John J Wiens

..This research program will connect speciation to many other fundamental questions in evolutionary biology, ecology, biogeography, and conservation biology...

..Our results suggest that the effects of paedomorphosis on phylogenetic analyses may be complex, difficult to detect, and can lead to results that are both wrong and statistically well supported by parsimony and Bayesian analyses...

..These latter results have important implications for all studies that attempt to resolve phylogenies with large-scale phylogenomic datasets...

..Here, we evaluate whether incomplete taxa can also rescue analyses under these conditions (empirically testing predictions from an earlier simulation study)...

..A new phylogenetic study in BMC Evolutionary Biology of Australian lizards shows remarkable evolutionary lability in digit numbers among closely related species, but also highlights important challenges in this area...

..We also show (possibly for the first time) a significant association between paedomorphosis and increased body size, rather than the expected association with reduced body size...

..Nevertheless, our study provides strong support for many clades, including several that were controversial or poorly resolved in previous studies of snake phylogeny...

..Instead, these results show the importance of historical biogeography in explaining high species richness in both the New World and Old World tropics...

..These results may shed light on both the evolutionary causes of the latitudinal diversity gradient and the dramatic but poorly explained disparities in the diversity of living amphibian clades...

..We present a new classification for phrynosomatid lizards and the genus Sceloporus, and offer a new tree with branch lengths for use in comparative studies...

..The new tree from maximum likelihood analysis is more well-resolved, strongly supported, and concordant with previous hypotheses, and provides a framework for future systematic, biogeographic, ecological, and evolutionary studies...

..Overall, the results suggest that improvements in molecular phylogenetics can potentially benefit phylogeny reconstruction for fossil taxa...

..g. invasives, global warming, tropical richness), and (3) suggests new areas for research (e.g. why are some clades largely nocturnal? why do related species share diseases?)...

..Overall, our results suggest promise for an integrated and comprehensive Tree of Life by combining molecular and morphological data for living and fossil taxa...

..Finally, I discuss a mechanism that may facilitate trait re-evolution, and the evolution of mandibular teeth in frogs as an example of developmental constraint...

..Specifically, sympatry between clades seems to slow diversification and trait evolution, but prevents neither the accumulation of local richness over time nor the co-occurrence of similar species...

..Finally, we use salamandrids to address how novel structures may arise, and support a model involving the expansion and subdivision of pre-existing structures...

..In general, the interface of biogeography and ecology could be a major area for research in both fields...

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..This pattern may be widespread and suggests that mid-elevation habitats may not only harbour more species, but may also contain more phylogenetic diversity than other habitats within a region...

..The major challenge for future studies is to understand the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underpinning the relationships between time, dispersal, diversification, and species richness patterns...

..In contrast, highly incomplete taxa can be surprisingly beneficial when using model-based methods. The results also suggest the importance of model-based methods in phylogenetic analyses that combine molecular and fossil data...

..Overall, the number of repeated origins of snakelike morphology seems to depend on large-scale biogeographic patterns and community ecology, in addition to more traditional explanations (e.g., selection, development)...

..Yet, this perspective is complementary to the traditional view because it focuses on a different temporal stage of the speciation process...

..Overall, our study illustrates how two general principles (niche conservatism and the time-for-speciation effect) may help explain the latitudinal diversity gradient as well as many other diversity patterns across taxa and regions...

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..In contrast to the conclusions of a recent review of adaptive radiation and hybridization, we suggest that extensive hybridization sometimes may be a consequence, rather than a cause, of rapid diversification...

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..A new classification of hylid frogs is proposed. Several potentially misleading signals in the morphological data are discussed...

..Consideration of how missing data does (or does not) affect phylogenetic analyses may allow researchers to design studies that can reconstruct large phylogenies quickly, economically, and accurately...

..Our results show the importance of ecology and evolution to large-scale biogeography and the importance of large-scale biogeography to understanding patterns of species richness...

..The results also imply that local-scale environmental factors alone may be insufficient to explain the high species richness of lowland tropical rainforests, and that diversification rates are lower in earth's most species-rich biome...

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..Our study provides the most comprehensive phylogeny of Colubroidea to date, and suggests that SHL values may provide a useful complement to bootstrapping for estimating support on likelihood-based trees...

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..Although our results support the idea of greater climatic zonation in tropical regions, they show that this climatic pattern does not lead to straightforward relationships between speciation, latitude, and niche evolution...

..Our study may be the first to statistically document significant phylogenetic clustering and correlation in the origins of novel structures, and to demonstrate the strongly misleading effects of peramorphosis on phylogenetic analysis...

..In summary, our results show that narrower niche breadths are not necessarily associated with faster rates of niche evolution...

..Together, these results suggest that competition may have driven the rapid diversification of body sizes in Caribbean treefrogs to the extremes seen in treefrog communities around the world...

..Our results demonstrate that even the relatively subtle climatic differences between montane and lowland habitats in eastern North America may play a key role in the origin of new species...

..Finally, by analysing an entirely aquatic group, we are able to better sort among potential hypotheses for explaining the paradoxically low diversity of marine environments...

..Finally, we briefly outline general research strategies for identifying these proximate causes in future studies...

..This pattern of ecologically conservative dispersal may be important in many continental and oceanic systems...

..Because different data and approaches can disagree so extensively, our results demonstrate that the methodology of species delimitation is a critical issue in systematics...

..The time-for-speciation effect may act through a variety of processes at different spatial scales to determine diverse patterns of species richness...

..We provide an online database of alignments and suggested primers for approximately 85 NPCL that should be useful across vertebrates...

..Rather than being an evolutionary dead end, the reversal from direct developing to biphasic life history may have helped communities in eastern North America to achieve the highest local diversity of salamander species in the world...

..More generally, our study demonstrates how integrating information from ecophysiology and phylogeny can help to explain macroevolutionary trends...

..Finally, although loss of digits is common, we find statistically significant support for at least six examples of the re-evolution of lost digits in the forelimb and hind limb...

..Here, we describe how the integration of GIS-based environmental data, along with new spatial tools, can transform evolutionary studies and reveal new insights into the ecological causes of evolutionary patterns...