The temperature-size rule, a form of phenotypic plasticity in which decreased temperature increases final size, is one of the most widespread patterns in biology, particularly for ectotherms. Identifying the environmental conditions in which this pattern is reversed is key to understanding the generality of the rule. We use wild and domesticated populations of the tobacco hornworm Manduca sexta...

All organisms face two fundamental trade-offs in the allocation of energetic resources: one between many small versus a few large offspring, and the second between present and future reproduction. Nowhere are these trade-offs more apparent than in the vast range of variation in the sizes of eggs and offspring exhibited among species of marine invertebrates. It has become increasingly clear that...

Explaining variability in offspring vs. adult size among groups is a necessary step to determine the evolutionary and environmental constraints shaping variability in life history strategies. This is of particular interest for life in the ocean where a diversity of offspring development strategies is observed along with variability in physical and biological forcing factors in space and time. W...

Nocturnality is a key evolutionary innovation of mammals that enables mammals to occupy relatively empty nocturnal niches. Invasion of ancestral mammals into nocturnality has long been inferred from the phylogenetic relationships of crown Mammalia, which is primarily nocturnal, and crown Reptilia, which is primarily diurnal, although molecular evidence for this is lacking. Here we used phylogen...

Palaeobiogeographic reconstructions are underpinned by phylogenies, divergence times and ancestral area reconstructions, which together yield ancestral area chronograms that provide a basis for proposing and testing hypotheses of dispersal and vicariance. Methods for area coding include multi-state coding with a single character, binary coding with multiple characters and string coding. Ancestr...

Recent evaluation of the use of Pleistocene megafauna by Clovis hunter-gatherers has suggested that a small number of reliable associations between Clovis artifacts and the remains of Proboscideans are documented, with perhaps as few as 14 occurrences currently known. Specifically, we ask whether 14 is a large or a small number of associations given the spatio-temporal dimensions of the Clovis ...

Laurasiatheria is one of the richest and most diverse superorders of placental mammals. Because this group had a rapid evolutionary radiation, the phylogenetic relationships among the six orders of Laurasiatheria remain a subject of heated debate and several issues related to its phylogeny remain open. Reconstructing the true phylogenetic relationships of Laurasiatheria is a significant case st...