evolution – Page 2 – Open Access Biology Summaries

Is there a downside to flight? Looking for trade-offs in bush-crickets

From: “Contrasting patterns of macroptery in Roesel’s bush cricket Metrioptera roeselii (Orthoptera, Ensifera)”, S. Szanyi, A. Nagy, I.A. Rácz, Z. Varga (2014), Estonian Journal of Ecology 63:4 doi: 10.3176/eco.2014.4.07 Click to access ecol-2014-4-299-311.pdf Roesel’s bush-crickets (Metrioptera roeselii) have been presenting an interesting problem to scientists in recent years. Why? Because they have been expanding across …

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Sex and Violence: The Surprising Consequences of Selective Breeding in Siamese Fighting Fish

From: ‘Artificial selection for male winners in the Siamese fighting fish Betta splendens correlates with high female aggression’, A. Ramos and D. Gonçalves (2019), Frontiers in Zoology 16:34 https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12983-019-0333-x#Sec6 Differences between males and females (sexual dimorphisms) in animals are odd. Males and females have significant differences in their reproductive organs and hormone profiles, and in …

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Is it better to be different? How water fleas resist parasites

From: “Daphnia parasite dynamics across multiple Caullerya epidemics indicate selection against common parasite genotypes”, E. González-Tortuero, J. Rusek, P. Turkode, A. Petrusek, I. Maayan, L. Piálek, C. Tellenbach, S. Gießlerc, P. Spaak, J. Wolinska (2019), Zoology 119:4 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2016.04.003 Parasite-host interactions are rapidly becoming a major frontier in evolutionary biology, and are increasingly recognised a major …

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A House Divided: what splits a lineage of birds?

From “Deep south-north genetic divergence in Godlewski’s bunting (Emberiza godlewskii) related to uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and habitat preferences”, J. Li, G, Song, N. Liu, Y. Change and X. Bao (2019), BMC Evolutionary Biology 19:161 From almost the beginning of recorded history through to the twentieth century the basic unit of Chinese politics has …

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How melanic was my squirrel: how dark squirrels got their colour

From: “Multiple origins of melanism in two species of North American tree squirrel (Sciurus)”, H.R. McRobie, N.D. Moncrief and N.I. Mundy (2019), BMC Evolutionary Biology 19:140 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-019-1471-7 Melanin is one of the most common pigments in nature. It determines our hair and skin colour, as well as that of many other animals – the more …

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