Cover title. Includes bibliographical references.

Patterns of coevolution in the adaptive radiation of crossbills / Craig W. Benkman, Thomas L. Parchman and Eduardo T. Mezquida -- Bridging the gap between ecology and evolution : integrating density regulation and life-history evolution / Ronald D. Bassar -- Global change and the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in plants / Silvia Matesanz, Ernesto Gianoli and Fernando Valladares -- Pleiotropy, plasticity, and the evolution of plant abiotic stress tolerance / David L. Des Marais and Thomas E. Juenger -- The origins and evolution of genetic disease risk in modern humans / Bernard J. Crespi -- The role of gene expression in ecological speciation / Scott A. Pavey ... [et al.] -- Telomeres and life histories : the long and the short of it / Pat Monaghan -- Are we analyzing speciation without prejudice? / Kerstin Johannesson. "The 2010 issue of "The Year in Evolutionary Biology" series of the Annals contains six synthetic reviews and two perspectives. Several of these contributions address issues related to speciation, ranging from a synthesis of research on two continents on the fascinating adaptive radiation of crossbills, by Benkman and colleagues, to an evaluation of how differences in gene expression affect the process of ecological speciation, by Pavey and co-workers. Johannesson and colleagues offer an intriguing meta-analysis of publications on allopatric versus sympatric speciation that looks at whether or not authors have fully considered alternate hypotheses. Matesanz et al., evaluate patterns of adaptation to climatic variation focus on phenotypic plasticity in response to global climate change, while Des Marais and Juneger take a fresh look at the genetic controls of plant stress responses from an evolutionary viewpoint. Two papers present new perspectives on the evolution of life histories: Monaghan provides a short summary of our knowledge and needs with respect to the evolutionary importance of telomeres; Bassar et al., discuss how density dependence impacts the evolution of life histories. Finally, Crespi provides a tour de force evolutionary analysis of the causes and consequences of persistent human diseases, suggesting that many of these may be pleiotropic results of strong selection on just a small group of human tissues."--Society website.