In a paper in Nature in 1992, Peter Berthold, Andreas Helbig, Gabriele Mohr and Ulrich Querner provided experimental evidence to show that central European blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) had evolved a new winter migration route, and established a new winter home over 1000 km away from their old...
Evolution
Revisiting Endler 1980
In a paper published in Evolution in 1980, John Endler provided experimental evidence to show that guppy color patterns represented a “shifting balance” between the effects of sexual and natural selection. Thirty-six years after the paper was published, I spoke to John Endler about his motivation...
Revisiting Price et al. 1988
In 1988, Trevor Price, Mark Kirkpatrick and Stevan Arnold published a paper in Science developing a model to explain why breeding date in birds, though heritable and under selection, does not evolve. Twenty-eight years after the paper was published, I spoke to Trevor Price about the making of this...
Revisiting Ryan et al. 1990
In 1990, Michael Ryan, James Fox, Walter Wilczynski and Stanley Rand published a paper in Nature showing that, during courtship, male Tungara frogs exploit a pre-existing neural bias in females towards lower-pitched calls. This experiment provided evidence in support of a third hypothesis for the...
Revisiting Møller 1988
In 1988, Anders Pape Møller published a paper showing that male barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) with experimentally-lengthened tails obtained mates quicker that males with shorter tails. While this wasn't the first experimental demonstration of the function of male secondary sexual ornaments,...
Revisiting Fournier et al. 2005
In 2005, Denis Fournier, Arnaud Estoup, Jérôme Orivel, Julien Foucaud, Hervé Jourdan, Julien Le Breton and Laurent Keller published a paper in Nature describing their discovery of the unique reproductive system of the little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata): males and queens reproduce clonally,...
Revisiting Wilkinson 1984
In 1984, Gerald Wilkinson published a paper in Nature showing that vampire bats share food in the form of regurgitated blood, within groups that contain both kin and non-kin. This was one of the first clear documentations of reciprocity in animals, and the paper went on to become a citation...