Most Interesting Papers of the Week

Popularly requested tweak: Choice quotes from abstracts now included!

These are papers that may be of general interest published this week, with commentary as necessary. No specific case studies, overly specialised research, or taxonomic papers. Papers ordered only by their appearance in my inbox. For PDFs, e-mail me, I get most of them. You can request an in-depth analysis of any paper and I’ll do it as I get the time.

Open-access papers, those that are free to read/download even without an academic connection, are tagged with [OA] for easy finding with your browser’s text search (Ctrl+F).

19 papers this week, 5 of them open access.

Index:

• Arthropods [3]
• Botany [1]
• Ecology [2]
• Evolution [3]
• Palaeontology [4]
• Phylogenetics [2]
• Zoology [4]

Most Interesting Papers of the Week

These are papers that may be of general interest published this week, with commentary as necessary. No specific case studies, overly specialised research, or taxonomic papers. Papers ordered only by their appearance in my inbox. For PDFs, e-mail me, I get most of them. You can request an in-depth analysis of any paper and I’ll do it as I get the time.

Open-access papers, those that are free to read/download even without an academic connection, are tagged with [OA] for easy finding with your browser’s text search (Ctrl+F).

11 papers this time.

Index:

• Arthropods [2]
• Ecology [1]
• Evolution [2]
• Palaeontology [2]
• Zoology [4]

The Origin of Modern Biodiversity: Coevolution of Flowers and Insects

This talk is split into two major parts: the first will look at the general fossil record of insects, and the second will introduce the flowering plants and their interactions with insects.

Orchid Sexual Deception

This is a really cool topic that I may write a larger post on sometime in the future. Most orchids are deceptive – i.e. they attract their pollinators by fooling them – but only the most specialised ones are sexual deceivers.