One of the driving forces behind a renewed interest in phylogeny is the realization that a phylogenetic context is critical for the study of a wide variety of evolutionary questions (e.g., Eldredge and Cracraft 1980; Felsenstein 1985; O'Hara 1988; Donoghue 1989; Fuak and Brooks 1990; Brooks and McLennan 1991; Harvey and Pagel 1991; Maddison and Maddison 1992; Eggleton and Vane-Wright 1994; Harv...

There is more than one way to develop neuronal complexity, and animals frequently use different molecular toolkits to achieve similar functional outcomes. Genomics and metabolomics data from basal metazoans suggest that neural signalling evolved independently in ctenophores and cnidarians/bilaterians. This polygenesis hypothesis explains the lack of pan-neuronal and pan-synaptic genes across me...

HIV-1 set-point viral load-the approximately stable value of viraemia in the first years of chronic infection-is a strong predictor of clinical outcome and is highly variable across infected individuals. To better understand HIV-1 pathogenesis and the evolution of the viral population, we must quantify the heritability of set-point viral load, which is the fraction of variation in this phenotyp...

It is often assumed that ecological specialization represents an evolutionary "dead-end" that limits further evolution. Maximum-likelihood (ML) analyses on phylogenies for 15 groups of phytophagous insects revealed that high transition rates both to and from specialization occurred, but that the mean ratio of rates was significantly biased toward a higher rate to specialization. Here we explore...

Character displacement - trait evolution stemming from selection to lessen resource competition or reproductive interactions between species - has long been regarded as important in finalizing speciation. By contrast, its role in initiating speciation has received less attention. Yet because selection for character displacement should act only where species co-occur, individuals in sympatry wil...

Evolution in adaptive landscapes—examples of science and technology development In science and technology studies it is very common to describe structure formation and structure development by using spatial representations. Maps of such knowledge landscapes allow the dynamic character of the research processes to be visualized. In this paper, we discuss how concepts, methods and mathematical mo...