Open research principles underpin the effective science-based policy key to tackling global challenges; however, the uptake of these principles is likely constrained by the politicisation, commoditisation and conflicting motives of stakeholders in the research landscape. Here, using the mission and vision statements from 129 stakeholders from across the research landscape, we explore alignment in open research principles. We find that poor alignment between different stakeholders stifles knowledge flow within the research landscape, ultimately limiting the mobilisation of impactful science-based policy.

This paper describes the genetic characterization of the mhorr gazelle population in captivity obtained through pedigree analysis. The genetic variability evolution shows how the mating strategy used has allowed maximizing the genetic potential of the population despite the low number of founders. The study of two living reference populations has made it possible to know the level of current genetic variability.

First record of leucism in the Rhabdophis tigrinus.

Cephalopods may release ink when attacked by predators, but we have discovered that ink is used as a part of the courtship display by males of the cuttlefish species Sepia andreana. Males of this species engage in a highly ritualized multi-modal courtship using a pair of markedly long sexually dimorphic arms, and at the climax of the courtship, the male releases a diffuse backdrop of ink near himself and then performs the specific courtship display in front of this ink backdrop. This novel use of cephalopod ink could potentially serve as a temporary modification of the visual environment for courtship display.

In the present study, three new species and one new record are recognized using morphology and DNA barcording analysis.

Ellochelon vaigiensis is a synchronous spawner, with peaks in reproductive activity from June to October. The length at 50% maturity for females is significantly higher than that for males at all sites and ranges from 10.6 to 19.3 cm. The diameter of the eggs examined for this species exhibited slight variation, from 0.43 to 0.54 mm. The potential fecundity ranged from 246,254 ± 35,878 to 411,970 ± 54,370 eggs, corresponding to female length and weight of 26.7–32.6 cm and 102.97–234.19 g, respectively. Relative fecundity values peaked at Thanh Phu, Ben Tre (6388 ± 605 eggs) and Dong Hai, Bac Lieu (6461 ± 637 eggs), followed by Tran De, Soc Trang (4729 ± 408), and were found to be lowest at Duyen Hai, Tra Vinh (3117 ± 223 eggs).

Our DNA metabarcoding analysis has revealed that Rhinopithecus brelichi predominantly feeds on plants from the Magnoliaceae and Rubiaceae families, Diptera and Coleoptera insects, as well as macrofungi such as Agaricales throughout the winter season.

A new species of Choleoeimeria from a captive-bred bilby (Macrotis lagotis Reid, 1837) has been identified and described using morphological and molecular information.

This text reports the discovery of the microlepidopteran Plodia interpunctella at the Chilean Yelcho scientific station on Doumer Island, near the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Plodia interpunctella is a global pest known for surviving in stored food for extended periods. The text suggests that the insect may have initially arrived in Antarctica due to the challenges of food transportation and storage in the harsh Antarctic conditions. Non-perishable food items like grains and flour are commonly transported to Antarctic research stations, potentially aiding the insect's introduction. The presence of P. interpunctella in Antarctica, even within buildings, poses a threat to Antarctic biodiversity as an invasive species and a potential vector for other non-native species.

This study provides the first documented evidence of interactions between the native leopard cat and the invasive coypu in South Korea, observed in the Hwapocheon wetland park from May 2015 to April 2017. Through camera traps, the research unveils active predatory behavior by leopard cats against coypus and the cooperative defense mechanisms exhibited by the coypus.

Maintaining long-distance elevational migration in the face of environmental change is important to ensure both the reproductive success and keystone ecological role of giant tortoises on Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos. Here, we show that rapid range expansion by Cedrela odorata, an invasive tree, threatens the last migration corridors of western Santa Crus Galapagos tortoises. Finding effective management solutions to Cedrela expansion is critical for conservation for critically endangered Galapagos tortoises and their ecosystem.

The African Monarch or African Queen shows intermediate dominance in the colour pattern heterozygotes formed across the broad East African contact zone. Here we quantify the level of penetrance of each heterozygote formed by interactions between the A, B and C colour pattern loci. We find that the A locus interacts with the B/C supergene and is thus an example of a genetic modifier.

To understand the effects of climate change on alpine pond biodiversity, we performed a comprehensive literature review for papers published since 1955. Increased water temperature, reduced hydroperiod, and loss of connectivity between alpine ponds were the main drivers of biodiversity geographic distribution, leading to predictable changes in spatial patterns of biodiversity.

