Evolutionary change in the construction of the nursery environment when parents are prevented from caring for their young directly.

Parental care can be partitioned into traits that involve direct engagement with offspring and traits that are expressed as an extended phenotype and influence the developmental environment, such as constructing a nursery. Here, we use experimental evolution to test whether parents can evolve modifications in nursery construction when they are experimentally prevented from supplying care directly to offspring. We exposed replicate experimental populations of burying beetles () to different regimes of posthatching care by allowing larvae to develop in the presence (Full Care) or absence of parents (No Care).

Pollination success following loss of a frequent pollinator: the role of compensatory visitation by other effective pollinators.

Pollinator abundance is declining worldwide and may lower the quantity and quality of pollination services to flowering plant populations. Loss of an important pollinator is often assumed to reduce the amount of pollen received by stigmas of a focal species (pollination success), yet this assumption has rarely been tested experimentally. The magnitude of the effect, if any, may depend on the relative efficiency of the remaining pollinators, and on whether the loss of one pollinator leads to changes in visitation patterns by other pollinators.

Variation in signal-preference genetic correlations in Enchenopa treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae).

Fisherian selection is a within-population process that promotes signal-preference coevolution and speciation due to signal-preference genetic correlations. The importance of the contribution of Fisherian selection to speciation depends in part on the answer to two outstanding questions: What explains differences in the strength of signal-preference genetic correlations? And, how does the magnitude of within-species signal-preference covariation compare to species differences in signals and preferences? To address these questions, we tested for signal-preference genetic correlations in two members of the Enchenopa binotata complex, a clade of plant-feeding insects wherein speciation involves the colonization of novel host plants and signal-preference divergence. We used a full-sibling, split-family rearing experiment to estimate genetic correlations and to analyze the underlying patterns of variation in signals and preferences.