Evolution and Paleontology Studies

The paper presents a large-scale dataset of Bayesian diversification rates for over 34,000 vertebrate species, providing continuous speciation rates and presence-absence matrices for evolutionary and spatial diversity analyses.

The paper describes new mandibular remains of Microcolobus from Nakali, Kenya, and finds they belong to a single species, Microcolobus tugenensis, with traits suggesting it is a stem Colobinae.

The paper decomposes mammalian life histories to show that natural selection on body mass explains most of the variation in ecological and demographic traits across species.

The paper develops a covariant model that integrates diversification and molecular/morphological evolution, showing that modern diversity is dominated by a few large clades with high early radiation rates and that molecular change is independent of lineage height.

This paper introduces PFIM, a model that reconstructs ancient food webs using functional trait data, showing it can predict ~70% of trophic interactions in modern systems and ~90% when enforcing interaction distributions.

This study uses phylogenomic data to analyze the branching order of Paenungulata, finding strong evidence for a polytomy with limited gene support for any specific resolution.

This study examines how recent speciation influences phylogenetic diversity patterns across tetrapod clades, finding a negative relationship between speciation rates and phylogenetic diversity.

The paper examines how nocturnality and transitions to diurnality in bony fishes and vertebrates influenced survival during mass extinctions and post-extinction diversification.

The paper describes new giraffoid taxa from the Siwaliks of Pakistan and provides insights into their morphology and evolutionary relationships.

This study compares parsimony and likelihood methods for ancestral state estimation using simulations and empirical data, finding that the Equal Rates model performs well across scenarios and that fossils improve accuracy.

The paper extends a speciation model to include extinct species in Canidae phylogeny, finding contrasting diversification patterns between extant and complete trees.

The paper analyzes molecular and morphological data to clarify the taxonomy of Episoriculus shrews, identifying valid species and describing a new subgenus.

PhylSim simulates trait evolution on phylogenies with variable speciation rates and models, using an example of Antarctic notothenioids' adaptive radiation.

The paper identifies the cranio-incudo joint as the mechanism allowing marsupials and monotremes to feed before their jaw joint forms.

This paper introduces the Bayesian Snyder filter for estimating birth-death process parameters from phylogenies, showing it is mean square error optimal and comparable to existing methods.