Conservation detection dogs (CDD) can be effective and applied to possibly limitless conservation scenarios but moving forward researchers must provide more consistent and detailed methodologies so that comparisons can be conducted, results are more easily replicated and progress can be made in standardising CDD work. This review aims to summarise what is currently known about the use of scent detection dogs in conservation and elucidate which factors affect efficacy.

Through convergent evolution, the entomopathogeny in nematodes is widespread within the Rhaditidae families, owing to the shared ecological and evolutionary attributes raised from saprophagy, phoresis, and necromeny.

Dillenia species, like all members of the phylogenetically mysterious family Dilleniaceae, were believed to be nectarless and pollinated by bees until the discovery that D. biflora was pollinated by bats in Fiji. Uniform stamens and apical anther pores, dominant traits in species suspected to be pollinated by bats because their corollas do not open, add evidence that several Dillenia species, including threatened ones, may need bats for pollination.

In this study we tested the “opposites-attract” hypothesis in two species of darter with known differences in female criteria used in mate choice: in the fantail darters (a paternal-care species), females prefer males with visual traits related to nest guarding and egg tending, while in rainbow darters (not a paternal-care species) female mate choice criteria are unknown. In dichotomous mate-choice trials, we presented females of both species with the scents of conspecific males with MHC class IIb genotypes that were either similar or dissimilar to that of the focal female. Our results do not support the “opposites-attract” hypothesis in darters.

Plants are responding to climate change by shifting their ranges to higher elevations. There is a large variety in how fast and how far species spread, and we do not understand the factors that allow or restrict subalpine species from colonising new alpine locations. To explore the relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors, as well as species-specific life strategies, on these limitations, we performed a seed transplant experiment with and without experimental warming, crossed with manipulation of biotic interactions, replicated across a precipitation gradient, with three resource conservative and three resource acquisitive subalpine species.

We detected no survival differences between male and female Adelie penguins, but the probability of recruiting into the breeding population was higher for females. In conjunction with the observed decrease in survival for birds of both sexes once they began to breed, females likely have shorter lifespans than males. These vital rate differences likely contributed to the male-biased sex ratio we observed in our study.

All orchids establish obligatory symbiotic relationships with specific fungi for germination and early growth, contributing to ecological niche differentiation. This investigation revealed that three co-occurring terrestrial orchid species engaged with distinct fungal partners. The identified fungi were detected at low abundance in the rhizosphere and appeared nearly absent from bulk soil, raising questions on the ecology and trophic mode of orchid mycorrhizal fungi beyond orchid tissues.

In this study, we analyzed the suitable distribution areas of Graphium sarpedon under current and future climate change (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) for two periods (the 2050s and 2090s) using the MaxEnt model. The analysis results showed that the high suitable areas are mainly distributed in southern Guangdong, southwestern Guangxi, western Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Zhejiang. Under different future climatic conditions, some of the high, medium, and low suitability zones for G. sarpedon increased and some decreased, but the mass center did not migrate significantly.

This study compares microbiota of feces, small, and large intestine in stream-dwelling amphibians. We find that microbiota differ significantly between sample types. Therefore, we caution the use of fecal microbiota as the proxy of intestinal microbiota in future studies.

Lesser prairie-chickens translocated to southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas experienced almost universal dispersal away from the release site (96%). During dispersal movements, lesser prairie-chickens selected for steps that ended far from roads and in Conservation Reserve Program grasslands. Dispersal rates suggest that translocation is better suited to regional, rather than site-specific, population augmentation for this species.

The little brown bat has low detection estimates for mist netting compared to acoustic surveys. Higher survey effort recommended for this species using capture techniques.

Understanding temporal variation of host–pathogen interactions might help to understand the impact of climate change on insect diseases. Here, we showed that seasonal variation of temperature and precipitation drives parasitism in subtropical climate. Our study highlights that climate change might increase diseases in subtropical climate which may contribute to further insect decline in the subtropics.

We conduct a comprehensive assessment of ecological drivers of red vision, across a broad range of taxa. Our results support the emerging consensus that, in general, visual systems are broadly adapted to the lighting environment and diverse visual tasks.

