Comparisons among species have been a standard tool in animal physiology to understand
how organisms function and adapt to their surrounding environment. During the last two …

Ecologists are increasingly adopting an evolutionary perspective, and in recent years, the
idea that closely related species are ecologically similar has become widespread. In this …

The Mantel test, based on comparisons of distance matrices, is commonly employed in
comparative biology, but its statistical properties in this context are unknown. Here, we …

Traits that enable species to persist in ecological environments are often maintained over
time, a phenomenon known as niche conservatism. Here we argue that ecological niches …

Over the past two decades geographers have developed an increasingly sophisticated
technology termed a geographic information system (GIS). A GIS has the ability to store, map …

Conservation of marmots, large ground-dwelling squirrels restricted to the northern
hemisphere, was impacted by direct human activity through hunting or modifying ecosystem …

The benefits of mammalian hibernation have been well documented. However, the
physiological and ecological costs of torpor have been emphasized only recently as part of a …

Mechanisms underlying species richness patterns remain a central yet controversial issue in
biology. Climate has been regarded as a major determinant of species richness. However …

For socially hibernating mammals, the effectiveness of huddling as a means of energy
conservation should increase with group size. However, group size has only been linked to …

Tree frogs Hyla arborea and Hyla savignyi are similar, closely-related species distributed in
Europe and the Middle East. We investigated geographic variation in body shape within and …