We identified hybrid chestnut trees with variable seed traits and estimated the average seed dispersal distance (by squirrels) for each tree. By sequencing pooled genomes of trees with similar dispersal distance, we identified loci in the chestnut genome that may influence seed dispersal.

Eutrophication is a major cause of biodiversity loss, but the underlying mechanisms are still under intense debate. We show that competition switches from symmetric (size-proportionate access to resource) to asymmetric (size-disproportionate access to resources) as fertility and productivity increase. Our results emphasize the need to mitigate chronic human-induced nutrient inputs to ecosystems in order to maintain and restore plant diversity and associated ecosystem functioning.

We combine genetic and stable isotope data to quantify patterns of migratory connectivity of Loggerhead Shrike, a species of conservation concern in North America, to assess how connectivity differs and impacts subpopulation trajectories. Our study used a Bayesian framework and species- and age-specific δ²H_f isoscapes and genetic markers to distinguish between co-occurring migratory and nonmigratory individuals on the wintering grounds.

This study is the first determination of the mitogenome of a deep-sea member of the order Brisingida and may shed light on the adaptive evolution of Brisingida species to the deep-sea environment.

The richness and composition of gall-inducing species varied according to the variation in leaf flushing time of the host plant. The results of null models analysis showed that galls co-occurrence on Copaifera langsdorffii trees differ than expected by chance and interspecific competition can be one potential mechanism structuring gall-forming community.

We established a noninvasive sampling method that does not interfere with gorillas' natural behaviour to provide wildlife SIV surveillance and health monitoring for conservation in Cameroon. We provided insights into gorilla social dynamics and SIVgor evolution. Our results validate a noninvasive approach to the recovery of otherwise unobtainable information directly related to the ecology of mammals and of infectious diseases in the wilderness.

Using a state-dependent dynamic programming model, we aimed at clarifying theoretical expectations about how behavior-selective fishing can shape the evolution of risk-taking behavior, life-history traits, and emergent natural mortality. First, our results are in line with earlier findings that an increased fishing mortality leads to increased natural mortality, earlier maturation, reduced size at age, and increased reproductive investment. Second, we found that the intensity of changes in natural mortality, length, and risk-taking behavior depends on whether fishing is targeting active, foraging (“bold”) fish, or passive, sheltering (“timid”) fish.

In this study, we tested whether age-related declines in female fruit fly fecundity and egg-to-adult viability varied based on mitochondrial DNA genotype. Using 13 strains of fruit flies with different mitochondrial DNA genotypes expressed alongside a common nuclear genetic “background,” we measured fecundity and egg-to-adult viability in females across five age classes. We found that mitochondrial genotype did not affect the rate of physiological decline with increasing age in female fruit flies.

We estimate that the combination of reduced pregnancy by mid-winter and the abortions following mid-winter reduces the reproductive output of exposed female elk by 24%, which affects population dynamics to a similar extent as severe winters or droughts. Exposing hidden reproductive costs of disease is essential to avoid conflating them with the effects of climate and predation.

We sampled populations of a California endemic plant from across its geographic range to test for interactions between plants, mycorrhizal fungi, and insect herbivores. Plants showed strong negative effects of inoculation with mycorrhizal spores but this did not influence herbivore preference for plant fruits

Based on established allometric rules, we designed a spatially explicit model, studying the effect of habitat isolation and resource growth on body size distribution of a consumer population or community. We compared scenarios of size-dependent and size-independent movement. Our results highlight the vital importance of size-dependent movement for the survival of isolated populations. Fine-grained isolation has a positive effect on consumer body size, with multiple body sizes coexisting at intermediate levels of isolation. Selected body size distributions are observed to affect consumer stability and resource abundance.

Our findings highlight strong variability within and between contrasting methods of determining self-thinning and site maximum carry capacity, which may influence ecological inferences.

Perceiving risks and responding accordingly may be important to balance selective pressures in a dynamic environment. Tidal-marsh-nesting birds that are subject to competing risks of predation and flooding make changes to their nesting behavior based on their prior experience. Females that experienced nest flooding increased the height of their subsequent nests and renested in a higher elevation area of the marsh, thereby adopting behaviors that mitigate flooding, while those that were depredated renested lower in the vegetation, reducing visibility to predators. Females had high fidelity in their nest site locations, although those with failed nests had a tendency to renest a farther distance from their prior nest than those that with successful nests.

We present a suite of knockout extinction models for plant–pollinator networks which we use to test the effects of extinction rules, interaction weights, and network structure on robustness. Our analysis reveals the mechanisms and fundamental network properties that drive observed trends in robustness.