Here, we investigate the sensitivity of close-kin mark-recapture (CKMR) models to violations of underlying assumptions, and then propose and test modified approaches that correct the bias. We find that base-case CKMR models are sensitive to unmodeled population dynamics and measurement error including interannual fluctuations in population size, intermittent breeding dynamics, and aging error. We then present adapted models that account for the hidden population dynamics, and – using both simulation and real genetic data – show that targeted sampling of juveniles that can be reliably aged can eliminate the bias that arises from errors in aging.

This study spanning over 20 years and involving 15 bat species in Italy challenges the expectation of a widespread increase in body size in response to climate change. Contrary to predictions, only three out of the 15 species exhibited a noticeable size increase, prompting a revaluation of bats as reliable indicators of climate change based on body size alterations. We identify temperature-related variables, sexual dimorphism, latitude, and altitude as crucial factors influencing bat body size dynamics, revealing a nuanced interplay that adds complexity to our understanding of how bats respond to environmental changes over time and space.

Bioenergetics models are routinely used to estimate food consumption or growth and are thus critical tools in applied science and decision-making in aquatic ecosystem and species management. Even though fish telemetry is widely used and has enabled researchers to accurately document in-situ temperatures aligned with dynamic fish behavior, that is, their realized thermal niche, the traditional use of lab-derived optimum temperatures based on the physiological optimum theory in models still persists. In this study, we contrasted optimum and field temperature data in models and quantified the effects on growth and consumption of two widely distributed salmonids that occupy both marine and freshwater ecosystems. We demonstrate that significant biases in the model estimates of growth and lifetime prey consumption produced using lab-obtained optimum temperatures could be eliminated by the adoption of realized thermal niche approach to bioenergetics modeling.

Using data from long-term monitoring scheme data and novel trait data, we explore the relationship between species trait dissimilarity and their population asynchrony amongst macro-moths, butterflies and bumblebees. We find that differences in certain traits that correspond with species' exposure to environmental variables, especially phenology-related traits such as flight period, particularly correlate with population asynchrony between species, giving us further insight into the mechanisms underpinning stability and resilience in insect communities.

We assembled a comparative dataset of pollen limitation in plants to test a central prediction from the theory of balanced fitness limitations, namely that the cost of harvesting a particular resource shapes the likelihood that a shortfall of that resource will constrain realized fitness. We find no support for the prediction that plants that invest more heavily in pre-pollination costs are subject to greater pollen limitation.

In this study, the dynamic processes of rodent communities under different disturbances in desert areas were compared, and the effects of disturbance on the functional structure of rodent communities were revealed from the perspective of functional traits.

The R package IBRtools allows users to calculate both IBR and IBRv2 with all accessed biomarkers at once and generate a radar chart for visualization, helping with accuracy and unifying multibiomarker studies.

The geophagy of sika deer at natural mineral licks mainly involves supplementation with sodium during the growing season. Licks are vulnerable due to their unstable soil microbes and susceptibility to carbon and nitrogen perturbation. Sika deer play critical roles in shaping and stabilizing microbes at licks through multiple behaviors such as grazing, trampling, and excretion.

We present an overview of all rare color variants in the order Carnivora, and compiled demographic and genetic data of the populations where they did and did not occur, to test for significant correlations. We found that variable populations displayed a significant reduction in heterozygosity and allelic richness compared to non-variable populations across species. It is likely that small effective size had phenotypic consequences on the extant populations, and that genetic drift is locally overruling natural selection.

We characterized temporal changes in moose habitat selection and space use patterns near a road network in a wolf-free area located in eastern Canada. Our results reaffirmed the year-round aversive effect of roads, even in the absence of wolves, but the magnitude of this avoidance differed between day phases, being lower during the “dusk-night-dawn” phase, perhaps due to a lower level of human activity on and near roads. We found that moose behavior was similar to what was observed in landscapes where moose and wolves cohabit, suggesting that the risk associated with humans, perceived as another type of predator, outweighs that of wolf predation in heavily managed landscapes.

We investigated differences in flight performances between core and edge population of the Southern small white butterflies (Pieris mannii) currently expanding its range northward. We found higher movement capacity in the individuals from the newly colonized range suggesting a potential dispersal syndrome in the edge population, which likely contributed to the rapid range expansion of this species.

