Thomas F. Duda

TL;DR: It is shown that conotoxins with little amino acid similarity are in fact products of recently diverged loci that are rapidly evolving by strong positive selection in the vermivorous cone, Conus abbreviatus, and that the rate of conotoxin evolution is higher than that of most other known proteins.

TL;DR: Analysis of population genetic structure among four species of sea urchins in the tropical Indo‐West Pacific shows that all four species have accumulated mtDNA differences over similar spatial and temporal scales but that the precise geographic pattern of genetic differentiation varies for each species.

TL;DR: A phylogeny from nuclear sequence data for 70 species of the marine gastropod genus Conus is reconstructed and used to map the evolution of developmental mode, challenging the conclusion that increases in the number of nonplanktonic species relative to species with planktonic larvae over geologic time is necessarily a result of higher rates of speciation.

TL;DR: The results suggest that coordinated and compensatory amino acid replacements have occurred within the acidic propiece and cationic mature domain of hylid antimicrobial peptide precursors, as has been observed for mammalian defensin genes, but not among those of ranid precursor.

TL;DR: Phylogenetic and paleontological analyses are combined to reveal patterns of species origination and divergence and to define the significance of potential and actual barriers to dispersal in Conus, a species-rich genus of predatory gastropods distributed throughout the world's tropical oceans.