In a paper published in Science in 1994, Dieter Ebert showed, using laboratory experiments on a horizontally-transmitted disease in Daphnia, that spore production and infection was lower when the geographic distance between parasite and wild-caught Daphnia host origins were greater. Ebert's...
Evolution
Revisiting Abrams et al. 1993
In a paper published in Evolutionary Ecology in 1993, Peter Abrams, Hiroyuki Matsuda and Yasushi Harada developed models to examine adaptive change in continuous traits under different conditions, and show that they can result in both stable fitness minima and unstable fitness maxima. Abrams and...
Revisiting West-Eberhard 1975
In a paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology in 1975, Mary Jane West-Eberhard reviewed the literature on kin selection and outlined "social, ecological and developmental factors" that might influence the evolution of beneficial social interactions. West-Eberhard was motivated to write...
Revisiting Parker 1970
In a paper published in Biological Reviews in 1970, Geoff Parker reviewed the evidence for sperm competition in nature, discussed why the phenomenon is likely to common in insects and described adaptations in animals to counter sperm competition. Forty-six years after the paper was published I...
Revisiting Huey and Bennett 1987
In a paper published in Evolution in 1987, Raymond Huey and Albert Bennett presented the results of their comparative analysis of temperature preferences and temperature dependence of running speeds in Australian lygosomid skinks. By chasing lizards down racing tracks at different temperatures,...
Revisiting Kempenaers et al. 1992
In a study published in Nature in 1992, Bart Kempenaers, Geert R. Verheyen, Marleen Van den Broeck, Terry Burke, Christine Van Broeckhoven and André Dhondt showed that female blue tits choose higher-quality males for extra-pair copulations (EPC), providing evidence in support of the genetic...
Revisiting Ehrlich and Raven 1964
In 1964, Paul Ehrlich and Peter Raven published a paper in Evolution that reported the findings of their literature survey of larval food plants of butterflies. Based on the patterns they found, they hypothesized that caterpillar-host plant relationships result from "coevolution", and that the...
Revisiting Lively 1986
In a paper published in Evolution in 1986, Curt Lively presented the results of his field experiments to understand shell dimorphism in acorn barnacles. Lively showed that the morphology of the atypical form is a developmental response that is induced by predation by a carnivorous gastropod....
Revisiting Bronstein 2001
In a conceptual paper in the American Zoologist in 2001, Judith Bronstein highlighted the need to understand the costs of mutualisms along with its benefits, and laid out a research agenda for future empirical work in this area. Sixteen years after the paper was published I asked Judith Bronstein...
Revisiting Janzen 1966
In 1966, Daniel Janzen published a paper in Evolution in which he synthesized his empirical work on different pairs of interacting ant and Acacia species in the neotropics, and discussed the possible origins and evolution of these mutualisms. Fifty years after the paper was published, I asked Dan...