Interesting papers



John Measey, et al., (2006). Freshwater paths across the ocean: molecular phylogeny of the frog Ptychadena newtoni gives insights into amphibian colonization of oceanic islands. Journal of Biogeography, 34(1), 7–20.
This paper examines the biogeography and origins of the Pychadena newtoni frogs on São Tomé and Príncipe and their travel across Africa.

Syvitski, J. P. M., et al., (2012). Floods, floodplains, delta plains - A satellite imaging approach. Sedimentary Geology, 267–268, 1–14.
This paper examines the geography of large floodplains all over the world and infers information regarding the frequency of large floods over time.

Thewissen, J. G. M., et al., (2009). From Land to Water: the Origin of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2(2), 272–288.
This paper covers the origins of dolphins, whales, and porpoises and covers the evolution of the cetacean organ system in detail.

McGowen, M. R., et al., (2014). Molecular evolution tracks macroevolutionary transitions in Cetacea. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 29(6), 336–346.
This paper gives a beautiful description of the way in which molecules have evolved in Cetaceans with respect to other mammals.

Buri, P. (1956). Gene Frequency in Small Populations of Mutant Drosophila. Evolution, 10(4), 367–402.
This seminal work performed a beautiful experiment measuring the effect of genetic drift on small populations using Drosophila.

Lässig, M. (2007). From biophysics to evolutionary genetics: statistical aspects of gene regulation. BMC Bioinformatics.
A wonderful review by statistical physicist Michael Lässig on the connection between biophysics and evolutionary fitness landscapes.

Meredith, R. W., et al., (2009). Molecular decay of the tooth gene enamelin (ENAM) mirrors the loss of enamel in the fossil record of placental mammals. PLoS Genetics, 5(9).
This wonderful paper considers both the fossil and molecular record and the evidence they shed on the loss of enamel and teeth in placental mammals such as aardvarks, anteaters, sloths and whales.

Townsend, T. M., et al., (2011). Eastward from Africa: palaeocurrent-mediated chameleon dispersal to the Seychelles islands. Biology Letters, 7(2), 225–228.
This paper describes how DNA sequencing has helped us understand patterns in biogeography. In this case, they consider chameleons on the Seychelles, once thought to be the result of the breakup of Indigascar (Madagascar, the Seychelles and India), this work shows that the chameleons of the Seychelles are most closely related to those of South Africa.

Mirceta, S., et al., (2013). Evolution of mammalian diving capacity traced by myoglobin net surface charge. Science, 340(6138).
One of the fascinating evolutionary puzzles is what adaptations have been needed so that animals such as sperm whales and elephant seals can dive for up to an hour at a time. This paper argues that such animals have much higher concentrations of myoglobin than mammals that are not elite divers and that these higher concentrations arise because of mutations conferring extra surface charge.

Thewissen, J. G. M., & Bajpai, S. (2001). Whale Origins as a Poster Child for Macroevolution. BioScience, 51(12), 1037.
The title says it all.

Feng, P., et al., (2014). Massive losses of taste receptor genes in toothed and baleen whales. Genome Biology and Evolution, 6(6), 1254–1265.
Genome science has made it possible to explore molecular changes in cetaceans. This interesting paper describes what we have learned about how taste receptors have been lost in whales.

Eme, L. et al., (2017). Archaea and the origin of eukaryotes. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 15(12), 711–723.
This paper does a nice job summarizing and providing context for the recent genomic evidence supporting the hypothesis that eukaryotes evolved from the archaea.

Fournier, G. P., & Gogarten, J. P. (2007). Evolution of acetoclastic methanogenesis in Methanosarcina via horizontal gene transfer from cellulolytic Clostridia. Journal of Bacteriology, 190(3), 1124–1127.
This is a nice easy paper about horizontal gene transfer.

Patterns, Process, and the Parable of the Coffeepot Incident: Arms Races Between Newts and Snakes from Landscapes to Molecules
Fun reading about the co-evolution and arm race between snakes and newts.