Volume 121

  • No. 6 December 2018

    “‘Vegetative incompatibility between pairs of isolates of the chestnut blight fungus’, copyright Michael Milgroom, Cornell University, used with kind permission Kent Loeffler, Cornell University"

  • No. 5 November 2018

    Fitness landscapes, big data, and the predictability of evolution.

    Evolutionary biology has become increasingly powerful in inferring past evolutionary processes from patterns in present-day genomes. However, forecasting evolution’s future routes remains an exciting intellectual challenge with substantial implications for global health and species conservation. The concept of the fitness landscape has been central to recent studies of the predictability of evolution and has inspired evolutionary biologists and mathematicians alike. This special issue focuses on a combination of microbial experimental evolution with next-generation sequencing, and theoretical modelling to advance our understanding of the predictability of evolution, particularly in the light of “big data”.

    Guest editors:

    J. Arjan G.M. de Visser, Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Santiago F. Elena, Instituto de Biología Integrativa de Sistemas (I2SysBio), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científi cas-Universitat de València, València, Spain

    Inês Fragata, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciências, Oeiras, Portugal

    Sebastian Matuszewski, École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

  • No. 3 September 2018

    Evolutionary Consequences of Epigenetic Inheritance

    Epigenetic inheritance is the non-genetic inheritance of a modifi ed phenotype across generations, and while its occurrence is well documented, its influence over evolutionary processes is debated. This special issue deals with the evolutionary consequences of epigenetic inheritance and focuses broadly on the evolutionary forces selecting for epigenetic inheritance, its costs and importance for adaptation. Moreover, several contributions specifi cally highlight the effects of paternal trans-generational epigenetic inheritance, which until now have received comparatively little attention. The contributions to this special issue give an important snapshot of the state of the adaptive epigenetic inheritance fi eld, highlight its evolutionary consequences and point out important directions forward.