In this study, we utilized a temperate coral–algal system (the northern star coral, Astrangia poculata, and its photosynthetic endosymbiont, Symbiodinium psygmophilum) to explore the impacts of nutritional sourcing on the host's health and ability to regenerate experimentally excised polyps. Healing initiation, tissue loss, polyp regeneration, and overall colony tissue cover were affected differentially, suggesting a diversity in energetic sourcing for each of these processes. These effects may also be compounded by feeding-based influences on host (polyp extension) and endosymbiont (photosynthetic activity) behavior.

We applied an NGS strategy to genotype hundreds of individuals at many custom-designed microstaellie loci, combining multiplex PCR, barcoding, and Illumina sequencing. We compared outputs from three different datasets based on (i) length of the repetitive region, (ii) total fragment length, and (iii) sequence identity. The number of alleles per locus, as well as observed and expected heterozygosity, was highest in the sequence-identity dataset, because of single nucleotide polymorphisms and insertions/deletions in the flanking regions of the SSR motif.

Carabids are abundant in temperate agroecosystems and play a pivotal role as biocontrol agents for weeds and insect pests. In a series of feeding experiments we investigated the effects of an omnivorous diet, which is characteristic for most carabids, and seed identity on the molecular detection of consumed seeds. Results indicate that meal size, seed identity, and their chemical composition can play a role and that mixed feeding leads to an enhancement of food detection intervals.

We show that nematodes carrying bacterial symbionts that confer a competitive advantage via allelopathy are less fit in the absence of competition relative to nematodes that carry non-allelopathic symbionts. These competitive and non-competitive phenotypes were isolated from the same population and represent sub-specific variation of both partners. This work highlights the myriad roles that symbionts play in their hosts’ ecologies and the context dependency of fitness.

Endozoochorous dispersal of many organisms is greatly influenced by seasonally variable morphology of the disperser's digestive tract. We found that seed survival of gut passage was higher and retention time lower in mallards adapted to low-fibre summer diets versus high-fibre winter diets, while digestive tract measures did not differ between these groups. However, highly variable digestive efficiency between individual mallards feeding on the same diet likely provides opportunities for seed dispersal throughout the annual cycle.

Global ecosystem models (GEMs) are essential tools to make predictions about biogeochemical budgets, fisheries yields or the fate of anthropogenic carbon, but these models have a substantial mismatch between measured and modeled carbon. Copepods are the most abundant multicellular animals on Earth but GEMs currently have copepods feeding only on single cell protists, despite the fact that they also prey upon metazoans, potentially reducing the amount of carbon entering the pelagic food webs. Using a meta-analysis on published copepod feeding rates, the metazoan-copepod link was estimated to be between 1.79 and 27.20 gigatons of C/year at a global scale using field and laboratory estimations, which could increase current estimates of biogeochemical fluxes by 15.6%–24.4%.

Accounting for multiple levels of observation error associated with using environmental DNA (eDNA) to detect terrestrial mammals results in better estimates of occupancy and provides critical information for designing eDNA studies. We estimated detection probability for an invasive terrestrial mammal at the water sample level, extraction level, and qPCR level and determine factors associated with observation error at those levels to provide unbiased estimates of occupancy.

Resource selection functions (RSFs) are widely used to assess animal-habitat relationships. However, the practice of aggregating animal location data to fit a population-level RSF may mask important individual variation. We found substantial variation among a study of elk RSFs and recommend that researchers make efforts to model RSFs at the individual level moving forward.

Regional and local habitats have an effect on the biological morphology of fish species, which further affects the functioning of the organism within the ecosystem. Morphological traits associated with locomotion were primarily effected by the river's physical characteristics (such as flow velocity, river fractals, and coefficients of fluvial facies). While morphological traits associated with food acquisition were primarily affected by water chemical factors (such as DO, water clarity, NH4–N concentration, and TDS).

Differences in diet can explain resource partitioning in sympatric species. We analyzed dietary data from five boreal bat species and revealed 550 prey items. We found significant differences in the diet, suggesting bats use different evolutionary strategies.

Fokienia hodginsii, a Tertiary relict conifer, was listed as “near threatened” species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. In this study, a medial to high level of genetic diversity and pronounced genetic diversity were revealed across 427 individuals of F. hodginsii based on the profiles of 12 SSR markers. Isolation by distance, differentiation in terrains, elevations, and climates may serve as the main factors contributing to the differentiations among group.

We provide empirical evidence that long-unburned eucalypt forests are disproportionately more important for reptile diversity than recently burned areas. This has important implications for forest management in fire-prone landscapes as long-unburned forest is often prioritized for prescribed burning.

We studied the spatial organization and genetic relatedness among female Eurasian lynx, continuously distributed in southern Finland. We hypothesized that closely related females form matrilineal assemblages, clustering together with relatives living in the neighboring areas. Our results support the hypothesis that the Eurasian lynx forms matrilineal assemblages.

