Animal migrations are a fascinating and global phenomenon, yet they are often difficult to study and sometimes poorly understood. Here, we build on classic ecological theory by hypothesizing that some enigmatic spawning migrations across coastal marine habitats can be inferred from the population genetic signature of larval dispersal by ocean currents. We test this assumption by integrating spatially realistic simulations of a...

The molecular mechanisms leading to asexuality remain little understood despite their substantial bearing on why sexual reproduction is dominant in nature. Here, we examine the role of hybridization in the origin and spread of obligate asexuality in D aphnia pulex , arguably the best‐documented case of contagious asexuality. Obligately parthenogenetic ( OP ) clones of D. pulex have traditionally been separated into ‘hybrid’ (...

We offer three reasons why economics matters more to species protection than many people think and what this implies for the ongoing debate over the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Economics matters because (1) human behavior generally, and economic parameters in particular, help determine the degree of risk to a species; (2) in a world of scarce resources, the opportunity cost of species protection—the...