Light detection and ranging (lidar) has rarely been applied in wetland ecosystems or to study the habitat selection of small mammals. We demonstrate the efficacy of lidar in examining the role of vegetation structure in determining the habitat selection of the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys raviventris) in a brackish wetland in California. We found that salt marsh harvest mice selected microhabitats with characteristics that provide refugia from tides and predators, such as taller and denser vegetation and proximity to levees. At the mesohabitat scale, salt marsh harvest mice were associated with a lower percentage of bare ground and pickleweed (Salicornia pacifica) presence. Preserving higher elevation wetland habitat features such as levees and supporting a heterogeneous mixture of shorter and taller vegetation types will benefit salt marsh harvest mouse populations.

TreeViewer is a new software to draw phylogenetic trees that is flexible, modular, and user-friendly. Plots are produced as the result of a user-defined pipeline, which can be finely customised and easily applied to different trees. TreeViewer is mainly aimed at users wishing to produce highly customised, publication-quality tree figures using a single GUI software tool and is released under an AGPLv3 licence for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems.

In the submitted paper, we described how mowing, as a strong habitat disturbance, influenced on mean, skewness and kurtosis of the body size in epigeic spider assemblages. We found that mowing had no significant effect on mean body size, skewness and kurtosis of the body size in epigeic spider assemblages. However, after the cut, mown plots showed, on average, significantly smaller spider species than unmown plots. Both the value of skewness and kurtosis significantly increased after mowing but to the same extent on both the control and mown plots.

Assessment of the impact of dispersal processes on macroinvertebrate bioassessment indices. Comparison of the response of different bioassessment indices to environmental factors.

The influence of incubation temperature, not maternal provisioning, varies across populations of the American alligator. Responses to incubation temperature are a larger source of interpopulation trait variation relative to maternal provisioning and may be more likely to be modified by selection.

In this study, for the first time, we compiled the state-wide occurrence records (N = 409), mainly from the camera-trapping surveys, of Asiatic golden cats from 2008 to 2019, and predicted its current distribution across the country through species distribution modeling using random forest algorithm. The results showed that the predicted habitats were mainly located in southwest China. From the 287 camera-trapping detections with photographs and/or videos collected across all populations, we identified six coat morphs and found the complexity of coat morph composition within regional populations showed an increasing gradient from northeast to southwest.

In the present study, biomass allocation and phylogenetic relationship affect the root system architecture and its variation patterns were investigated in annual ephemerals. Although we found that biomass allocation indicators and trait variation can reflect the adaptive strategies of annual ephemerals, the impact of phylogenetic relationships is equally important.

This work investigate the effects of microhabitat features on the intraspecific variability of the distribution and functional traits in a highest elevational distributed lizard.

We assess urban fish community change over time and drivers of change related to urbanization including land cover change and connectivity. Using the TBI, species richness, Pielou's evenness, and Shannon diversity, we find that land cover and connectivity do not effectively explain community change. Overall, the TBI suggests there are more gains than losses in fish communities through time.

Microplastics (MPs) and endocrine-disrupting chemicals can alter the behavior of aquatic organisms, but this is little studied. This study evaluated the effects of MPs and estrogen on social interactions between male and female fathead minnows. Exposure to MPs, alone or in combination with EE2, had few observable effects on male behavior but non-exposed female fish discriminated against exposed males.

By integrating physiological responses and microbial community analysis, this study reveals that Turbinaria peltata can recover from or adapt to the marine heatwaves by undergoing physiological changes and modulating their microbial community.

In our study we investigate harem size phenology and related variation in a large polygamous herbivore, the Przewalski horse, using a 15-year dataset from an introduced population in Hortobágy National Park, Hungary. Our results demonstrate that intrinsic population processes can play a major role in regulating group size and counter the effects of extrinsic non-stationary climatic conditions during periods of growth in a group-living herbivore.

Recent advances in statistical methods for measuring shape were combined with a classic example of continuous phenotypic plasticity to measure the whole-organism shape response to predation in Daphnia pulex. We found complex, multi-faceted shape changes, with a mixture of locally and globally co-ordinated features.

Models of occupancy using detection data from camera surveys for American marten in southern Vermont indicated that detectability decreased with increasing distance from historical reintroduction sites. Unit-level occupancy models containing covariates did not perform better than the base model that assumes occupancy is homogeneous among units. Marten appears to be restricted by some attribute (e.g. vital demographic rate) that was not measured in the study.

