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Evolutionary ecology and behaviour

This section considers studies in the areas of evolutionary behaviour and ecology including sexual conflict and selection.

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  1. Studying how trophic traits and niche use are related in natural populations is important in order to understand adaptation and specialization. Here, we describe trophic trait diversity in twenty-five Norwegia...

    Authors: Kjartan Østbye, Chris Harrod, Finn Gregersen, Tom Klepaker, Michael Schulz, Dolph Schluter and Leif Asbjørn Vøllestad
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:102
  2. Intralocus sexual conflict, arising from selection for different alleles at the same locus in males and females, imposes a constraint on sex-specific adaptation. Intralocus sexual conflict can be alleviated by...

    Authors: David Berger, Tao You, Maravillas R. Minano, Karl Grieshop, Martin I. Lind, Göran Arnqvist and Alexei A. Maklakov
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:88
  3. Signals are essential for communication and play a fundamental role in the evolution and diversification of species. Olfactory, visual and acoustic species-specific signals have been shown to function for spec...

    Authors: Hanitriniaina Rakotonirina, Peter M. Kappeler and Claudia Fichtel
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:100
  4. Black sparrowhawks (Accipiter melanoleucus) recently colonised the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, where the species faces competition for their nest sites from Egyptian geese (Alopochen aegyptiaca) which frequentl...

    Authors: Petra Sumasgutner, Juan Millán, Odette Curtis, Ann Koelsag and Arjun Amar
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:97
  5. Sperm size and quality are key factors for fertilization success. There is increasing empirical evidence demonstrating that sperm form and function are influenced by selective pressures. Theoretical models pre...

    Authors: Dénes Schmera, Julia Pizá, Ellen Reinartz, Sylvain Ursenbacher and Bruno Baur
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:89
  6. Inbreeding is often associated with a decrease in offspring fitness (‘inbreeding depression’). Moreover, it is generally assumed that the negative effects of inbreeding are exacerbated in stressful environment...

    Authors: Regina Vega-Trejo, Megan L. Head and Michael D. Jennions
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:68
  7. Models that predict changes in the abundance and distribution of fauna under future climate change scenarios often assume that ecological niche and habitat availability are the major determinants of species’ r...

    Authors: Jane L. Younger, John van den Hoff, Barbara Wienecke, Mark Hindell and Karen J. Miller
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:61
  8. Sperm competition between rival ejaculates over the fertilization of ova typically selects for the production of large numbers of sperm. An obvious way to increase sperm production is to increase testis size, ...

    Authors: Athina Giannakara, Lukas Schärer and Steven A. Ramm
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:60
  9. Although most insect species are specialized on one or few groups of plants, there are phytophagous insects that seem to use virtually any kind of plant as food. Understanding the nature of this ability to fee...

    Authors: Maria de la Paz Celorio-Mancera, Christopher W. Wheat, Mikael Huss, Francesco Vezzi, Ramprasad Neethiraj, Johan Reimegård, Sören Nylin and Niklas Janz
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:59
  10. Ecological factors often have a strong impact on spatiotemporal patterns of biodiversity. The integration of spatial ecology and phylogenetics allows for rigorous tests of whether speciation is associated with...

    Authors: Zachary W. Culumber and Michael Tobler
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:44
  11. Social and environmental factors can profoundly impact an individual’s investment of resources into different components of reproduction. Such allocation trade-offs are expected to be amplified under challengi...

    Authors: Topi K. Lehtonen, P. Andreas Svensson and Bob B. M. Wong
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:18
  12. The eusocial Hymenoptera have radiated across a wide range of thermal environments, exposing them to significant physiological stressors. We reconstructed the evolutionary history of three families of Heat Sho...

    Authors: Andrew D. Nguyen, Nicholas J. Gotelli and Sara Helms Cahan
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:15
  13. Species or clades may retain or shift their environmental niche space over evolutionary time. Understanding these processes offers insights into the environmental processes fuelling lineage diversification and...

    Authors: Alexander Gamisch, Gunter Alexander Fischer and Hans Peter Comes
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:14
  14. A host infected with multiple parasitic species provides a unique system to test evolutionary and ecological hypotheses. Different parasitic species associated with a single host are expected to occupy differe...

    Authors: Thomas Parmentier, Wouter Dekoninck and Tom Wenseleers
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:12
  15. Skewed body size distributions and the high relative richness of small-bodied taxa are a fundamental property of a wide range of animal clades. The evolutionary processes responsible for generating these distr...

