Considering the rapid rate of mortality in coral reef species around the globe, there is an urgent need to fill literature gaps concerning baseline information, specifically related to coral life history traits and their mechanisms to respond to local environmental changes. This…
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Feathers are among the key characteristics that distinguish extant Aves (crown birds) from other taxonomic groups. However, 'modern' pennaceous feathers were inherited to the birds from their non-avian dinosaurian ancestors and are present in a more inclusive group of theropod d…
El conocimiento actual de los patrones de diversidad biológica se basa principalmente en laevaluación de la riqueza de especies a distintas escalas. Es reconocido ampliamente que estamedida de diversidad no se distribuye al azar, donde el patrón más recurrente y documentado aesc…
Most proteins associate into multimeric complexes with specific architectures, which often have functional properties like cooperative ligand binding or allosteric regulation. No detailed knowledge is available about how any multimer and its functions arose during historical evo…
Understanding the history of Amazonian diversity and how it relates to past environmental changes in the region is fundamental for elucidating processes behind the origin of global diversity distribution patterns and understanding future threats to its preservation. The diversif…
Sexual reproduction is an evolutionary innovation that arose 1.2 billion years ago, and in that time, has allowed a rapid diversification of species outpacing that of asexually reproducing organisms. Successful sexual reproduction in animals requires the incredible coordination …
Violence is a prominent part of human history as well as modern society. In this study, literature describing social, cognitive, and evolutionary psychological models of aggression is discussed. Based on this discussion, it is suggested that evolutionary psychology provides an e…
Recent studies showed that admixture between modern humans and ancient hominin species was a ubiquitous phenomenon in the past. We now know that modern humans admixed with Neanderthals as well as Denisovans, an extinct hominin species, existence of which we acknowledged through …
A fundamental pattern of biodiversity is that it is unevenly distributed across the tree of life, both in terms of species richness and morphological disparity. Understanding the relationship between species richness and morphological disparity, therefore, is a central goal of e…
Every ecological system, past or present, developed from a path-dependent history of evolution and ecology. A tangible way to describe this history is through characterizing biodiversity patterns and processes of stability or change. Although the traditional use of biodiversity …
Urban ecology, evolution, and conservation are important disciplines in our urbanized and urbanizing world. In the last twenty years, academic work has elucidated generalizable patterns about how urbanization affects the natural world. In this talk, I will approach these pattern…
Ecological diversity in nature is tremendously complex. Evolutionary biologists and ecologists have sought to understand this complexity using foundational concepts like ecological niches, guilds, and adaptive zones. The merger of these concepts with stochastic models and phylog…
Understanding how organisms endure abiotic challenges across scales, in both space and time, is a major goal of ecologists. Rocky intertidal zones, where terrestrial and marine ecosystems meet, are among the most harsh and dynamic habitats on Earth. The goal of my dissertation w…
Most flagship species or commonly recognized plants and animals proliferate via sexual reproduction, however, there are a curious number of plants and animals that are asexual. Both modes of reproduction have advantages and disadvantages. Sex, and in particular biparental inheri…
Accurately delimiting species remains a contentious issue within modern systematic biology despite recent advancements in species delimitation and high-throughput sequencing techniques. In this study, I apply an integrative approach for species delimitation by analyzing morpholo…
The North American river otter is a semiaquatic carnivore that occupies freshwater habitats across most of North America, and is a conservation symbol across most of its range. It is used as an indicator species, a keystone species, an umbrella species, and an example of conserv…
The evolution of major psychopathologies remains a point of intense debate within the scientific community. Counter to classical Darwinian perspectives, these disorders persist in human populations despite their high fitness costs (shorter lifespan and fewer surviving offspring …
Discovering the targets of selection in a genome is fundamental for understanding how adaptation has affected the biological processes that lead to population and species diversity. However, very few variants in proteins are known to be adaptive. For example, in humans, fewer th…
The evolution of species radiations has involved two processes: diversification, or the formation of many species, as well as disparification, the differentiation of species in traits associated with differing ecological niches. Extremes of disparification are a hallmark of clas…