Pasquale Raia

TL;DR: The relative weights of physical forcing and biotic interaction as drivers of evolutionary change have been debated in evolutionary theory as discussed by the authors, and it has been shown that these primary units of biological evolution arise and wane in coincidence with major climatic change.

TL;DR: Turtles on islands do not follow the island rule, and it is suggested that both physiological and ecological factors drive turtle body size evolution on islands, and their tendency for insular gigantism is suggested.

TL;DR: There is significant correlation between integration at the clade level and per-clade averaged stress values, on both original data and by partialling out interclade allometry from shapes when calculating integration, which suggests a strong interaction between natural selection and the evolution of developmental and functional modules at theClade level.

TL;DR: This study supports the idea that the late Pleistocene extinctions were environmentally driven by climatic changes that triggered habitat fragmentation, species range reduction, and population decrease, after which human interference either by direct hunting or via indirect activities probably became critical.

TL;DR: Analysis of the morphometry of the first lower molar in 199 carnivore species in order to clarify the tempo and mode of evolution of two different and possibly related traits, tooth size and tooth angular height shows that m1 size exhibits a weak phylogenetic signal, and that its variance occurs more within than among clades.