The idea that behaviour has played an important role in evolution has had its ups and
downs over the past two centuries. Now it appears to be up once again. Lamarck can claim …

Body condition indices, measures of body 'plumpness' or mass relative to frame size, are
often used as a proxy for lipid reserves or fitness‐related traits of animals and assumed to be …

Human beings persist in an extraordinary range of ecological settings, in the process
exhibiting enormous behavioural diversity, both within and between populations. People …

Evolutionary biologists often use phenotypic differences between species and between
individuals to gain an understanding of organismal design. The focus of much recent …

Animal 'personality', defined as repeatable inter-individual differences in behaviour, is a
concept in biology that faces intense controversy. Critics argue that the field is riddled with …

Functional factors such as optimal design and adaptive value have been the central concern
of evolutionary biology since the advent of the New Synthesis. By contrast, evolutionary …

Ecological development or 'eco-devo'examines the mechanisms of developmental
regulation in real-world environments, providing an integrated approach for investigating …

The new field of evolutionary developmental biology is one of the most exciting areas of
contemporary biology. The fundamental principle of evolutionary developmental biology (" …

In recent decades, Susan Oyama and her colleagues in the burgeoning field of
developmental systems theory have rejected the determinism inherent in the nature/nurture …

This theme issue pursues an exploration of the potential of taking into account the
environmental sensitivity of development to explaining the evolution of metazoan life cycles …