Revisiting Ebert 1994

In a paper published in Science in 1994, Dieter Ebert showed, using laboratory experiments on a horizontally-transmitted disease in Daphnia, that spore production and infection was lower when the geographic distance between parasite and wild-caught Daphnia host origins were greater. Ebert's findings suggested that parasites were locally adapted and contradicted the hypothesis that co-evolved parasites …

Revisiting Colwell and Lees 2000

In a paper published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution in 2000, Robert Colwell and David Lees reviewed the conceptual and empirical literature on the influence of the "mid-domain effect" - geometric constraints in geographic patterns of species richness caused by physiological and physiographical boundaries. Sixteen years after the paper was published, I asked Robert …

Revisiting Abrams et al. 1993

In a paper published in Evolutionary Ecology in 1993, Peter Abrams, Hiroyuki Matsuda and Yasushi Harada developed models to examine adaptive change in continuous traits under different conditions, and show that they can result in both stable fitness minima and unstable fitness maxima. Abrams and colleagues also discuss real biological scenarios in which the adaptive …

Revisiting West-Eberhard 1975

In a paper published in The Quarterly Review of Biology in 1975, Mary Jane West-Eberhard reviewed the literature on kin selection and  outlined "social, ecological and developmental factors" that might influence the evolution of beneficial social interactions. West-Eberhard was motivated to write this paper because she felt that there was too much emphasis on the …