Conservation planning typically entails strategically protecting a network of reserves to shield target species from deleterious anthro.pogenic processes, but limited resources and other practical restraints challenge their practical implementation. Therefore, many on-the-ground protected areas are a collection of ad hoc or opportunistic land acquisitions, many without any active conservation intervention other than restrictions in public access. Here, we use a maximum-likelihood, multi-species distribution modeling approach to examine how protections from human disturbance modify the size and distribution of habitat that will likely support nesting by beach-nesting birds of conservation concern and demonstrate that managing human disturbance has variable conservation benefit depending on the target species.

We test several hypotheses related to the evolution of peripheral endemics by sequencing ultraconserved element loci to produce a genome-scale phylogeny of 47 butterflyfish species (family Chaetodontidae), including all shallow-water butterflyfish from the Red Sea to Arabian Gulf. Our analyses indicate that unique environmental conditions in the coastal waters of the Arabian Peninsula probably contributed to the formation of endemic butterflyfishes. Older endemic species are also associated with narrow versus broad depth ranges, suggesting that adaptation to deeper coral reefs in the coastal waters of the Arabian Peninsula occurred only recently (<1.75 Ma).

We measure agreement among experts in classifying camera images of two similar-looking and congeneric species, bobcats and lynx. Our results show that image classifications may be incorrect in many cases, and we recommend that studies using wildlife images consult multiple experts when classifying their images.

We tested the hypothesis that CYP2D gene expansion was associated with the dietary preferences and found that diet wasn't a driving force of CYP2D gene expansion, and CYP2D gene expansion was more complex than previously recognized.

Social insects have a combination of individual immune responses and sophisticated collective behavioral and organizational disease defenses, that is, social immunity. We investigated how the presence or absence of these social defense lines affects individual-level immunity in ant queens after bacterial infection. We found that the absence of workers does not compromise the onset of an individual immune response by the queens, but that the social environment impacts the route of the individual innate immune responses.

We describe molecular responses to predatory fish kairomone occurring at functionally distinct embryonic stages in a freshwater pond snail. We identify molecular responses indicative of accelerated growth, muscle function, and shell development, and these were responses that were also observed at the phenotypic level.

Mangrove species Rhizophora mangle has many physiognomic forms, the short one or scrub type occupies large extensions. We evaluate whether this type is genetically different from the tall type and found that differences are greater at local scale than at regional scale, indicating that short-distance ecological barriers exist between these two types of mangrove within a site.

Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are generalist North American predators that make use of a variety of prey types across their broad geographic range. We provide the first description of the winter diet of bobcats in northwest Montana and compare these findings to other studies of winter bobcat diet in similar northern latitudes.

Humans, like many other animals, make paths. Here we analyze the results of many studies of the impacts of human paths on plant richness and diversity. We find that on average the effect sizes of paths on plants are nonzero and positive.

We present strong evidence that the prevalence of a nonnative competitor alters resource selection and promotes use of an invasive shrub by an imperiled native cottontail. We identify seasonal shifts in selection that could facilitate displacement of residents and identify resources to selectively manage to benefit desired over undesired species.

Functional diversity provides a mechanistic understanding of the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on animal communities. Using a novel approach to assess diversity weighted by abundance we compare functional richness, diversity, and redundancy of lepidopteran communities under different disturbance regimes. While raw species richness was lower in disturbed sites, functional richness did not vary. Biotic functional homogenisation in both broadleaf and plantation sites suggests that landscape rather than local factors drive reduced functional diversity.

Euterpe precatoria, known as açaí do Amazonas, is a regionally important palm of the Amazon rainforest, due to its palm heart and fruit production. The fruit has a pulp rich in energy that is consumed raw and is much appreciated by local population in the Amazon. Fruit production is exclusively made by extractivism. We assess the genetic diversity, inbreeding level, spatial genetic structure, and gene flow in four ontogenetic stages (reproductive, immature, young, and seedling) of a natural E. precatoria population, in the Brazilian Amazon, based on 18 microsatellite loci. Our results indicate substantial pollen flow in the population, high genetic diversity in four ontogenetic stages, and absence of inbreeding to reproductive plants. In conservation terms, our results indicate that open-pollinated seeds must be harvested in mother plants distant at least 110 m from each other, to avoid collecting seeds from related mother plants. This study will help researchers to implement strategies for ex situ conservation of populations of this species.

Grey wolves provide carrion to numerous scavenger species on the Northern Range of Yellowstone National Park, including common ravens. In the winter, common raven use of human-use areas and wolf habitat depends on winter severity as well as the amount of carrion biomass supplied by wolves. Wolf recovery in Yellowstone helped stabilize local raven populations by providing a regular winter food supply that was not directly tied to winter severity and ungulate winter-kill.

