Evolution in action across life at “Evolution Canyons”, Israel

Fluctuating Helical Asymmetry and Morphology of Snails (Gastropoda) in Divergent Microhabitats at ‘Evolution Canyons I and II,’ Israel

BACKGROUND Developmental instability of shelled gastropods is measured as deviations from a perfect equiangular (logarithmic) spiral. We studied six species of gastropods at 'Evolution Canyons I and II' in Carmel and the Galilee Mountains, Israel, respectively. The xeric, south-facing, 'African' slopes and the mesic, north-facing, 'European' slopes have dramatically different microclimates and ...

Editorial: Could Speciation Across Evolution be Governed by Genetic Switch Codes at Short Tandem Repeats?

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...

Adaptive evolution of benzoxazinoids in wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides, at "Evolution Canyon", Mount Carmel, Israel

BACKGROUND "Evolution Canyon" (ECI) at Lower Nahal Oren, Mount Carmel, Israel, is an optimal natural microscale model for unraveling evolution-in-action, highlighting the evolutionary processes of biodiversity evolution, adaptation, and incipient sympatric speciation. A major model organism in ECI is the tetraploid wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides (TD), the progenitor of cultivated emmer ...

Social life, evolution of intelligence, behaviour and human brain size

Social life is one of the most critical factors of the evolution of the behavior of non-human primates and humans. Several factors, such as an increase in brain size, adaptive modules, and grooming, are related to the complexities of social groups. Although some scientists have mentioned foraging as a rival hypothesis for the evolution of behavior, in this research, we tried to investigate the ...