Functional innovation promotes diversification of form in the evolution of an ultrafast trap-jaw mechanism in ants.

Evolutionary innovations underlie the rise of diversity and complexity-the 2 long-term trends in the history of life. How does natural selection redesign multiple interacting parts to achieve a new emergent function? We investigated the evolution of a biomechanical innovation, the latch-spring mecha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Douglas B Booher, Joshua C Gibson, Cong Liu, John T Longino, Brian L Fisher, Milan Janda, Nitish Narula, Evropi Toulkeridou, Alexander S Mikheyev, Andrew V Suarez, Evan P Economo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021-03-01
Series:PLoS Biology
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001031