Antiherbivory defense mechanisms along an environmental gradient in restinga

Niche Partitioning Along an Environmental Gradient

Biological systematics studies suggest that species are discretized in niche space. That is, rather than seeing a continuum of organism types with respect to continuous environmental variations, observers instead find discrete species or clumps of species, with one clump separated from another in niche space by a gap. Here, using a simple one dimensional model with a smoothly varying environmen...

Genomic mechanisms of evolved physiological plasticity in killifish distributed along an environmental salinity gradient.

Adaptive variation tends to emerge clinally along environmental gradients or discretely among habitats with limited connectivity. However, in Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus), a population genetic discontinuity appears in the absence of obvious barriers to gene flow along parallel salinity clines and coincides with a physiologically stressful salinity. We show that populations residen...

Life history variation in an annual plant under two opposing environmental constraints along an aridity gradient

Environmental gradients represent an ideal framework for studying adaptive variation in the life history of plant species. However, on very steep gradients, largely contrasting conditions at the two gradient ends often limit the distribution of the same species across the whole range of environmental conditions. Here, we study phenotypic variation in a winter annual crucifer Biscutella didyma p...

Distribution of Dioecious Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) along an Environmental Gradient in Ogallala, NE

Natural selection along an environmental gradient: a classic cline in mouse pigmentation.

We revisited a classic study of morphological variation in the oldfield mouse (Peromyscus polionotus) to estimate the strength of selection acting on pigmentation patterns and to identify the underlying genes. We measured 215 specimens collected by Francis Sumner in the 1920s from eight populations across a 155-km, environmentally variable transect from the white sands of Florida's Gulf coast t...