Gideon S. Bradburd

Introduction I can't compare with it; and I've known some ships made of dead trees outlast the lives of man made of the most vital stuff of vital fathers. Chapter 135 The Chase - Third day, Moby Dick, Herman Melville Life histories across plants range from the ephemeral to the effectively eternal. In natural populations, beech trees (Fagus) set their first seeds after 40 yr and can live for hundreds of years; Arabidopsis individuals live their entire life within 6–12 wk.

Abstract Traits that have lost function sometimes persist through evolutionary time. These traits may persist if there is not enough standing genetic variation for the trait to allow a response to selection, if selection against the trait is weak relative to drift, or if the trait has a residual function.

Abstract The abundant center hypothesis postulates that population density is the highest in the center of the range and declines towards the periphery. While many evolutionary hypotheses have been offered to explain what generates this pattern, ecologically it's assumed the pattern emerges due to increasing distance from a species ideal niche with edge populations occupying a marginal niche of low suitability. However, the ubiquity of the abundant center pattern has recently been questioned.