This dissertation investigates an old and fundamental question in evolutionary biology: how is adaptation maintained in highly heterogeneous environments? Adaptation in variable environments poses a …
An exceptional group of aquatic invertebrates makes up Class Bdelloidea. Bdelloid rotifers are the only group of ancient asexual animals known. A second distinction that …
This work seeks to explain the recurrent doubt and misunderstanding of, and hostility towards, naturalistic, Darwinian evolutionary accounts of the origins and development of living …
Abstract of Development and Evolution of Scyphomedusae, by Rebecca R. Helm, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2016. Scyphozoan jellyfish are important members of marine ecosystems. Jellyfish, …
From quadrupedal alligators and dinosaurs to flying pterosaurs and birds, archosaurs are a fascinating group of reptiles that exhibit a diverse locomotor repertoire at the …
The mammalian olfactory cortex is central to the historical definition of paleocortex, a three-layered cortical trait that resembles the cortex of reptiles and amphibians, and …
This dissertation consists of three essays on the economics of coordination under bounded rationality. The coordination problem is a long-standing research agenda to investigate how …
Cancer is an evolutionary process where cells acquire somatic mutations over time. As a result of this process, tumors are often highly heterogeneous — containing …
This dissertation explores the transpersonal forms of thinking and feeling that became imaginable in the nineteenth century, when Victorian literature and science together defined the …