Death shapes life

Life & Death

life insurance policy (college freshman), about the same as the Gettysburg Address, and much less readable than Hemingway (fifth grade level). I used more words per sentence than Hemingway (18.5 versus 13.5) but less than Lincoln (26.8). I used longer words than any of the references (4.8 letters per word, versus 4.0 for Hemingway) but used fewer prepositions (10.7 percent) than any of the othe...

Life history shapes gene expression in salmonids

Within species, individuals differ by gene expression, which may translate into remarkable phenotypic differences. Between species, gene expression levels change linearly over evolutionary time due to stochastic processes [1,2], while intraspecific evolution of transcriptional variation seems to be dominated by stabilizing selection [3]. We show that global gene expression levels within juvenil...

Nutrition shapes life-history evolution across species.

Nutrition is a key component of life-history theory, yet we know little about how diet quality shapes life-history evolution across species. Here, we test whether quantitative measures of nutrition are linked to life-history evolution across 96 species of butterflies representing over 50 independent diet shifts. We find that butterflies feeding on high nitrogen host plants as larvae are more fe...

Relitigating life and death.

From death comes life

Feeding on the dead: White rot fungi, like this shiitake mushroom, have the unusual ability to digest dead wood, making them key players in the decomposition of plant litter. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.) Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselv...