Gut microbes are believed to play a critical role in most animal life, yet fitness effects and cost benefit-tradeoffs incurred by the host are poorly understood. Unlike most hosts studied to date, butterflies largely acquire their nutrients from larval feeding, leaving relatively little opportunity

This data file contains a matrix of genetic kinship for the 43 individual marmots analyzed in this study. Kinship was calculated as pair-wise relatedness between individuals based on genotypes taken from 12 microsatellite loci (detailed genotyping methods described in Blumstein et al. 2010 doi:10.11

Parental environmental effects, or transgenerational plasticity, can influence an individual’s phenotype or fitness, yet remain underexplored in the context of global change. Using the perennial self-pollinating plant Boechera stricta, we explored the effects of climate change on transgenerational a

Fixed chromosomal inversions can reduce gene flow and promote speciation in two ways: by suppressing recombination and by carrying locally favoured alleles at multiple loci. However, it is unknown whether favoured mutations slowly accumulate on older inversions or if young inversions spread because

Aim: Ecologically driven diversification can create spectacular diversity in both species numbers and form. However, the prediction that the match between intrinsic (e.g. functional trait) and extrinsic (e.g. climatic niche) variables may lead to evolutionary radiation has not been critically tested

Conflicting hypotheses predict how traits mediate species establishment and community assembly. Traits of newly establishing individuals are predicted to converge, or be more similar to the resident, preexisting community, when the biotic or abiotic environment favors a single best phenotype, but ar

Correlated evolution of mate signals and mate preference may be constrained if selection pressures acting on mate preference differ from those acting on mate signals. In particular, opposing selection pressures may act on mate preference and signals when traits have sexual as well as nonsexual funct

Abstract One cause of reproductive isolation is gamete competition, in which conspecific pollen has an advantage over heterospecific pollen in siring seeds, thereby decreasing the formation of F1 hybrids. Analogous pollen interactions between hybrid pollen and conspecific pollen can contribute to po

The central Colorado landscape bears a strong imprint of post-Laramide (late Eocene to Quaternary) tectonics, volcanism, climate change, and drainage rearrangement. This field trip will examine the post-Laramide evolution of central Colorado, traversing the Front Range, from the Colorado Piedmont on

We investigated the genetic background of intraspecific variation in wing color across an elevational gradient in the butterfly Colias philodice eriphyle. The degree of wing melanization was an accelerating function of elevation, and differences in wing melanization persisted in a common environment

The Ipomopsis aggregata species complex (Polemoniaceae) includes species pairs that hybridize readily in nature as well as pairs that meet along contact zones with no apparent hybridization. Artificial hybrids can be made between I. aggregata and I. arizonica, yet morphological intermediates between

Two sympatric Delphinium species, D. barbeyi and D. nuttallianum, are ecologically and morphologically similar. However, D. barbeyi has multiple, large inflorescences while D. nuttallianum has a single, small inflorescence. These differences in floral display should result in greater intraplant poll