Within‐clade allometric relationships represent standard laws of scaling between energy and size, and their outliers provide new avenues for physiological and ecological research. According to the metabolic level boundaries hypothesis, metabolic …
The loss of previously adaptive traits is typically linked to relaxation in selection, yet the molecular steps leading to such repeated losses are rarely known. Molecular studies of loss have tended to focus on gene sequences alone, but overlooking …
Vestigial characters are common across the tree of life, but the underlying evolutionary processes shaping phenotypic loss are poorly understood. The mammalian vomeronasal system, which detects social chemical cues important to fitness, is an …
The role of trophic specialisation in taxonomic diversification remains unclear. Plant specialists diversify faster than omnivores and animalivores, but at shorter macroevolutionary scales this pattern sometimes reverses. Here, we estimate the effect …
The earliest record of plant visiting in bats dates to the Middle Miocene of La Venta, the world's most diverse tropical palaeocommunity. Palynephyllum antimaster is known from molars that indicate nectarivory. Skull length, an important indicator of …
How ecological opportunity relates to diversification is a central question in evolutionary biology. However, there are few empirical examples of how ecological opportunity and morphological innovation open new adaptive zones, and promote …