Publications by authors named "Merlijn Staps"

Article Synopsis
  • Communication helps groups, like animals and insects, share important information about their surroundings.
  • Different types of groups use different ways to communicate, but we don't fully understand why.
  • We've created a theory to explain how communication might develop, showing that it grows in stable environments and is influenced by how much effort it takes to sense what's going on.
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Vertebrate groups have evolved strikingly diverse color patterns. However, it remains unknown to what extent the diversification of such patterns has been shaped by the proximate, developmental mechanisms that regulate their formation. While these developmental mechanisms have long been inaccessible empirically, here we take advantage of recent insights into rodent pattern formation to investigate the role of development in shaping pattern diversification across rodents.

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Task allocation is a central feature of collective organization. Living collective systems, such as multicellular organisms or social insect colonies, have evolved diverse ways to allocate individuals to different tasks, ranging from rigid, inflexible task allocation that is not adjusted to changing circumstances to more fluid, flexible task allocation that is rapidly adjusted to the external environment. While the mechanisms underlying task allocation have been intensely studied, it remains poorly understood whether differences in the flexibility of task allocation can be viewed as adaptive responses to different ecological contexts—for example, different degrees of temporal variability.

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A mathematical model shows how the shape of early multicellular organisms may have helped cells evolve specialized roles.

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The evolution of multicellularity has given rise to a remarkable diversity of multicellular life cycles and life histories. Whereas some multicellular organisms are long-lived, grow through cell division, and repeatedly release single-celled propagules (for example, animals), others are short-lived, form by aggregation, and propagate only once, by generating large numbers of solitary cells (for example, cellular slime moulds). There are no systematic studies that explore how diverse multicellular life cycles can come about.

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