Rapid adaptive evolution has been advocated as a mechanism that promotes invasion. Demonstrating adaptive evolution in invasive species requires rigorous analysis of phenotypic shifts driven by selection. Here, we document selection-driven evolution of Phyla canescens, an Argentine weed, in two invaded regions (Australia and France). Invasive populations possessed similar or higher diversity th...

Recent theoretical studies have shown that demographic stochasticity can greatly increase the tendency of asexually reproducing phenotypically diverse organisms to spontaneously evolve into localized clusters, suggesting a simple mechanism for sympatric speciation. Here we study the role of demographic stochasticity in a model of competing organisms subject to assortative mating. We find that i...

Example 5.5: Near-critical binary splitting. The theorem applies to binary splitting where the probability of division is p(z) = 1/2+1/(2z), and q(z) = 1− p(z) is the probability of no children, if population size is z. Thus, m(z) = 1 + 1/z and the process is supercritical, but approaches criticality as z increases. The probability generating function of the offspring number is fz(s) = q(z) + p...

For octocorals, sexual reproductive processes are fundamental to maintaining populations and influencing macroevolutionary processes. While ecological data on octocorals have lagged behind their scleractinian counterparts, the proliferation of reproductive studies in recent years now enables comparisons between these important anthozoan taxa. Here we review the systematic and biogeographic patt...

The relationship between sexual reproduction and clonal growth in clonal plants often shows up at the ramet level. However, only a few studies focus on the relationship at the genet level, which could finally account for evolution. The sexual reproduction and clonal growth of Ligularia virgaurea, a perennial herb widely distributed in the alpine grasslands of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of Chin...

fable literature is one of the bases in which sexual stereotypes are reproduced. like all other scientific fields, it continuously delineates a repetitive image of women. therefore, this article aims to study how literary texts reflect sexual discrimination in a specific culture and how they deal with reproduction of sexual division; specially how these injustices are drawn in mr. dolatabadi&ap...