The evolution of land plants approximately 470 million years ago created a new adaptive
zone for natural enemies (attackers) of plants. In response to attack, plants evolved highly …

For decades the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has been an important model system
for biology, but little is known about its natural ecology. Recently, C. elegans has become …

Insects contain more than half of all living species, but the causes of their remarkable diversity
remain poorly understood. Many authors have suggested that herbivory has accelerated …

Identifying the genetic mechanisms of adaptation requires the elucidation of links between
the evolution of DNA sequence, phenotype, and fitness 1 . Convergent evolution can be used …

Herbivory is a key innovation in insects, yet has only evolved in one-third of living orders. The
evolution of herbivory likely involves major behavioral changes mediated by remodeling of …

… This study arose out of Noah K. Whiteman's PhD dissertation, supervised by Patricia G. Parker
in the … Noah's interests are in conservation biology, the biology of co-evolved systems, and …

Toxin cargo genes are often horizontally transferred by phages between bacterial species
and are known to play an important role in the evolution of bacterial pathogenesis. Here, we …

Chemically defended plant tissues present formidable barriers to herbivores. Although
mechanisms to resist plant defenses have been identified in ancient herbivorous lineages, …

Insect herbivory is pervasive in plant communities, but its impact on microbial plant colonizers
is not well-studied in natural systems. By calibrating sequencing-based bacterial detection …

Few clades of plants have proven as difficult to classify as cacti. One explanation may be an
unusually high level of convergent and parallel evolution (homoplasy). To evaluate support …