We investigated the prey species and the proportion of each species in the leopard diet in a human-dominated mid-hill region of Nepal. The analysis of 96 leopard scats collected between August 2020 and March 2021 revealed 15 prey species consumed by leopards, including small- and medium-sized mammals and livestock.

This study compared aquatic invertebrate communities between a regulated and unregulated river and sought to determine whether the largest inland lake of the region, which receives water from both rivers, resembles the aquatic invertebrate communities of either river. The unregulated river showed a diverse and sensitive aquatic invertebrate community, indicating its high conservation value, while the regulated river has experienced effects of anthropogenic impacts, with a greater presence of invertebrates resilient to changes in water quality. The inland lake displayed a unique aquatic invertebrate community, different from both rivers and their floodplains. This study underscores the importance of maintaining adequate water flow in rivers and floodplains to protect biodiversity and sensitive species.

Using a simple trait-based metacommunity model that resolves fundamental temperature niches for a range of competing phytoplankton, we ask how dispersal and local temperature variability influence species distributions and diversity. We find that, independently, both dispersal and temperature variability increase realized temperature niche widths and local diversity but the combined effects result in high diversity and realized temperature niches that are consistently wider than fundamental temperature niches. These results have broad implications for understanding the drivers of phytoplankton biogeography as well as for refining species distribution models used to project how climate change impacts phytoplankton distributions.

This study developed an eDNA-based method to accurately monitor the distribution of Garra cambodgiensis in the Mekong River, where population declines have raised conservation concerns. The eDNA technique successfully detected G. cambodgiensis in water samples from 10 out of 21 survey sites, demonstrating its feasibility and effectiveness in the ecologically diverse Mekong River. This innovative approach can enhance conservation and management efforts by providing comprehensive data on species distribution, informing decision-making processes for fisheries management and conservation initiatives.

Both Black-billed and Yellow-billed Cuckoos showed significant site-level turnover between years. Black-billed Cuckoos were associated with greater vertical vegetation cover within sites and persisted at sites with less forest cover in the surrounding landscape, while Yellow-billed Cuckoos used areas with shorter or absent subcanopy layers within less-developed landscapes. Sites with greater canopy cover were more likely to be colonized by Yellow-billed Cuckoos.

Himalayan Musk deer, Moschus chrysogaster (HMD) is widely distributed but one of the least studied species in Nepal. We used a combination of bioclimatic, anthropogenic, topographic, and vegetation-related variables to predict the current suitable habitat for HMD in Nepal using 16 predictor variables for habitat suitability modeling after the multicollinearity test. We explored the ensemble model outperformed single algorithm models in terms of predictive performance (0.966) showing 6973.76 km² (5%) area of Nepal is highly suitable and 8387.11 km² (6%) is moderately suitable for HMD.

Genetic tools for wildlife monitoring can provide valuable information on spatiotemporal population trends and connectivity, particularly in systems experiencing rapid environmental change. Here, we developed a genotyping-in-thousands by sequencing (GT-seq) panel (307 SNPs) as a potential monitoring tool for the American pika (Ochotona princeps) and evaluated its performance when applied to traditional, non-invasive, and archival samples. The GT-seq panel demonstrated high genotyping success, low genotyping error, and excellent performance identifying individuals, sex, relatedness, and population structure from contemporary and archival tissue samples, but this was not the case for the fecal pellet samples suggesting additional optimization of sample and genetic data collection techniques are required.

Geothermally warmed habitats provide a unique opportunity to test for routes of thermal adaptation in a natural warming experiment. We used a reciprocal transplant experiment to test for fitness consequences of morphological variation found in threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) originating from geothermal and cold habitats. We found evidence of unequal fitness consequences and some evidence that body shape and allometry play a role in this study system.

Size selection can act in tandem with diversity loss to reduce adaptive potential. Here, we show directional selection magnifies the effect of diversity loss alone to increase a population's susceptibility to thermal stress.

We have conducted a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis to determine levels and patterns of genetic diversity, inbreeding and gene flow within and among the populations of one of the threatened native species, Notelaea lloydii, restricted in south-eastern Queensland. Our SNP analysis revealed low genetic diversity, inbreeding and significant genetic structuring even among proximate populations, and conservation implications are discussed in the manuscript.

