Understanding the diversification of phenotypes through time—“descent with modification”—
has been the focus of evolutionary biology for 150 years. If, contrary to expectations …

Why do unrelated organisms sometimes appear almost identical in details of the anatomy,
behavior, physiology, and ecology? Homoplasy assembles leaders in evolutionary biology …

Homology is at the foundation of comparative studies in biology at all levels from genes to
phenotypes. Homology is similarity because of common descent and ancestry, homoplasy is …

Homology is the presence of the same feature in two organisms whose most recent common
ancestor also possessed the feature. I discuss the bases on which we can tell that two …

Although parallel and convergent evolution are discussed extensively in technical articles
and textbooks, their meaning can be overlapping, imprecise, and contradictory. The …

Evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated with the episodes of rapid phenotypic
innovation that underlie the emergence of major lineages. Although our understanding of …

Although genes have specific phenotypic consequences in a given species, this functional
relationship can clearly change during the course of evolution. Many cases of evolutionary …

The origin of novel traits is what draws many to evolutionary biology, yet our understanding
of the mechanisms that underlie the genesis of novelty remains limited. Here I review …

A charm of biology as a scientific discipline is the diversity of life. Although this diversity can
make laws of biology challenging to discover, several repeated patterns and general …

Homology as a topic in phylogenetic analysis has to do with what is conserved in evolution.
The problem of homology in systematics—to find homologues, and in so doing, to identify …