Collaborator Mike Logan and myself have just published a new paper on integrative biology and inferring adaptation. In this perspective paper, we argue that deeply integrative studies of only a few species can serve as a useful complement to broad comparative studies with many species. Check out the link to read the paper!
Lab alum John David just published his Master's research in Proceedings of the Royal Society B! He studied the evolution of diversity in color traits that are associated with mimicry and those that are not associated with mimicry. Great job John David!
Check out the link to read the paper. We have just published a new paper on sex-biased parasitism in the slender anole! We found that male slender anoles have many more ectoparasites (trombiculid mites) than female slender anoles, but this pattern seem to be driven by the larger dewlap of males. Mites preferentially attach to the dewlaps of males, perhaps because of the relatively wide spacing between the gorgetal scales of the dewlap. Our work suggests that male slender anoles might pay a fitness cost (in the form of increased parasitism) for having a sexual signal. Check out the link to read the paper: https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article-abstract/131/4/785/5983170?redirectedFrom=fulltext Trombiculid mites (little white spots) on the dewlap of a male slender anole.
Our new paper on the thermal ecology of the bark centipede (Scolopocryptops sexspinosus) was just published in the Journal of Thermal Biology! This paper features the research of two talented undergraduate researchers at Georgia Southern University. Check out the link to read the paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306456520305271 Our review paper on how genetic constraints and transcriptome plasticity can impact the evolutionary response to climate change was just published in Frontiers in Genetics! This article was part of a special issue on "Coping with Climate Change: A Genomic Perspective on Thermal Adaptation". Congrats to first author Mike Logan at University of Nevada Reno, who was the mastermind behind this paper. Check out the link to read the article:
https://preview.tinyurl.com/y5psrfv5 Noah Gripshover joins the new Cox lab at Florida International University! Noah has broad interests in ecology and evolution, particularly in the evolution of feeding. Noah got his undergraduate degree from the University of Louisville. He joins the lab at Florida International University from the University of Cincinatti, where he got his M.S. studying feeding behavior of crayfish snakes. He will bring his expertise in studying feeding ecology and behavior to one of the systems in the laboratory. Welcome, Noah!
A new paper on enemy release in slender anoles was just published in Biology Letters! The factors that enable non-native species to become invasive are still debated by scientists. It is possible that non-native species undergo “enemy release”, losing their parasites during invasion, yet experimental tests of this phenomenon are rare. We mimicked invasions by experimentally translocating mite-parasitized anole lizards to several islands in the Panama Canal. Mites rapidly went extinct on islands without native anoles but were retained on an island with a resident species, suggesting that the native species functioned as an “enemy reservoir” that facilitated parasite survival. Our work suggests that more diverse native communities could be resistant to invasion. Check out the link to read the paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0474
Our new paper on how habitat type mediates fitness of different types of decoy coloration was just published in the journal Zoology. We combined field studies of predation with surveys of the natural history collection at Georgia Southern University. The first author is Ryann Heninger, who worked on this project as part of an honor's thesis at Georgia Southern University. Congratulations Ryann!
Check out the link to read the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0944200620300799 We just published an observation on social aggregations in a little bolitoglossine salamander, Nototriton brodiei. Very little is known about the natural history of this species, and so we hope this is a useful addition to the literature. Check out the link to read the paper!
Graduate student Lauren Wilson just successfully defended her Masters thesis at Georgia Southern University! Lauren studied coral snake mimicry in the montane tropics in Honduras. Congratulations Lauren!
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