Despite extensive research, stabilizing mechanisms in ecosystems remain uncertain. Taylor's power law (TPL) is a pervasive ecological pattern that describes how variance scales with mean abundance (σ....

Mammal communities in Central Asia responded to global and regional climate changes, according to a new study.

Make sure to take a look at part 1, where I summarized what we know about modern sea otter anatomy, behavior, geography, and molecular phylo...

A small, spotted tiger cat from Bolivia may just be the beginning of a wave of new small cat species.

Efficient construction of phylogenetic consensus trees. Methods include strict, majority-rule, majority-rule (+), loose (combinable component / semi-strict), greedy, Adams, frequency difference, R*, a...

Adaptive radiations generate remarkable morphological diversity, yet traits often diversify at different rates and modes, producing mosaic patterns of evolution. Modularity, the semiautonomous organization of traits, can shape how selection and ...

Researchers find fossils ranging from 7,000 years to 46,000 years old showing evidence that devils may have become reliant on humans for scavenging

The eared seals (family Otariidae) are divided into fur seals and sea lions, despite a lack of cladistic support for these groups. The division is primarily based on hair morphology, and it is unknow...

Nature Communications - The recently extinct thylacine was Australia’s largest marsupial predator and famously likened to dog-family carnivorans such as wolves. However, here the authors show...

The woolly rhinoceros was a prominent Ice Age megafaunal species, and there is limited knowledge regarding its origin and responses to past glacial cycles. We sequenced 29 mitochondrial and 14 nuclear...

Nature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...

Macroevolutionary adaptation of a continuous trait to different discrete states across species can be modelled using a phylogenetic state-dependent Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process. Existing infere...

Fossil biotic interactions (fBIs) provide a critical but underutilized window into the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of life through time. Unlike modern ecological data, the fossil record captu...

As the British naturalist celebrates a milestone birthday, we take a look at how his work has shaped science.

Pohlsepia mazonensis is still a landmark fossil – but not in the way it was first thought.

Offene Stellen

Micro-computed tomography of the unique skeleton of Eurotamandua joresi Storch, 1981 (middle Eocene, Grube Messel)—initially described as the oldest myrmecophagid and the only known Old World xenarthr...

Minuscule fossils from 73m years ago are oldest evidence yet for birds nesting in polar regions