Character displacement is the process by which traits evolve in response to selection to
lessen resource competition or reproductive interactions between species. Although …

Background Most, if not all, organisms possess the ability to alter their phenotype in direct
response to changes in their environment, a phenomenon known as phenotypic plasticity …

Although mothers influence the traits of their offspring in many ways beyond the
transmission of genes, it remains unclear how important such 'maternal effects' are to …

As the environment changes, populations can respond by adapting via evolutionary change.
If the rate or magnitude of environmental change is too great for evolution to keep pace, then …

In The Origin of Species, Darwin proposed his principle of divergence of character (a
process now termed “character displacement”) to explain how new species arise and why …

A growing number of biologists have begun asking whether environmentally induced
phenotypic change––'phenotypic plasticity'––precedes and facilitates the origin and …

Recent studies of communities have examined phylogenetic signal in species' functional
traits to infer drivers of community assembly. Phenotypic variation in traits, arising from …

Phenotypic plasticity may be favored in generalist populations if it increases niche width,
even in temporally constant environments. Phenotypic plasticity can increase the frequency …

When experiencing resource competition or abrupt environmental change, animals often
must transition rapidly from an ancestral diet to a novel, derived diet. Yet, little is known …

A major goal of evolutionary biology is to identify the causes of diversification and to
ascertain why some evolutionary lineages are especially diverse. Evolutionary biologists …