Macroevolution

Evolutionary theory: a hierarchical perspective

0 Type: Book

"The natural world is infinitely complex and hierarchically structured, with smaller units forming the components of larger systems: genes are components genomes, cells are building blocks of tissues and organs, individuals are members of populations, which, in turn, are parts o…

Evolutionary theory: a hierarchical perspective

0 Type: Book

"The natural world is infinitely complex and hierarchically structured, with smaller units forming the components of larger systems: genes are components genomes, cells are building blocks of tissues and organs, individuals are members of populations, which, in turn, are parts o…

Fires of life: endothermy in birds and mammals

by Lovegrove, Barry

0 Type: Book

A groundbreaking argument on how endothermy-arguably the most important innovation in vertebrate evolution-developed in birds and mammals This pioneering work investigates why endothermy, or "warm-bloodedness," evolved in birds and mammals, despite its enormous energetic costs. …

Fires of life: endothermy in birds and mammals

by Lovegrove, Barry

0 Type: Book

This pioneering work investigates why endothermy, or "warm-bloodedness," evolved in birds and mammals, despite its enormous energetic costs. Arguing that single-cause hypotheses to explain the origins of endothermy have stalled research since the 1970s, Barry Gordon Lovegrove ad…

Contingency and convergence: toward a cosmic biology of body and mind

by Powell, Russell

fromVienna series in theoretical biology

0 Type: Book

"In this book, Russell Powell investigates whether we can use the patterns and processes of convergent evolution to make inferences about universal laws of life, on Earth and elsewhere. Weaving together disparate philosophical and empirical threads, Powell offers the first detai…

Origins of biodiversity: an introduction to macroevolution and macroecology

by Cardillo, Marcel, Bromham, Lindell

0 Type: Book

"Origins of Biodiversity is a unique introduction to the fields of macroevolution and macroecology, which explores the evolution and distribution of biodiversity across time, space and lineages. Using an enquiry-led framework to encourage active learning and critical thinking, e…

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…

Phylogenetic trees are key objects for understanding evolutionary history, first used to describe relationships between groups of species. Phylogenies help us to fill out the tree of life and to describe the dynamics that have given rise to the diversity of life on Earth. As we …

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…

The modern synthesis was a critical development in evolutionary biology as it combined Darwinian evolution with Mendelian genetics. Today, we embark on a new revolution – the widespread availability of genomic data. In this dissertation, I use three applications of phylogenetic,…

A central goal of conservation biology is to identify and understand the factors that lead to extinction. The Earth is currently undergoing a 6th mass extinction event, in large part because of human activity. In the last century, rates of extinction have increased anywhere from…

Biologists have long sought to understand how ecological selective pressures drive evolutionary responses. Defining how morphology, life history, and abiotic conditions interact across deep time can reveal the selective pressures responsible for shaping various axes of biodivers…

The goal of my dissertation is to expand our knowledge of how mammalian diets are affected by and affect other ecological and evolutionary processes. I did this by evaluating how diet is related to mammalian diversity, body mass, and evolution. I also evaluated and how environme…