Locomotion in water and on land impose dramatically different demands, yet many animals successfully move in both environments. Most turtle species perform both aquatic and terrestrial locomotion but vary in how they use their limbs. Freshwater …
Ultraviolet (UV) colour patterns invisible to humans are widespread in nature. However, research bias favouring species with conspicuous colours under sexual selection can limit our assessment of other ecological drivers of UV colour, like …
Colour pattern variation provides biological information in fields ranging from disease ecology to speciation dynamics. Comparing colour pattern geometries across images requires colour segmentation, where pixels in an image are assigned to one of a …
The ability to recognize others is a frequent assumption of models of the evolution of cooperation. At the same time, cooperative behavior has been proposed as a selective agent favoring the evolution of individual recognition abilities. Although …
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are biopersistent, global pollutants. Although some in vitro and epidemiological studies have explored the neurotoxic potential of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), a prevalent PFAS congener, it is unknown …
Vertebrate dentitions are often collapsed into a few discrete categories, obscuring both potentially important functional differences between them and insight into their evolution. The terms homodonty and heterodonty typically conflate tooth …
Multifunctionality is often framed as a core constraint of evolution, yet many evolutionary transitions involve traits taking on additional functions. Mouthbrooding, a form of parental care where offspring develop inside a parent’s mouth, increases …
The evolution of constriction and of large prey ingestion within snakes are key innovations that may explain the remarkable diversity, distribution and ecological scope of this clade, relative to other elongate vertebrates. However, these behaviors …
Teeth tell the tale of interactions between predator and prey. If a dental battery is made up of teeth that look similar, they are morphologically homodont, but if there is an unspecified amount of regional specialization in size or shape, they are …
*Pseudogymnoascus destructans* colonizes the wing membrane of hibernating bats with the potential to form dense fungal hyphae aggregates within cupping erosions. These fungal cupping erosions emit a characteristic fluorescent orange-yellow color when …