Evolutionary Biology

Digital restoration of the pectoral girdles of two Early Cretaceous birds and implications for early-flight evolution

1. Shiying Wang
2. Yubo Ma
3. Qian Wu
4. Min Wang
5. Dongyu Hu
6. Corwin Sullivan
7. Xing Xu

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The authors provide new 3D fossil findings in Sapeornis, an avialan which lived during the early Cretaceous period, a key node in our understanding of the evolution of avian flight. The functional reconstruction of two critical skeletal elements of the avian flight apparatus, the scapula and coracoid, enable the authors to hypothesize how the evolution of the scapula and coracoid enabled the modern avian wing stroke. The new 3D morphological reconstruction enables future integrative studies of Sapeornis flight performance based on biomechanical, muscle physiological and aerodynamic principles and is thus a key building block to inform our general understanding of the evolution of avian flight.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Genome size evolution in the diverse insect order Trichoptera

1. Jacqueline Heckenhauer
2. Paul B Frandsen
3. John S Sproul
4. Zheng Li
5. Juraj Paule
6. Amanda M Larracuente
7. Peter J Maughan
8. Michael S Barker
9. Julio V Schneider
10. Russell J Stewart
11. Steffen U Pauls

Reviewed by GigaScience

The germline mutational process in rhesus macaque and its implications for phylogenetic dating

1. Lucie A Bergeron
2. Søren Besenbacher
3. Jaco Bakker
4. Jiao Zheng
5. Panyi Li
6. George Pacheco
7. Mikkel-Holger S Sinding
8. Maria Kamilari
9. M Thomas P Gilbert
10. Mikkel H Schierup
11. Guojie Zhang

Reviewed by GigaScience

GADMA: Genetic algorithm for inferring demographic history of multiple populations from allele frequency spectrum data

1. Ekaterina Noskova
2. Vladimir Ulyantsev
3. Klaus-Peter Koepfli
4. Stephen J O'Brien
5. Pavel Dobrynin

Reviewed by GigaScience

Inferring putative ancient whole-genome duplications in the 1000 Plants (1KP) initiative: access to gene family phylogenies and age distributions

1. Zheng Li
2. Michael S Barker

Reviewed by GigaScience

RepeatFiller newly identifies megabases of aligning repetitive sequences and improves annotations of conserved non-exonic elements

1. Ekaterina Osipova
2. Nikolai Hecker
3. Michael Hiller

Reviewed by GigaScience

Real-time DNA barcoding in a rainforest using nanopore sequencing: opportunities for rapid biodiversity assessments and local capacity building

1. Aaron Pomerantz
2. Nicolás Peñafiel
3. Alejandro Arteaga
4. Lucas Bustamante
5. Frank Pichardo
6. Luis A Coloma
7. César L Barrio-Amorós
8. David Salazar-Valenzuela
9. Stefan Prost

Reviewed by GigaScience

Innovative assembly strategy contributes to the understanding of evolution and conservation genetics of the critically endangered Solenodon paradoxus from the island of Hispaniola

1. Kirill Grigorev
2. Sergey Kliver
3. Pavel Dobrynin
4. Aleksey Komissarov
5. Walter Wolfsberger
6. Ksenia Krasheninnikova
7. Yashira M. Afanador-Hernández
8. Liz A. Paulino
9. Rosanna Carreras
10. Luis E. Rodríguez
11. Adrell Núñez
12. Filipe Silva
13. J. David Hernández-Martich
14. Audrey J. Majeske
15. Agostinho Antunes
16. Alfred L. Roca
17. Stephen J. O’Brien
18. Juan Carlos Martinez-Cruzado
19. Taras K. Oleksyk

Reviewed by GigaScience

Repeated truncation of a modular antimicrobial peptide gene for neural context

1. Mark A. Hanson
2. Bruno Lemaitre

Reviewed by Review Commons

Palatal morphology predicts the paleobiology of early salamanders

1. Jia Jia
2. Guangzhao Li
3. Ke-Qin Gao

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This paper is of interest to vertebrate paleontologists and other evolutionary biologists interested in the early evolution of amphibians. Using geometric morphometric analysis, the authors demonstrate that both the shape of the palate and several non-shape variables (particularly associated with vomerine teeth) are ecologically informative in early stem- and basal crown-group salamanders. The phylomorphospace analysis reveals that metamorphosis is significant in the expansion of ecomorphospace of the palate in early salamanders. In overall, the main claims of the manuscript are well supported by the data.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1, Reviewer #2 and Reviewer #3 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife