In a paper published in Science in 1983, Stephen O'Brien, David Wildt, David Goldman, Carl Merril and Mitchell Bush showed that the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) had extremely low levels of genetic diversity, a pattern that they interpreted as resulting from a population bottleneck. This study was...
Evolution
Revisiting Eldredge and Gould 1972
In a landmark chapter published in 1972 in a book called Models in Paleobiology, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed, based on their observations of the fossil record, that evolution proceeds in short bursts of change separated by long periods of stasis, a theory they called "Punctuated...
Revisiting Komdeur et al. 1997
In a paper published in Nature in 1997, Jan Komdeur, Serge Daan, Joost Tinbergen and Christa Mateman showed, through a combination of observation, experiment and genetic analysis, that, in the endemic and endangered Seychelles warbler, parents can manipulate sex ratio adaptively to improve their...
Revisiting Kokko et al. 2002
In a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London London B, Hanna Kokko, Robert Brooks, John McNamara and Alasdair Houston integrated 'Fisherian' and 'good genes' ideas into a general model of female mate choice for indirect benefits. Fourteen years after the paper was published I...
Revisiting Hubbell 1997
The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography, published as a monograph in 2001, by Stephen Hubbell, is considered one of the most important recent developments in Ecology. What is, probably, less well-known is that the ideas in the book were originally laid out in a paper published...
Revisiting Bolnick et al. 2003
In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 2003, Daniel Bolnick, Richard Svanbäck, James A. Fordyce, Louie Yang, Jeremy Davis, Darrin Hulsey and Matthew Forister reviewed studies that examined individual specialization on resource use and quantified how much inter-individual variation...
Revisiting Hamilton and Zuk 1982
In a paper published in Science in 1982, William Hamilton and Marlene Zuk showed positive associations between the level of chronic blood infections and display characteristics across North American Passerines. Based on these results they proposed a "good genes" model of sexual selection...
Revisiting Lande and Arnold 1983
In 1983, following up on a little-known paper published by Karl Pearson eighty years earlier, Russell Lande and Stevan Arnold, developed statistical methods to measure selection based only on changes in population phenotypic traits within a generation. Thirty-six years after the paper was...
Revisiting Vellend 2010
In a paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology in 2010, Mark Vellend proposed a new conceptual framework for Community Ecology, drawing inspiration from Population Genetics. Vellend proposed that, like in the case of genetic variation in populations, biological communities too can be...
Revisiting Brosnan and de Waal 2003
In a paper published in Nature in 2003, Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal provided what was, arguably, the first evidence for inequity avoidance in a non-human animal. Brosnan and de Waal found that brown capuchin monkeys, refused to participate in trials if they observed conspecifics receiving a...