Revisiting Rainey & Travisano 1998

In a paper published in Nature in 1998, Paul Rainey and Michael Travisano showed that identical populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluroescens diversify morphologically when provided with ecological opportunity, but show no divergence when opportunity is restricted. Further, the morphs follow a predictable sequence of evolution maintained by competition. These results provided support for the …

Revisiting Şekercioğlu et al. 2002

In a paper published in PNAS in 2002, Çağan Şekercioğlu, Paul Ehrlich, Gretchen Daily, Deniz Aygen, David Goehring and Randi Sandi showed. using data from forest fragments in Costa Rica, that the ability to move through the deforested matrix was the best predictor of persistence of understory insectivorous birds in small forest fragments. Bird diets, …

Revisiting Srivastava & Lawton 1998

In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1998, Diane Srivastava and John Lawton, using experiments on tree hole insect communities, tested the "more individuals hypothesis", the idea that more productive support higher species richness because they have a greater number of individuals. Srivastava and Lawton found that more productive tree holes had higher …