Our results show that under current winter conditions, the spongy moth egg hatch is well synchronized with the leaf emergence of a set of common European trees. However, under warmer winter conditions, we found an increasing mismatch in trees with high chilling requirement or photoperiodic sensitivity, such as European beech but still good synchronization with trees having low chilling requirement, such as pedunculate oak and hornbeam. Remarkably, Q. robur was the only species that advanced budburst to the same extent as L. dispar for all temperature treatments, demonstrating that both species do have similar temperature requirements for their ontogenetic development during winter and spring.

Evolutionary history of ploidy level was confirmed among wild and domesticated water chestnut. Complete chloroplast genome sequences were applied to know maternal origin of domesticated species.

The increased extent of rooting depth in three woody species with increasing rock fragment content declined with plant growth years. Degrees of interannual decreases in fine root diameter of all species increased with increasing gravel content. The limited resource and deep penetration in high rocky soil led to deep fine root distribution.

The first record of the population status of Sarus crane can be used as a baseline data for developing a management plan.

This study addresses a serious challenge in speciation genetics: how to identify loci responsible for reproductive isolation between species. Here we explore via computer simulation the neglected possible strategy of using experimental evolution of hybrid populations to map genetic incompatibilities.

We analyzed the role of resin intake on the foraging behavior and resource intake of tropical stingless bees in Ecuador. We show that stingless bee species with a large workforce devoted to collecting resin were overall more active, and foraged on pollen from slightly different spectra of plants, suggesting that species engaging in high resin collection might compensate for their comparatively low number of food foragers by increasing overall foraging activity and exploring specific plants for resource allocation.

Phenotypic plasticity has been presented as a potential rapid-response mechanism with which organisms may confront swift environmental change and increasing instability. We subjected juvenile brown trout to diet regimes, traced by stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, alternating at various temporal scales. We found that with extreme or even sub-seasonal resource instability, the association of diet type with the phenotype was overwhelmed, calling into question the efficacy of plasticity as a means of adaptation to environments with rapidly fluctuating prey resources.

The red-backed salamander has two common color forms, striped and unstriped. In this study, the unstriped morph showed a stronger response to surface habitats with leaf litter addition, and they showed higher refuge-use in the laboratory. These behavioral differences are consistent with the view that the unstriped morph is more fossorial, and this niche difference combined with spatiotemporal variation in leaf litter accumulation on the forest floor may contribute to the maintenance of the polymorphism.

Intraspecific hybrids between two host races of a biological control agent did not show hybrid vigor in terms of fecundity. One of the parental populations made maladaptive oviposition choices that did not support offspring development. The hybrids had intermediate developmental success on three knotweed species that could make them suitable for field release in different regions.

Heliconiini larvae are likely to be in an evolutionary arms race with their Passifloraceae host plants. By analysing larval social behaviour we investigate whether host habitat, leaf defences and leaf size are important drivers of, or constraints on, the evolution of larval gregariousness. Whereas our data do not reveal links between larval gregariousness and the host plant traits included in this study, we find that gregarious larvae are more likely to feed on a narrower range of host plant species than solitary larvae.

In this study, 616 samples of Tetraodontiformes were identified by using morphological characteristics and DNA barcoding technology. It provided molecular evidence for clarifying the valid species names of L. spadiceus and T. rubripes. The results can provide reliable DNA barcoding information for the identification and classification of Tetraodontiformes and also provide technical support for the development and utilization of puffer fish resources and the identification of the original components of related commodities on the aquatic product market.

Our findings provide insights into the structuring of coral reef fish communities, demonstrating that distinct assemblages can occur within semi-enclosed seas at smaller spatial scales than previously documented. We also report a low abundance of threatened fish species in an area of rapid, large-scale coastal development, which identifies an urgent need to develop a regional management plan.

Helichrysum arenarium (Asteraceae) is a self-compatible, insect-pollinated herb from sand grasslands, and is declining and (critically) endangered in Europe. Genetic assessment using microsatellite markers of the only small remaining population in Belgium and of three large German populations revealed high clonality, with only two, however heterozygous, genets detected in the small Belgian population, and high genetic diversity and no significant inbreeding coefficient values, despite expectations of geitonogamous selfing, in the three large German populations, which will be used for plant translocations.

