Browsing Biological Sciences by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-20 of 135
Why are incubation periods longer in the tropics? A common-garden experiment with house wrens reveals it is all in the egg
(2023-05-17)
Incubation periods of Neotropical birds are often longer than those of related species at temperate latitudes. We conducted a common-garden experiment to test the hypothesis that longer tropical incubation periods result ...
Lizard embryos prioritize post-hatching energy reserves over increased hatchling body size during development
(2019-09-09)
Embryonic development in oviparous organisms is fueled by maternally-allocated yolk, with many organisms hatching before that energy store is completely used up; the resultant leftover (residual) yolk is internalized and ...
Hemichordate Molecular Phylogeny Reveals a Novel Cold-Water Clade of Harrimaniid Acorn Worms
(2022-03-04)
Hemichordates are instrumental to understanding early deuterostome and chordate evolution, yet diversity and relationships within the group have been understudied. Recently, there has been renewed interest in hemichordate ...
Developmental reaction norms vary among families of lizards in response to multivariate nest environments
(2024-08-23)
Developmental plasticity is the capacity of a single genotype to express multiple phenotypes in response to different early-life environments. Such responses are defined by reaction norms, which may vary among individuals ...
The Vitamin A-Redox Hypothesis: A Biochemical Basis for Honest Signaling via Carotenoid Pigmentation
(2022-07-29)
Trade-offs in resource allocation have been widely stated as the means by which the honesty of ornamental traits is maintained, but an alternative to this resource trade-off hypothesis is that production of ornamentation ...
Crossing the Divide: Admixture Across the Antarctic Polar Front Revealed by the Brittle Star Astrotoma agassizii
(2019-07-31)
The Antarctic Polar Front (APF) is one of the most well-defined and persistent oceanographic features on the planet and serves as a barrier to dispersal between the Southern Ocean and lower latitudes. High levels of endemism ...
Are we underestimating the genetic variances of dimorphic traits?
(2022-09-16)
Populations often contain discrete classes or morphs (e.g., sexual dimorphisms, wing dimorphisms, trophic dimorphisms) characterized by distinct patterns of trait expression. In quantitative genetic analyses, the different ...
Multiple Colonizations Lead to Cryptic Biodiversity in an Island Ecosystem: Comparative Phylogeography of Anchialine Shrimp Species in the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan
(2022-03-04)
Archipelagos of the Indo-West Pacific are considered to be among the richest in the world in biodiversity,
and phylogeographic studies generally support either the
center of origin or the center of accumulation hypothesis ...
Longitudinal Analysis of a Diversity Support Program in Biology: A National Call for Further Assessment
(2020-05-26)
National calls to improve the performance and persistence of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds in science have led to a surge of research on inclusive, evidence-based teaching methods. Less work has ...
Propagule size and sex ratio influence colonisation dynamics after introduction of a non-native lizard
(2022-01-28)
1. The composition of founding populations plays an important role in colonisation dynamics and can influence population growth during early stages of biological invasion. Specifically, founding populations with small ...
Reproductive Value and the Stochastic Demography of Age-Structured Populations
(2020-06-03)
The dynamics of an age-structured population in a fluctuating environment is determined by the stochastic individual contributions from annual survival and fecundity to the total reproductive value of the population the ...
Reproductive Value and the Stochastic Demography of Age-Structured Populations
(2022-09-15)
The dynamics of an age-structured population in a fluctuating environment is determined by the stochastic individual contributions from annual survival and fecundity to the total reproductive value of the population the ...
Life History Aspects of Exyra semicrocea (Pitcher Plant Moth) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)
(2022-03-03)
With as little as 3% of southeastern Coastal Plain pitcher plant bogs remaining, it is important to understand the life-history aspects of the endemic organisms that
comprise this community. In this study, we elucidate ...
Landscape-level influences of terrestrial snake occupancy within the southeastern United States
(2020-04-02)
Habitat loss and degradation are thought to be the primary drivers of species
extirpations, but for many species we have little information regarding specific habitats that
influence occupancy. Snakes are of conservation ...
Thermal Spikes Caused by the Urban Heat Island Effect Result in Differential Egg Survival of a Non-native Lizard (Anolis cristatellus)
(2019-09-15)
Embryonic development in ectotherms is very sensitive to abiotic nest conditions. In reptiles, high incubation temperatures often result in relatively short incubation periods and large hatching size, but extremely high ...
The evolution of signal design in manakin plumage ornaments
(2022-07-29)
Animal signals are characterized by two design components: efficacy (detectability) and content (message being conveyed). Selection for efficient signal perception should favor the evolution of traits that exhibit an optimal ...