The distribution of organisms in morphologic space is clumpy. Cats are like felids, dogs are like canids and snails are (mostly) like gastropods. But cats are not like dogs and snails are not like...
The evolution of hierarchical gene regulatory networks (2009)
Erwin, Douglas H., Davidson, Eric H.
Comparative developmental evidence indicates that reorganizations in developmental gene regulatory networks (GRNs) underlie evolutionary changes in animal morphology, including body plans. We argue...
The evolution and distribution of species body size (2009)
Clauset, Aaron, Erwin, Douglas H.
The distribution of species body size within taxonomic groups exhibits a heavy right-tail extending over many orders of magnitude, where most species are significantly larger than the smallest...
Compilation and Network Analyses of Cambrian Food Webs (2008)
Jennifer A. Dunne, Richard J. Williams, Neo D. Martinez, Rachel A. Wood, Douglas H. Erwin
A rich body of empirically grounded theory has developed about food webs—the networks of feeding relationships among species within habitats. However, detailed food-web data and analyses are...
Recovery after mass extinction: evolutionary assembly in large-scale biosphere dynamics (2007)
Ricard V. Solé, José M. Montoya, Douglas H. Erwin
Biotic recoveries following mass extinctions are characterized by a process in which whole ecologies are reconstructed from low-diversity systems, often characterized by opportunistic groups. The...
FOSSIL FISHES FROM THE LOWER TRIASSIC OF MAJIASHAN, CHAOHU, ANHUI PROVINCE, CHINA (2006)
JINNAN TONG, XIUGAO ZHOU, DOUGLAS H. ERWIN, JINGXUN ZUO, LAISHI ZHAO
The fossils described here were collected from the Lower Triassic (Olenekian) at two Majiashan sections in Chaohu City, Anhui Province, East China. Nine species belonging to five genera are...
The last common bilaterian ancestor (2002)
Erwin, Douglas H., Davidson, Eric H.
Many regulatory genes appear to be utilized in at least superficially similar ways in the development of particular body parts in Drosophila and in chordates. These similarities have been widely...
The Origin of Bodyplans (1999)
Paleontologists have documented the progressive origination of metazoan bodyplans beginning about 610 million years ago (Ma) with the major period of innovation occurring from 570 Ma to about 525 Ma....
Lessons from the past: Biotic recoveries from mass extinctions
Although mass extinctions probably account for the disappearance of less than 5% of all extinct species, the evolutionary opportunities they have created have had a disproportionate effect on the...
“Hopeful monsters,” transposons, and Metazoan radiation
Erwin, Douglas H., Valentine, James W.
The appearance of many novel morphologies, frequently expressed taxonomically as new phyla, classes, or orders, occurs with such rapidity in evolutionary time that microevolutionary substitutions...
Lessons from the past: Biotic recoveries from mass extinctions
Although mass extinctions probably account for the disappearance of less than 5% of all extinct species, the evolutionary opportunities they have created have had a disproportionate effect on the...
“Hopeful monsters,” transposons, and Metazoan radiation
Erwin, Douglas H., Valentine, James W.
The appearance of many novel morphologies, frequently expressed taxonomically as new phyla, classes, or orders, occurs with such rapidity in evolutionary time that microevolutionary substitutions...
Recovery after mass extinction: evolutionary assembly in large-scale biosphere dynamics.
Solé, Ricard V, Montoya, José M, Erwin, Douglas H
Biotic recoveries following mass extinctions are characterized by a process in which whole ecologies are reconstructed from low-diversity systems, often characterized by opportunistic groups. The...
Recovery After Mass Extinction: Evolutionary Assembly in Large-Scale Biosphere Dynamics
Ricard V. Solé, José M. Montoya, Douglas H. Erwin
Biotic recoveries following mass extinctions are characterized by a process in which whole ecologies are reconstructed from low-diversity systems often characterized by opportunistic groups. The...
Lessons from the Past: Biotic Recoveries from Mass Extinctions
Although mass extinctions probably account for the disappearance of less than 5% of all extinct species, the evolutionary opportunities they have created have had a disproportionate effect on the...
Extinction as the loss of evolutionary history
Current plant and animal diversity preserves at most 1–2% of the species that have existed over the past 600 million years. But understanding the evolutionary impact of these extinctions requires a...
Compilation and Network Analyses of Cambrian Food Webs
Dunne, Jennifer A, Williams, Richard J, Martinez, Neo D, Wood, Rachel A, Erwin, Douglas H
A rich body of empirically grounded theory has developed about food webs—the networks of feeding relationships among species within habitats. However, detailed food-web data and analyses are...