By Nobu Tamura (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons

It’s Friday and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and other stuff) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments section!

According to a recent analysis of the paleo record of marine fauna in Nature Communications, functional diversity increased much more slowly than was previously hypothesized. Cambrian fauna attempted relatively few new ways of making a living, but functional diversity continued to increase through the Ordovician and following subsequent mass extinctions. (Photo credit Nobu Tamura, via Wikimedia Commons).

Species-area relationships are affected by ecological characteristics of species in Ecology.

What role does maladaptation play in evolutionary ecology? Farkas et al. use island biogeography to develop a framework for including predictions about maladaption in ecological time.

–Emily Grason

March 6, 2015