Cope's Rule is the tendency for organisms in evolving lineages to increase in size over time.
The concept is detailed in many textbooks, but has rarely been demonstrated. Many …

Birds have long fascinated scientists and travellers, so their distribution and abundance
through time have been better documented than those of other organisms. Many bird …

To assess the role of human disturbances in species' extinction requires an understanding
of the species population history before human impact. The passenger pigeon was once the …

Theoretical and empirical work has shown that once reduced in size and geographical
range, species face a considerably elevated risk of extinction. We predict minimum viable …

The decline and disappearance of species from large parts of their former geographical
range has become an important issue in fisheries ecology. There is a need to identify which …

Over the past decades, primate populations have been declining. Four years ago,> 60% of
species were listed as threatened. As the rate of loss accelerates and new IUCN …

Mass extinctions have played many evolutionary roles, involving differential survivorship or
selectivity of taxa and traits, the disruption or preservation of evolutionary trends and …

Understanding the consequences of species loss in complex ecological communities is one
of the great challenges in current biodiversity research. For a long time, this topic has been …

Climate change has resulted in major changes in the phenology—ie the timing of seasonal
activities, such as flowering and bird migration—of some species but not others. These …

Background As global environmental change accelerates, biodiversity losses can disrupt
interspecific interactions. Extinctions of mutualist partners can create “widow” species, which …