The bones of the vertebrate skull come from two developmental sources: the mesoderm and the neural crest. This dual origin allows to investigate how developmental properties influence evolutionary trends. In our paper published in Evolution Letters, we (Quentin,...

Disagreements are the bread and butter of science. What’s more, they tend to have positive consequences: scientific controversies usually motivate scientific rivals to gather new evidence, refine their theories, and reassess long-held assumptions. But while...

This year, two teams worked in parallel to pursue our studies on Podarcis diversification; Nathalie, Gwenaëlle and Tobias went to the western Mediterranean, while Guannan, Ivan and Quentin went to Brittany. The western Mediterranean team was complemented by Natalia...

As the EU-funded project IDEAL came to a close, Tobias and Bas Heijmans looked for a good scientific reason to stay in touch. Tobias’ plans to work on water fleas seemed like a promising way to collaborate. The only problem was that the project was not funded, but a...

Readers of this blog will be well aware of the conspicuous variation in dorsal color patterns of Anolis lizards – think of the spots of A. sabanus, or the bands of A. transversalis (both worthy a google search if you happen to be unfamiliar with them). Such patterns...

Natural historians have known for a long time that islands often harbour an extraordinary amount of biodiversity. One reason is that lineages that colonize islands can exploit open ecological niches and therefore diversify along new evolutionary trajectories. So did...

The rock-paper-scissors story of the side-blotched lizards was beautiful. Many lizards have similar colour polymorphism, and quite a few PhD projects and postdoc years have been spent testing the idea in other species. One of the most obvious candidates are wall...

Skeletal morphology is a classic candidate for ‘plasticity-led’ evolution. Our new paper in eLife tests the idea that such ‘plasticity-led’ evolution has occurred in the adaptive radiation of Anolis lizards on the Greater Antilles. In her study, Nathalie quantified...

Mary-Jane West-Eberhard famously suggested that plasticity ‘takes the lead’ in adaptive evolution. But how can you tell if you are not there to see it happen? In a new paper in Evolution Letters, we show one way to tackle the problem – here is a quick summary of what...