| # | Title | Journal | Year | Citations |
|---|
| 1 | The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme | Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B, Containing Papers of A Biological Character | 1979 | 5,366 |
| 2 | Exaptation—a Missing Term in the Science of Form | Paleobiology | 1982 | 4,401 |
| 3 | Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered | Paleobiology | 1977 | 2,414 |
| 4 | Predation, apparent competition, and the structure of prey communities | Theoretical Population Biology | 1977 | 2,068 |
| 5 | Cause and Effect in Biology: Kinds of causes, predictability, and teleology are viewed by a practicing biologist | Science | 1961 | 1,789 |
| 6 | Broad phylogenomic sampling improves resolution of the animal tree of life | Nature | 2008 | 1,698 |
| 7 | Size and shape in ontogeny and phylogeny | Paleobiology | 1979 | 1,440 |
| 8 | Haploidploidy and the evolution of the social insect | Science | 1976 | 1,228 |
| 9 | NATURAL SELECTION AND RANDOM GENETIC DRIFT IN PHENOTYPIC EVOLUTION | Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution | 1976 | 1,149 |
| 10 | The evolution of eusociality | Nature | 2010 | 1,083 |
| 11 | Genetic Conflicts in Human Pregnancy | Quarterly Review of Biology | 1993 | 1,059 |
| 12 | Gait and the energetics of locomotion in horses | Nature | 1981 | 974 |
| 13 | Leg stiffness and stride frequency in human running | Journal of Biomechanics | 1996 | 945 |
| 14 | Growth rate influence on the chemical composition of phytoplankton in oceanic waters | Nature | 1979 | 870 |
| 15 | Punctuated equilibrium comes of age | Nature | 1993 | 854 |
| 16 | Adaptation and diversification on islands | Nature | 2009 | 786 |
| 17 | Nucleotide polymorphism at the alcohol dehydrogenase locus of Drosophila melanogaster | Nature | 1983 | 781 |
| 18 | The maintenance of genetic variability by mutation in a polygenic character with linked loci | Genetical Research | 1975 | 772 |
| 19 | CONVERGENCE, ADAPTATION, AND CONSTRAINT | Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution | 2011 | 760 |
| 20 | "Inordinate Fondness" Explained: Why Are There So Many Beetles? | Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution | 1998 | 694 |
| 21 | Phylogeny of the Ants: Diversification in the Age of Angiosperms | Science | 2006 | 684 |
| 22 | Faster top running speeds are achieved with greater ground forces not more rapid leg movements | Journal of Applied Physiology | 2000 | 682 |
| 23 | Muscular Force in Running Turkeys: The Economy of Minimizing Work | Science | 1997 | 680 |
| 24 | Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? | Paleobiology | 1980 | 659 |
| 25 | Energetics of running: a new perspective | Nature | 1990 | 656 |
| 26 | Prokaryotic Cells in the Hydrothermal Vent Tube Worm Riftia pachyptila Jones: Possible Chemoautotrophic Symbionts | Science | 1981 | 655 |
| 27 | PASSIVE AND ACTIVE FLOW CONTROL BY SWIMMING FISHES AND MAMMALS | Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics | 2006 | 649 |
| 28 | Phanerozoic Trends in the Global Diversity of Marine Invertebrates | Science | 2008 | 643 |
| 29 | On measures of gametic disequilibrium. | Genetics | 1988 | 628 |
| 30 | Darwinism and the expansion of evolutionary theory | Science | 1982 | 619 |
| 31 | The Discovery and Importance of Multiple Islands of Most-Parsimonious Trees | Systematic Biology | 1991 | 602 |
| 32 | Systematics and Evolution of Spiders (Araneae) | Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics | 1991 | 579 |
| 33 | Eusociality: Origin and consequences | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | 2005 | 558 |
| 34 | Running Springs: Speed and Animal Size | Journal of Experimental Biology | 1993 | 543 |
| 35 | Reconstructing ancestral character states under Wagner parsimony | Mathematical Biosciences | 1987 | 537 |
| 36 | Phototactic guidance of a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray | Science | 2016 | 534 |
| 37 | Biodiversity Studies: Science and Policy | Science | 1991 | 530 |
| 38 | Fish biodiversity and conservation in South America | Journal of Fish Biology | 2016 | 464 |
| 39 | Speed, Stride Frequency and Energy Cost Per Stride: How Do They Change With Body Size and Gait? | Journal of Experimental Biology | 1988 | 444 |
| 40 | Nitrogenous Nutrition of Marine Phytoplankton in Nutrient-Depleted Waters | Science | 1979 | 437 |
| 41 | The beetle tree of life reveals that Coleoptera survived end‐Permian mass extinction to diversify during the Cretaceous terrestrial revolution | Systematic Entomology | 2015 | 435 |
| 42 | Choosing Among Multiple Equally Parsimonious Cladograms | Cladistics | 1988 | 419 |
| 43 | The Ecology and Evolution of Ant Association in the Lycaenidae (Lepidoptera) | Annual Review of Entomology | 2002 | 406 |
| 44 | Coordination of mastication and swallowing | Dysphagia | 1992 | 395 |
| 45 | EXPLAINING THE CAMBRIAN “EXPLOSION” OF ANIMALS | Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences | 2006 | 390 |
| 46 | Sociobiology as an adaptationist program | Systems Research and Behavioral Science | 1979 | 389 |
| 47 | Symbiotic chemoautotrophic bacteria in marine invertebrates from sulphide-rich habitats | Nature | 1983 | 388 |
| 48 | Bipedal locomotion: effects of speed, size and limb posture in birds and humans | Journal of Zoology | 1991 | 378 |
| 49 | The hierarchical expansion of sorting and selection: sorting and selection cannot be equated | Paleobiology | 1986 | 372 |
| 50 | Iron and grazing constraints on primary production in the central equatorial Pacific: An EqPac synthesis | Limnology and Oceanography | 1997 | 368 |