    Authors: James L. Rainford, Michael Hofreiter and Peter J. Mayhew
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:8
  16. White-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) are small Asian apes known for living in stable territories and producing loud, elaborate vocalizations (songs), often in well-coordinated male/female duets. The female great ...

    Authors: Thomas A. Terleph, S. Malaivijitnond and U. H. Reichard
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:4
  17. Aggressive behaviour can have significant evolutionary consequences–not only within species, but also in the context of heterospecific interactions. Here, we carried out an experimental field study to investig...

    Authors: Topi K. Lehtonen, Karine Gagnon, Will Sowersby and Bob B. M. Wong
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2016 16:3
  18. Hymenoptera that mass-provision their offspring have evolved elaborate antimicrobial strategies to ward off fungal infestation of the highly nutritive larval food. Females of the Afro-European Philanthus triangul...

    Authors: Katharina Weiss, Erhard Strohm, Martin Kaltenpoth and Gudrun Herzner
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:291
  19. Immune response induction benefits insects in combatting infection by pathogens. However, organisms have a limited amount of resources available and face the dilemma of partitioning resources between immunity ...

    Authors: Andrea Barthel, Heike Staudacher, Antje Schmaltz, David G. Heckel and Astrid T. Groot
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:282
  20. Interactions between wildlife and humans are increasing. Urban animals are often less wary of humans than their non-urban counterparts, which could be explained by habituation, adaptation or local site selecti...

    Authors: Wouter F.D. van Dongen, Randall W. Robinson, Michael A. Weston, Raoul A. Mulder and Patrick-Jean Guay
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:253
  21. Organisms may develop into multiple phenotypes under different nutritional environments by developmental plasticity, whereas the potential costs and mechanisms of such plasticity are poorly understood. Here we...

    Authors: Jiaqin Xie, Patrick De Clercq, Chang Pan, Haosen Li, Yuhong Zhang and Hong Pang
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:276
  22. Nannandry is a sexual system where males (”dwarf males”) are much smaller than the conspecific females. Dwarf males occur in a wide range of unrelated organisms but the evolutionary advantages of this conditio...

    Authors: Frida Rosengren, Bengt Hansson and Nils Cronberg
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:270
  23. Maternal care (egg-nymph guarding behavior) has been recorded in some genera of Acanthosomatidae. However, the origin of the maternal care in the family has remained unclear due to the lack of phylogenetic hyp...

    Authors: Jing-Fu Tsai, Shin-ichi Kudo and Kazunori Yoshizawa
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:258
  24. In social Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), various chemical compounds present on the cuticle have been shown to act as fertility signals. In addition, specific queen-characteristic hydrocarbons have been im...

    Authors: Ricardo Caliari Oliveira, Cintia Akemi Oi, Mauricio Meirelles Castro do Nascimento, Ayrton Vollet-Neto, Denise Araujo Alves, Maria Claudia Campos, Fabio Nascimento and Tom Wenseleers
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:254
  25. Whole genome duplications (WGDs) have been proposed to have made a significant impact on vertebrate evolution. Two rounds of WGD (1R and 2R) occurred in the common ancestor of Gnathostomata and Cyclostomata, f...

    Authors: Hikoyu Suzuki, Masato Nikaido, Kimiko Hagino-Yamagishi and Norihiro Okada
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:245
  26. A multitude of correlations between heterozygosity and fitness proxies associated with disease have been reported from wild populations, but the genetic basis of these associations is unresolved. We used a lon...

    Authors: Patrick M. Brock, Simon J. Goodman, Ailsa J. Hall, Marilyn Cruz and Karina Acevedo-Whitehouse
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:242
  27. Unpredictable and inclement weather is increasing in strength and frequency, challenging organisms to respond adaptively. One way in which animals respond to environmental challenges is through the secretion o...

    Authors: JQ Ouyang, ÁZ Lendvai, R. Dakin, AD Domalik, VJ Fasanello, BG Vassallo, MF Haussmann, IT Moore and F. Bonier
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:219
  28. Sexual selection is largely driven by the availability of mates. Theory predicts that male competition and female choice should be density-dependent, with males competing more intensely at relatively high dens...

    Authors: Robin M. Tinghitella, Chelsea Stehle and Janette W. Boughman
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:200
  29. Hybridization between species is of conservation concern as it might threaten the genetic integrity of species. Anthropogenic factors can alter hybridization dynamics by introducing new potentially hybridizing...