We postulate that the persistence of soil organic carbon (SOC) is an equilibrium point where SOC losses resulting from continuous decomposition and SOC gains due to SOC protection are balanced. The distinction between the forces that control SOC loss and gain, and their equilibrium, sheds light on SOC dynamics and can be used to quantify the relative roles of the abiotic and ecological factors on the temporal variation of SOC loss and gain.

NEP was more sensitive to rainfall pulse in the studied temperate grass ecosystem. Antecedent soil moistures before rainfall event significantly offset the positive effect of rainfall amount on these carbon fluxes.

Upon introduction, some species may have large effects on the recipient ecosystems, but these effects are not necessarily all harmful (upper panel). Most introduced species have mixed effects, negative for some resident species or processes and positive for others (middle panel). Many introduced species have no major impacts, which does not entail that their small effects are not favorable for some resident species and deleterious for others. There is no evidence in the scientific literature that the negative effects of NIS are systematically ignored or dismissed (pink background).

This study was conducted based on the long-term 13-year field observation at the northern distribution limits of evergreen hardwood species. We analyzed stand structure, stand dynamics, tree competition during 13 years, and population growth rates by matrix model. Therefore, this study analyzed thoroughly how dominant tree species of three growth forms (evergreen conifers, deciduous hardwoods, and evergreen hardwoods) maintain their population at a latitudinal ecotone from various analyses.

Elevated, yet low-level nitrogen deposition is currently impacting plant assemblages around the world, but it is unclear whether this subtle fertilization affects trophic cascades between predators and plants. I simulated low-level nitrogen deposition in a field experiment to evaluate whether nitrogen enrichment affected a trophic cascade from ant-eating black bears to plants. I found that nitrogen additions weakened plant–herbivore interactions and the indirect effect of bears on plants, suggesting that low-level nitrogen deposition may have widespread effects on trophic cascades.

The distribution of intraspecific genetic variation and how it relates to environmental factors is of increasing interest to researchers in macroecology. Thus, we related genetic differentiation to ecological niche overlap among genetic groups resulting from spatial Bayesian clustering in the wolf population inhabiting part of the Italian peninsula. We found a significant relationship between genetic differentiation and ecological niche overlap and quantified differences in environmental factors among clusters.

Orchids are highly diverse, and we mapped orchid climate and spatial distributions at a continental scale. Surprisingly, diversification did not correlate with increases in range size, rainfall or temperature breadths, suggesting speciation doesn’t occur via local adaptation to new habitats.

Embryos of annual killifish diapause in soil egg banks while ponds are dry. Their numbers at pond rewetting depend on rates of development and survival. We investigated plasticity for desiccation in the embryonal life histories of the Argentinean pearlfish Austrolebias bellottii across phases of mild desiccation and rewetting.

There are very few studies on triggering factors for phenology of dry zone tropical tree species, and even fewer studies that investigate how phenology is varying among origins in common garden experiments. In this study, we tested 13 baobab origins and their phenological response to drought stress and different daylengths. Our results demonstrate that both water availability and daylength influence flushing of leaves, and that origin react differently to these signals.

Habitat fragmentation often inhibits the movements of animals across landscapes. We identify areas of connectivity for Canada lynx as an example of a highly mobile carnivore that is specialized in habitat needs. We base our connectivity models on a Travel Habitat analysis revealing a broader range of habitats and thus areas of connectivity used by traveling lynx than by lynx in core habitat. We suggest that basing connectivity models on Travel Habitat analyses will better inform conservation efforts on fragmented landscapes.

The article describes genetic variability and differentiation among Prosopis alba (Leguminosae) populations from dry valleys of Bolivia with different levels of human disturbance and altitude. The results are in agreement with the hypothesis that genetic diversity is reduced by the impact of anthropic disturbance in the population located at higher altitude in comparison with the lightly disturbed situated at lower altitude and farther from urban settlements. We discuss the results in order to provide some guidelines for management and conservation of the native resource.

In our study, we compared realized niche size and microhabitat selection among core (Bulgaria) and northern peripheral (Germany, Czech Republic) populations of Lacerta viridis and estimated niche differentiation among regions.

In recent decades, advances in lighting technology have precipitated exponential increases in night sky brightness worldwide, raising concerns in the scientific community about the impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on crepuscular and nocturnal biodiversity. Long-term records show that insect abundance has declined significantly over this time, with worrying implications for terrestrial ecosystems. This review proposes five categories of ALAN impact on nocturnal insects, highlighting past research and identifying key knowledge gaps. We conclude with a summary of relevant literature on bioluminescent fireflies, which emphasizes the unique vulnerability of terrestrial light-based communication systems to artificial illumination.

In response to DeSantis et al., we describe that the presence of phylogenetic signal in tooth wear dietary niche proxies is likely a result of the evolutionary process. We also address their concerns regarding enforcement of the use of phylogenetic comparative methods by editors of ecology and evolution journals.