The Leguminosae, the third–largest angiosperm family, has a global distribution and high
ecological and economic impor tance. We examine how the legume systematic research …

The Apicomplexa is the only large taxonomic group whose members are entirely parasitic
and is, therefore, presumably of major interest to parasitologists. We might, for example …

Premise of the Study Large phylogenies can help shed light on macroevolutionary patterns
that inform our understanding of fundamental processes that shape the tree of life. These …

We combined new sequence data for more than 300 muroid rodent species with our
previously published sequences for up to five nuclear and one mitochondrial genes to …

Abstract Background The Solanaceae is a plant family of great economic importance.
Despite a wealth of phylogenetic work on individual clades and a deep knowledge of …

Comparative methods used to study patterns of evolutionary change in a continuous trait on
a phylogeny range from Brownian motion processes to models where the trait is assumed to …

Species richness varies widely across extant clades, but the causes of this variation remain
poorly understood. We investigate the role of diversification rate heterogeneity in shaping …

A recent controversy concerns whether plant traits that are assumed to be adaptations to fire
originally evolved in response to selective factors other than fire. We contribute to this …

Considerable research efforts have focused on elucidating the systematic relationships
among salmonid fishes; an understanding of these patterns of relatedness will inform …

The aim of the present study was to infer a substantially larger, more evenly sampled,
phylogenetic tree for Caryophyllaceae in order to more confidently resolve relationships …