We investigated the effects of isocaloric diets with varying macronutrient compositions on key life traits in a large outbred Drosophila melanogaster population. Findings showed that reduced carbohydrate diets led to faster pre-adult development and increased reproductive output, while high carbohydrate diets shortened lifespan and affected fly health. Transcriptomic analyses revealed distinct gene regulatory patterns depending on the protein-carbohydrate balance, providing insights into adaptive strategies against dietary imbalances.

Hatchlings of invasive cane toads in Australia respond to risk of cannibalism by conspecific tadpoles by accelerating development. This occurs as a trade-off with growth. The resulting size reduction predicts some, but not all, future fitness costs.

Mineral licks are critical resources for herbivores across the world, including the Peruvian Amazon, but the services they provide visiting animals are largely unknown. We tested three hypotheses for geophagical behavior in the red brocket deer, one of the most common visitors to Amazonian mineral licks, at mineral licks in the Peruvian Amazon using camera traps, soil sampling, and a modeling framework. We found that all three hypotheses had at least some support, but the mineral supplementation hypothesis was the most heavily supported.

Our study examines the alpha- and beta-diversity of arthropods in the Arctic-alpine biomes of the Scandes using environmental DNA (eDNA)/metabarcoding. We found that micro-climatological parameters such as air/soil temperature and soil moisture significantly influence the arthropod community structure, highlighting the fine-scale heterogeneity of these ecosystems. Our study emphasizes the importance of integrating long-term functional environmental data and modern taxonomic techniques to accurately assess arthropod diversity and broaden our understanding of biogeographical patterns in alpine-tundra ecosystems.

We studied the effects of wetland quality on boreal breeding ducks from two important aspects: nest predation and food availability. Duck food availability is low and nest predation pressure is high at permanent lakes, while ponds (seasonal, beaver, man-made) were shown to be food-rich habitats with low nest predation pressure. Our results emphasize the benefits of different wetland types in the landscape for the breeding ducks.

We studied polyphenol metabolism in polyphagous caterpillars of Lymantria mathura (Erebidae, Lepidoptera) to explore mechanisms that may contribute to its ability to feed on various host-plants. We detected pronounced intraspecific variation in polyphenol metabolism, an ability to excrete ingested metabolites and potential dietary habituation. Our results provide support for the hypothesis that generalists and specialists may have distinct metabolic strategies for dealing with secondary metabolites.

Turfgrass fertilizer applications over 11 years had variable effects on soil nematode abundance and community structure. Biosolid-based fertilizer applications where Cu, Fe, and Zn concentrations were highest resulted in the highest plant-parasitic Hoplolaimus abundance and lowest beneficial omnivore-predator nematode abundance.

Using a camera trap survey, we investigated land cover preferences and spatiotemporal interactions within a Scottish ungulate community: the sika deer (Cervus nippon), the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), the red deer (Cervus elaphus), and the wild boar (Sus scrofa). Ungulates showed some land cover preferences, whilst we found evidence of a spatiotemporal association between sika deer and roe deer. Although the underlying cause of this is unknown, we hypothesise that interactions such as grazing facilitation or an anti-predator response to culling could be driving this pattern.

We tested the hypothesis that plant–soil feedbacks along a climatic and elevation gradient influence plant community assembly through shifts in habitat suitability, which drive plant functional, phylogenetic, and spectral diversity in a high mountain system (2400–3500 m) of Región Metropolitana in the Chilean Andes (33°S, 70°W). We found that leaf nitrogen increased with increasing elevation, and taxonomic and functional diversity associated with turnover in lineages peaked at mid-elevations, indicating that the ability to acquire and retain nitrogen in colder temperatures may be important in plant community assembly in this range. Such environmental filters have important implications for forecasting shifts in alpine plant communities under a warming climate.

Some white-tailed deer populations are migratory in locations with severe and chronic seasonal resource limitations, but biological justification for such behaviors is lacking at lower latitudes. We document migratory behavior termed the "mobile" movement strategy in 33% of adult male deer in a low-latitude system void of such environmental pressures. Mobile deer had multiple home range segments separated by an average of 7 km and migrated at all times of year.

Aspergillus flavi are frequently found in beebread (pollen processed for long-term storage) and are thought to contribute to food preparation, processing, preservation, and digestion in the bee colony. We used quantitative and qualitative assays as well as genomic analysis to determine whether A. flavus isolated from beebread demonstrated tolerance for the hive environment in terms of temperature, pH, osmotic pressure, and propolis exposure. Both bioassays and molecular evidence suggest a history of coevolution between this strain of fungus and the western honey bee and a role for this fungus in bee food processing that could be disrupted by human activity.