    Authors: Katja Rohde, Yvonne Hau, Jessica Weyer and Axel Hochkirch
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:191
  30. Eurypterids are a diverse group of chelicerates known from ~250 species with a sparse Ordovician record currently comprising 11 species; the oldest fully documented example is from the Sandbian of Avalonia. Th...

    Authors: James C. Lamsdell, Derek E. G. Briggs, Huaibao P. Liu, Brian J. Witzke and Robert M. McKay
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:169
  31. For conservation of highly threatened species to be effective, it is crucial to differentiate natural population parameters from atypical behavioural, ecological and demographic characteristics associated with...

    Authors: Jessica V. Bryant, Valérie A. Olson, Helen J. Chatterjee and Samuel T. Turvey
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:171
  32. Identifying the causes of intraspecific phenotypic variation is essential for understanding evolutionary processes that maintain diversity and promote speciation. In polymorphic species, the relative frequenci...

    Authors: Claire A. McLean, Devi Stuart-Fox and Adnan Moussalli
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:156
  33. Investigating the evolution of species-specific insect genitalia is central to understanding how morphological diversification contributes to reproductive isolation and lineage divergence. While many studies e...

    Authors: Maxi Polihronakis Richmond
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:255
  34. Detailed knowledge of spatial and temporal variation in the genetic population structure of hosts and parasites is required for understanding of host − parasite coevolution. As hot-spots of contemporary coevol...

    Authors: Justyna Wolinska, Adam Petrusek, Mingbo Yin, Henrike Koerner, Jaromir Seda and Sabine Giessler
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:247
  35. Cooperative benefits of mutualistic interactions are affected by genetic variation among the interacting partners, which may have consequences for interaction-specificities across guilds of sympatric species w...

    Authors: Henrik H De Fine Licht and Jacobus J Boomsma
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:244
  36. Life-history studies of wild bird populations often focus on the relationship between an individual’s condition and its capacity to mount an immune response, as measured by a commonly-employed assay of cutaneo...

    Authors: Scott K Sakaluk, Alastair J Wilson, E Keith Bowers, L Scott Johnson, Brian S Masters, Bonnie GP Johnson, Laura A Vogel, Anna M Forsman and Charles F Thompson
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:242
  37. Decreases in mate and/or pollinator availability would be expected to affect the selective pressure on plant mating systems. An increase in self-fertilization may evolve to compensate for the negative effects ...

    Authors: Chloé EL Delmas, Pierre-Olivier Cheptou, Nathalie Escaravage and André Pornon
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:243
  38. Five basic taste modalities, sour, sweet, bitter, salt and umami, can be distinguished by humans and are fundamental for physical and ecological adaptations in mammals. Molecular genetic studies of the recepto...

    Authors: Kangli Zhu, Xuming Zhou, Shixia Xu, Di Sun, Wenhua Ren, Kaiya Zhou and Guang Yang
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:218
  39. Nicrophorus vespilloides eggs are deposited into the soil in close proximity to the decomposing vertebrate carcasses that these insects use as an obligate resource to rear their offspring. Eggs in this environmen...

    Authors: Chris G C Jacobs, Yin Wang, Heiko Vogel, Andreas Vilcinskas, Maurijn van der Zee and Daniel E Rozen
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:208
  40. A central question for understanding the evolutionary responses of plant species to rapidly changing environments is the assessment of their potential for short-term (in one or a few generations) genetic chang...

    Authors: Ricardo Alía, Regina Chambel, Eduardo Notivol, José Climent and Santiago C González-Martínez
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:200
  41. The release of radioactive materials due to the Fukushima nuclear accident has raised concern regarding the biological impacts of ingesting radioactively contaminated diets on organisms. We previously performe...

    Authors: Chiyo Nohara, Wataru Taira, Atsuki Hiyama, Akira Tanahara, Toshihiro Takatsuji and Joji M Otaki
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:193
  42. The Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) predicts that gestation duration, lactation duration, and their sum, total development time, are constrained by mass-specific basal metabolic rate such that they should sc...

    Authors: Gabrielle Jackson, Arne Ø Mooers, Evgenia Dubman, Jenna Hutchen and Mark Collard
    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:194

Annual Journal Metrics

  • For BMC Evolutionary Biology (former title)

    2022 Citation Impact
    3.4 - 2-year Impact Factor
    3.6 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.061 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    0.968 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2023 Speed
    29 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
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