Background Though skeletal adaptations for locomotion in mammals are well documented, possible limb adaptations in terms of muscle architecture have received far less study. Examining mustelid mammals...

Aim Differences in the functional traits of co-occurring species drive species' interactions and sustain key ecosystem services. However, the historical and contemporary environmental drivers of, as...

The selection of environmental variables is a cornerstone of biogeographical analyses. However, most studies use standard sets of predictors, without …

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Establishing a universal evolutionary timescale of nematodes has been complicated by their patchy fossil record and analytical limitations. Combining genomic data from 156 nematode species with fossil...

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Evolution of spinescence in mimosoid legumes.

Aim We investigate the distribution of dispersal modes—endozoochory (via animal ingestion), synzoochory (via animal seed accumulation) and anemochory (via wind)—and seed mass of woody plants across ...

Studies predicting extinction risk come to different conclusions if their analyses use different temporal extents.

The movement of taxa between North and South America across the Panamanian land bridge, known as the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), established modern-day mammal assemblages in the Americas...

The authors review ecological novelty—ecological situations with no precedent—arising from climate change. They discuss ecological novelty due to direct and indirect effects of climate change, and due...

The local effects of atmospheric nitrogen deposition on plants are well established, yet a global empirical analysis of nitrogen deposition effects on vegetation dynamics is missing. Here, we assess ...

Recognizing patterns in functional trait evolution is a necessary step in testing macroevolutionary questions. Quantification of these patterns and interpretation of their generative processes relies ...

Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...

Many of the functional traits that mediate extinction risk across the range of biodiversity relate indirectly to a species’ ability to persist in a changing world, yet certain traits such as colorati...

Human impacts substantially affect our ability to detect and understand natural biodiversity patterns.

Morphological evolution can be explosive, producing visually spectacular adaptive radiations like Caribbean anoles, Malagasy vangas, and African Ri...

This study compares alpine biodiversity patterns for plants and vertebrates across mountains worldwide using an expert-validated dataset. Authors found strong variation among mountains and taxonomic g...

Global patterns in leaf size are linked to climatic trade-offs, so we explore these relationships in a major group of plants, the conifers. Using contemporary phylogenetic methods, we show that conif....