Iso-luminance counterillumination drove bioluminescent shark radiation

Iso-luminance counterillumination drove bioluminescent shark radiation

Counterilluminating animals use ventral photogenic organs (photophores) to mimic the residual downwelling light and cloak their silhouette from upward-looking predators. To cope with variable conditions of pelagic light environments they typically adjust their luminescence intensity. Here, we found evidence that bioluminescent sharks instead emit a constant light output and move up and down in ...

Palaeoenvironmental Shifts Drove the Adaptive Radiation of a Noctuid Stemborer Tribe (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae, Apameini) in the Miocene

Between the late Oligocene and the early Miocene, climatic changes have shattered the faunal and floral communities and drove the apparition of new ecological niches. Grassland biomes began to supplant forestlands, thus favouring a large-scale ecosystem turnover. The independent adaptive radiations of several mammal lineages through the evolution of key innovations are classic examples of these...

What drove the evolution of endothermy?

The metabolic production of heat and high, stable body temperatures characteristic of birds and mammals was a major step in the evolution of vertebrate animals; however, the 1979 paper by Albert Bennett and John Ruben (Bennett and Ruben, 1979) represented a fundamental shift in thinking about the problem of the evolution of endothermy. They argued that endothermy based on thermoregulatory consi...

What Drove 19 Century Market Integration?

Environmental change drove macroevolution in cupuladriid bryozoans.

Most macroevolutionary events are correlated with changes in the environment, but more rigorous evidence of cause and effect has been elusive. We compiled a 10 Myr record of origination and extinction, changes in mode of reproduction, morphologies and abundances of cupuladriid bryozoan species, spanning the time when primary productivity collapsed in the southwestern Caribbean as the Isthmus of...