Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) are arguments that use considerations from evolutionary science to raise doubts about some broad class of beliefs, such as moral beliefs, religious beliefs, object beliefs, or all beliefs. A given EDA will attack some particular positive e…
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Evolution is a complex process with a simple recipe. Evolutionary change involves three essential “ingredients” interacting over many generations: adaptation (selection), chance (random variation), and history (inheritance). In 1989’s Wonderful Life, the late paleontologist Step…
Most hair follicles on the human body have evolved to be miniaturized, rendering us practically ‘naked’. Despite sparse body hair, we retain thick hair on our scalps that varies significantly among populations. Yet little is known of the evolutionary history of our scalp hair an…
Potamopyrgus antipodarum is a species of freshwater snail native to New Zealand that has invaded every continent aside from Antarctica and Africa. While native P. antipodarum populations are characterized by frequent coexistence between obligately sexual and obligately asexual i…
Evaluating the impact of climate change is arguably one of the main goals of conservation biology, which can be addressed in part by studying the demographic history of species in the region of interest. In North America, landscape and species composition during the most recent …
Evolutionary history is typically portrayed as a branching phylogenetic tree, yet not all evolution proceeds in a purely bifurcating manner. Introgressive hybridization is one process that results in reticulate evolution. At ancient time scales, lateral movement of genetic mater…
The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the principal vector of the viruses that cause dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. There have been recent outbreaks of all these diseases, and the number of dengue cases has increased 30-fold in the past 50 years. Of the diseases Ae. aegypt…
Understanding how ecology and evolution interact resulting in the accumulation of biodiversity is an emerging frontier of integrative research. The accumulation of biodiversity has two controls: origination and persistence of species. The main focus of the literature on the orig…
Seasonality is one of the most important sources of environmental variation that organisms face. In response, species have evolved a wide array of adaptive mechanisms to accommodate the cyclical fluctuations in, for example, temperatures, precipitation, biomass, food resources, …
The question of how native species diversity affects a community’s ability to resist invasive species has inspired decades of research. One of the oldest invasion biology hypotheses is that more species rich ecosystems are less invaded. While there has been strong support for th…
Cerambycid (longhorn) beetles are diverse in their morphology and life history traits, but all share the common trait of being larval plant-borers. The larvae bore into and develop inside various plant tissues thus they can potentially cause significant economic and ecological d…
Visual signals in the form of wing color, size, shape, pattern, and UV reflectance play an important role in the mating and reproductive strategies of diurnal butterflies. Wing-based visual signals are linked to different functions and can be acted on by a variety of selective p…
The Origin Recognition Complex (ORC) is a heteromeric six-subunit protein complex that defines origins of DNA replication. ORC recognizes and binds to replication origins, serving as a scaffold for the assembly of replication initiation factors, therefore, it is a central compon…
Repetitive DNA is ubiquitous in eukaryotic genomes, but a clear link between its structure, abundance, and biological significance is lacking. There are two main types of repetitive DNA: transposable elements, which are interspersed in the genome, and satellite DNA, which is fou…
Orthoseira Thwaites (1848) is an aerophilous genus of diatoms commonly found attached to mosses in the splash zones of waterfalls. The first taxon associated with the genus was described in 1848, but it lacks carinoportulae, the defining feature of the group (Thwaites 1848). Als…
Researchers of many disciplines continue their pursuit to reconstruct the evolution of language, as it remains one of the few traits separating humans from other animal taxa. Because behavior does not leave evident traces in the fossil record, understanding the communication str…
Brief periods of starvation are a common stressor that most animals encounter in the wild and must be able to survive in order to maximize their fitness. Starvation resistance of the adult fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is thought to be primarily conferred by adult fat stor…
Rapid evolution is becoming increasingly relevant to evolutionary biologists and ecologists, especially in the context of global environmental change. This thesis is motivated by the goal of understanding the genomic mechanisms and evolutionary history that allow pest insects to…
How to control evolution? This question has animated biologists for nearly 150 years and for breeders, some time longer. Charles Darwin’s theorization of evolution by natural selection was in part an analysis of extant breeding practices, what he called an “experiment on a gigan…