Gavrilets' work on monogamy featured in Slate

UTK Distinguished Professor Sergey Gavrilets' work on the evolution of monogamy, published in PNAS, has been featured in an article in the online magazine Slate. In his model, low-ranked males begin providing resources to females, who begin selecting them rather than higher-ranked males. Such behavior then becomes optimal for males higher and higher up the hierarchy.

Remembering Hal DeSelm

Our esteemed colleague Hal DeSelm died July 12 at 7pm. Hal’s wife of 63 years, Bee, and their daughter Diane were with him.

The obituary and guestbook are here.

A memorial service is being held this Sunday, July 17 at 3pm at Tennessee Valley Unitarian and Universalist Church on Kingston Pike.

Condolences to Bee and their family.

Phyloseminar on "Making comparative methods as easy as ABC"

Faculty member Brian O'Meara is giving a phyloseminar on March 30 at 2 pm eastern on "Making comparative methods as easy as ABC" based on work by him and postdoc Barb Banbury. A phyloseminar is a seminar delivered online virtually -- people around the world can log in to watch and ask questions. For more information, see http://phyloseminar.org/.

Update: The seminar is over. You can see a recording at http://phyloseminar.org/recorded.html and the slides at http://www.brianomeara.info/talks.

Boyer Science paper

Alison Boyer, a new Research Assistant Professor in EEB, just published a paper in last week's issue of Science.

The Evolution of Maximum Body Size of Terrestrial Mammals
Felisa A. Smith, Alison G. Boyer, James H. Brown, Daniel P. Costa, Tamar Dayan,
S. K. Morgan Ernest, Alistair R. Evans, Mikael Fortelius, John L. Gittleman,
Marcus J. Hamilton, Larisa E. Harding, Kari Lintulaakso, S. Kathleen Lyons,
Christy McCain, Jordan G. Okie, Juha J. Saarinen, Richard M. Sibly, Patrick R. Stephens, Jessica Theodor, Mark D. Uhen
Science 330, 1216 (2010);
DOI: 10.1126/science.1194830

Abstract:
The extinction of dinosaurs at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary was the seminal event that opened the door for the subsequent diversification of terrestrial mammals. Our compilation of maximum body size at the ordinal level by sub-epoch shows a near-exponential increase after the K/Pg. On each continent, the maximum size of mammals leveled off after 40 million years ago and thereafter remained approximately constant. There was remarkable congruence in the rate, trajectory, and upper limit across continents, orders, and trophic guilds, despite differences in geological and climatic history, turnover of lineages, and ecological variation. Our analysis suggests that although the primary driver for the evolution of giant mammals was diversification to fill ecological niches, environmental temperature and land area may have ultimately constrained the maximum size achieved.