There is extensive evidence that some species of ecological generalists, which use a wide diversity of resources, are in fact heterogeneous collections of relatively specialized individuals. This within-population variation, or "individual specialization," is a key requirement for frequency-dependent interactions that may drive a variety of types of evolutionary diversification and may influenc...

The tenet that ecological opportunity drives adaptive diversification has been central to theories of speciation since Darwin, yet no widely accepted definition or mechanistic framework for the concept currently exists. We propose a definition for ecological opportunity that provides an explicit mechanism for its action. In our formulation, ecological opportunity refers to environmental conditi...

BACKGROUND A number of biotic and abiotic factors have been proposed as drivers of geographic variation in species richness. As biotic elements, inter-specific interactions are the most widely recognized. Among abiotic factors, in particular for plants, climate and topographic variables as well as their historical variation have been correlated with species richness and endemism. In this study,...

Combining ecological niche modeling with phylogeography has become a popular approach to understand how historical climate changes have created and maintained population structure. However, methodological choices in geographic extents and environmental layer sets employed in modeling may affect results and interpretations profoundly. Here, we infer range-wide phylogeographic structure and model...

BACKGROUND Psilochilus is a poorly studied orchid genus distributed from southern Mexico to south-eastern Brazil. A taxonomic revision of this Neotropical endemic based on morphological data is presented. MATERIAL AND METHODS Over 170 dried herbarium specimens and flowers preserved in liquid of Psilochilus were analyzed. Morphological variation among examined taxa was described based on multi...

Species distribution modeling has been widely used in studying habitat relationships and for conservation purposes. However, neglecting ecological knowledge about species, e.g. their seasonal movements, and ignoring the proper environmental factors that can explain key elements for species survival (shelter, food and water) increase model uncertainty. This study exemplifies how these ecological...

Abstract We here develop a concept of an individualized niche in analogy to Hutchison’s population-level the ecological niche. consider (ecological) as range environmental conditions under which particular individual has expected lifetime reproductive success ≥ 1. Our primarily function, it refers match phenotype its contemporary environment (niche fit) while we discuss evolutionary fitness eva...

Organisms can receive not only a genetic inheritance from their ancestors but also an ecological inheritance, involving modifications their ancestors made to the environment through niche construction. Ecological inheritances may persist as a legacy, potentially generating selection pressures that favor sociality. Yet, most proposed cases of sociality being impacted by an ecological inheritance...

Boivin et al.’s (1) article profoundly deepens scientific understanding of anthropogenic global ecological change from Pleistocene to present by offering robust new evidence of early human transformation of the biosphere that should influence discussions on Anthropocene formalization (2, 3). As ecologists and evolutionary theorists, we applaud this work. However, we are also concerned that this...