Zoology: Recent submissions
Now showing items 161-180 of 241
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Vultures acquire information on carcass location from scavenging eagles
(2014)Vultures are recognized as the scroungers of the natural world, owing to their ecological role as obligate scavengers. While it is well known that vultures use intraspecific social information as they forage, the possibility ... -
Best practices for use of stable isotope mixing models in food web studies
(2014)Stable isotope mixing models are increasingly used to quantify consumer diets, but may be misused and misinterpreted. We address major challenges to their effective application. Mixing models have increased rapidly in ... -
Dispersal capacity predicts both population genetic structure and species richness in reef fishes
(2014)Dispersal is a fundamental species characteristic that should directly affect both rates of gene flow among spatially distributed populations and opportunities for speciation. Yet no single trait associated with dispersal ... -
Molecular and Phenotypic Data Support the Recognition of the Wakatobi Flowerpecker (Dicaeum kuehni) from the Unique and Understudied Sulawesi Region
(2014)Accurate estimates of species richness are essential to macroecological and macroevolutionary research, as well as to the effective management and conservation of biodiversity. The resolution of taxonomic relationships is ... -
Identification of mechanosensitive genes during skeletal development: alteration of genes associated with cytoskeletal rearrangement and cell signalling pathways.
(University of Edinburgh (datashare), 2014) -
Bayesian stable isotope mixing models
(2013)In this paper, we review recent advances in stable isotope mixing models (SIMMs) and place them into an overarching Bayesian statistical framework, which allows for several useful extensions. SIMMs are used to quantify the ... -
Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information.
(2013)Body size and metabolic rate both fundamentally constrain how species interact with their environment, and hence ultimately affect their niche. While many mechanisms leading to these constraints have been explored, their ... -
Phylogenetic host specificity and understanding parasite sharing in primates.
(2012)Understanding how parasites are transmitted to new species is of great importance for human health, agriculture and conservation. However, it is still unclear why some parasites are shared by many species, while others ... -
Phylogenetic comparative approaches for studying niche conservatism
(2010)Analyses of phylogenetic niche conservatism (PNC) are becoming increasingly common. However, each analysis makes subtly different assumptions about the evolutionary mechanism that generates patterns of niche conservatism. ... -
What factors shape rates of phenotypic evolution? A comparative study of cranial morphology of four mammalian clades
(2009)Understanding why rates of morphological evolution vary is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Classical work suggests that body size, interspecific competition, geographic range size and specialisation may all be ... -
Trophic enrichment factors for blood serum in the European badger (Meles meles)
(2012)Ecologists undertaking stable isotopic analyses of animal diets require trophic enrichment factors (TEFs) for the specific animal tissues that they are studying. Such basic data are available for a small number of species, ... -
Abnormal notochord branching is associated with foregut malformations in the adriamycin treated mouse model.
(University of Edinburgh (datashare), 2011)Oesophageal atresia (OA) and tracheooesophageal fistula (TOF) are relatively common human congenital malformations of the foregut where the oesophagus does not connect with the stomach and there is an abnormal connection ... -
Specialization and the road to academic success
(Ecological Society of America, 2011)The relative merits of focusing research on few areas of science versus generalizing across topics have important implications for how academics conduct science. Little is known, however, about how research breadth and ... -
Host longevity and parasite species richness in mammals.
(Public Library of Science, 2012)Hosts and parasites co-evolve, with each lineage exerting selective pressures on the other. Thus, parasites may influence host life-history characteristics, such as longevity, and simultaneously host life-history may ... -
Phylogenetic conservatism of environmental niches in mammals
(2011)Phylogenetic niche conservatism is the pattern where close relatives occupy similar niches, whereas distant relatives are more dissimilar. We suggest that niche conservatism will vary across clades in relation to their ... -
A common tendency for phylogenetic overdispersion in mammalian assemblages
(The Royal Society, 2008)Competition has long been proposed as an important force in structuring mammalian communities. Although early work recognised that competition has a phylogenetic dimension, only with recent increases in the availability ... -
Macroecology and extinction risk correlates of frogs
(Blackwell Publishing, 2008)Aim Our aim was to test whether extinction risk in frogs could be predicted from their body size, fecundity or geographic range size. Because small geographic range size is a correlate of extinction risk in many taxa, we ... -
Body size evolution in mammals: complexity in tempo and mode
(University of Chicago Press, 2010)Body size correlates with virtually every aspect of species? biology, so understanding the tempo and mode of its evolution is of key importance in macroecology and macroevolution. Here we use body-mass data from 3473 of ...
