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Cleaning symbioses are mutualistic relationships where cleaners remove and consume ectoparasites from their clients. Cleaning behavior is rare in fishes and is a highly specialized feeding strategy only observed in around 200 species. Cleaner fishes vary in their degree of specialization, ranging from species that clean as juveniles or facultatively as adults, to nearly obligate or dedicated cleaners...
Ecological specialization is an important engine of evolutionary change and adaptive radiation, but empirical evidence of local adaptation in marine environments is rare, a pattern that has been attributed to the high dispersal ability of marine taxa and limited geographic barriers to gene flow. The broad‐nosed pipefish, Syngnathus typhle, is one of the most broadly distributed syngnathid species...
Male hummingbirds have repeatedly evolved sexually dimorphic tails that they use as ornaments during courtship. We examine how male ornament evolution is reflected in female morphology. Lande's two‐step model of the evolution of dimorphism predicts that γ (the genetic correlation between the sexes) causes trait elaboration to first evolve quickly in both sexes, then dimorphism evolves more slowly...
Cave adaptation has evolved repeatedly across the Tree of Life, famously leading to pigmentation and eye degeneration and loss, yet its macroevolutionary implications remain poorly understood. We use the North American amblyopsid fishes, a family spanning a wide degree of cave adaptation, to examine the impact of cave specialization on the modes and tempo of evolution. We reconstruct evolutionary...
Genitalia are multitasking structures whose development is mediated by numerous regulatory pathways. This multifactorial nature provides an avenue for multiple sources of selection. As a result, genitalia tend to evolve as modular systems comprising semi‐independent subsets of structures, yet the processes that give rise to those patterns are still poorly understood. Here, we ask what are the relative...
Innovations in foraging behavior can drive morphological diversity by opening up new ways of interacting with the environment, or limit diversity through functional constraints associated with different foraging behaviors. Several classic examples of adaptive radiations in birds show increased variation in ecologically relevant traits. However, these cases primarily focus on geographically narrow...
Organisms are exposed to environmental and mutational effects influencing both mean and variance of phenotypes. Potentially deleterious effects arising from this variation can be reduced by the evolution of buffering (canalizing) mechanisms, ultimately reducing phenotypic variability. There has been interest regarding the conditions enabling the evolution of canalization. Under some models, the circumstances...
Tetrapod limbs have been used as a model system to investigate how selective pressures and constraints shape morphological evolution. Anurans have had many independent transitions to various microhabitats, allowing us to dissect how these factors influence limb morphology. Furthermore, anurans provide a unique system to test the generality of developmental constraints proposed in mammals, namely that...
Understanding the interplay between genetic differentiation, ancestral plasticity, and the evolution of plasticity during adaptation to environmental variation is critical to predict populations’ responses to environmental change. However, the role of plasticity in rapid adaptation in nature remains poorly understood. We here use the invasion of the horned beetle Onthophagus taurus in the United States...
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