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...
Evolution
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 &...
Revisiting Dingemanse et al. 2002
In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 2002, Niels Dingemanse, Christiaan Both, Piet Drent, Kees van Oers and Arie van Noordwijk showed, using an open field test in the laboratory on wild caught great tits, that, 1. there is consistent individual variation in behaviour, and 2. this behaviour...
Revisiting Schemske & Bradshaw 1999
In a paper published in PNAS in 1999, Douglas Schemske and Toby Bradshaw showed, through field crosses of a bee-pollinated and a hummingbird-pollinated monkeyflower (Mimulus) plant, that genes of large effect on pollinator preference have had a role in floral evolution and premating reproductive...
Revisiting Coyne and Orr 1989
In a paper published in Evolution in 1989, Jerry Coyne and Allen Orr showed, through a meta-analysis of 119 pairs of closely-related Drosophila species at different stages of speciation, that mating discrimination, and sterility or inviability of hybrids, gradually increase with time since...
Revisiting Bond and Kamil 2002
In a paper published in Nature in 2002, Alan Bond and Alan Kamil showed, with experiments using real jays and digital moths, that frequency-dependent predation led to the evolution of greater crypticity and phenotypic variation. Fourteen years after the paper was published I spoke to Alan Bond...
Revisiting Johnson 1993
In a paper published in Ecological Applications in 1993, Nancy Collins Johnson showed, experimentally, that fertilization of soil leads to the selection of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi that are inferior mutualists. Johnson found that fertilization, both, alters the species composition of AM...
Revisiting Kirkpatrick 1982
In a paper published in Evolution in 1982, Mark Kirkpatrick showed, theoretically, that strong female mating preference for a male trait that reduces viability is neither selected for or against, but the mating advantage it provides to the males it prefers can lead to maintenance of that male...
Revisiting Roughgarden 1972
In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1972, Joan Roughgarden presented a model to predict the course of evolution in a population containing individuals of different types of ecological specialization and put it to test using field data on a species of Anolis lizard collected by Tom...
Revisiting Clutton-Brock and Albon 1979
In a paper published in Behaviour in 1979, Tim Clutton-Brock and Steve Albon showed, using observations and playback experiments, that red deer stags use roaring contests to assess each other's fighting abilities when there aren't any obvious size discrepancies. Twenty-seven years after the paper...