By their very nature oceanic island ecosystems offer great opportunities for the study of
evolution and have for a long time been recognized as natural laboratories for studying …

Deserts and arid regions are generally perceived as bare and rather homogeneous areas of
low diversity. The S ahara is the largest warm desert in the world and together with the arid S …

The last species list of the European herpetofauna was published by Speybroeck, Beukema
and Crochet (2010). In the meantime, ongoing research led to numerous taxonomic …

With more than 80 species inhabiting all warm continental land masses and hundreds of
intervening continental and oceanic islands, Hemidactylus geckos are one of the most …

The upside-down jellyfish Cassiopea is a globally distributed, semi-sessile, planktonically
dispersed scyphomedusa. Cassiopea occurs in shallow, tropical inshore marine waters on …

Abstract Geckos in the Western Hemisphere provide an excellent model to study faunal
assembly at a continental scale. We generated a time‐calibrated phylogeny, including …

Abstract Aim Geckos (Reptilia: Squamata), due to their great age and global distribution, are
excellent candidates to test hypotheses of Gondwanan vicariance against post‐Gondwanan …

Skinks are the largest family of lizards and are found worldwide in a diversity of habitats.
One of the larger and more poorly studied groups of skinks includes members of the …

A molecular phylogenetic analysis of the Macaronesian endemic species of Convolvulus
was undertaken using data from the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) …

Evidence from the early paleontological record of mammalian evolution has often been
interpreted as supporting the idea that mammals were nocturnal for most of their early …