examine the role of interaction of drift and weak selection in molecular evolution. Tomoko Ohta called this extension the "nearly neutral...
Revisiting Losos et al. 1998
In a paper published in Science in 1998, Jonathan Losos, Todd Jackman, Allan Larson, Kevin de Queiroz, and Lourdes Rodrı́guez-Schettino, using morphometric and phylogenetic analyses, showed that the same set of habitat specialists or "ecomorphs" of Anolis lizards had evolved independently on four...
Revisiting Benkman 1999
In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1999, Craig Benkman demonstrated the existence of a selection mosaic with coevolutionary hotspots in a population of the Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine. Where red squirrels are present, they drive selection on lodgepole pine cone structure. In...
Revisiting Thompson & Cunningham 2002
In a paper published in Nature in 2002, John Thompson and Bradley Cunningham showed, through careful study of a widespread plant-moth interaction across multiple habitats and years, that the same moth species functions as a pollinator in some places and as a parasite in other. Thompson &...