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…
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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…
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…
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,…
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 …
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…