We quantified among-individual correlations in behaviour, growth and survival in a wild bighorn sheep population and assessed whether decades of size-selective hunting led to indirect harvest-induced selection on behaviour. We found positive among-individual correlations between early-life trappability, growth and survival but no correlations between early-life behaviour and vulnerability to hunters. Our results show that correlations between behaviour, growth and life-history traits can occur in wild terrestrial population but may be context dependent and highlight the difficulty in formulating general predictions about harvest-induced selection on behaviour.

Grey Crowned Crane social groupings showed greater tolerance to drone monitoring, displaying evasive behaviours at 23 m compared with 98 m when monitored on foot. The behavioural response of flocks was minimal at flight heights above 50 m, whilst larger flocks were more likely to display evasive behaviours in response to monitoring by either method. Families displayed the least evasive behaviours to lower flights but we caution that nesting birds are sensitive to drone approach angle.

The relationship between the body temperature and air temperature 1985–2019. While the air temperature impacts the ectotherm body temperature, it captures only a fraction of its thermal experience. The body temperature is not predictable from air temperature alone, and differences between the air and body temperature (temperature offset) varies between years.

Populations of Cirsium pitcheri, a rare thistle endemic to the Great Lakes of North America, are impacted by external forces, or threats, such as habitat conversion, trampling, and exotic seed-eating weevils. However, populations in Wisconsin were adversely affected by changing lake levels, with dramatic declines in plant survivorship and population growth rates occurring in years with record or near-record high lake levels. High lake levels are expected to become more frequent with climate change and pose a significant threat to all near-shore populations of C. pitcheri.

This study provides the first comprehensive geomicrobiological analysis of the dome-shaped structures in Laguna Verde, a crucial Andean Microbial Ecosystem (AME) in the Central Andes. The research unveils the structure's diverse micro-environments and the associated microorganisms, primarily Cyanobacteria, which play a significant role in the ecosystem's carbon fixation through oxygenic photosynthesis. This investigation into Laguna Verde's unique gypsum evaporitic microbial ecosystems (GEMEs) contributes critical insights into similar records throughout Earth's history, thus, aiding studies of life's origin and astrobiology.

Climate change research has historically focused on single species responses to future climate conditions, leaving other factors that can alter these outcomes, such as climate scenario intensity, species interactions, and seasonality, understudied. We examined the effect of these additional factors on an intertidal rockweed community's response to climate change and found that different future climate scenarios interacted with the season, resulting in different rockweed communities.

We used camera traps to explore patterns of spatial and temporal niche partitioning as mechanisms supporting coexistence among four mesocarnivore species in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park. We found no evidence of spatial or temporal avoidance among species, and we documented species-specific environmental factors that affected detection probability. This study contributes valuable insights into African mesocarnivore ecology, particularly in the absence of apex predators, and highlights the importance of understanding these dynamics for effective conservation and restoration.

We investigated biparental incubation behaviour and nest temperature using autonomous recording devices and test whether male and female time budgets change across the diel cycle in a sexually dimorphic species. Black skimmers made use of several behavioural mechanisms, such as shorter incubation bouts, higher pair synchronisation and thermoregulatory postures to maintain high nest attendance even in the hottest part of the day. Our findings can inform habitat management and conservation which are increasingly needed for sandbank nesting species.

In Papua New Guinea, a nationwide vector intervention program based on the use of long-lasting insecticidal bed nets has been ongoing since 2009. While there are many reports of reduced vector abundance and malaria transmission rates attributed to the bed nets, the extent to which this outcome affected the population genetic structure and demographic parameters of the mosquito vectors in Papua New Guinea has not been investigated. This paper reports the findings of a study that addressed this knowledge gap.

The present study investigated community structure and assembly processes in the southern part of Qilian Mountain National Park.

Here, we compared different methods for estimating relatedness among the individuals (based on social pedigree or genomic data) to investigate additive genetic variance and heritability in the tarsus length of a passerine. Our results confirm the potential for this crucial trait to respond to selection and highlight methodological concerns when calculating additive genetic variance and heritability in phenotypic traits, as the heritability estimates were higher when obtained with the genetic similarity matrix instead of the social pedigree.

We GPS-tracked 48 free-ranging sheep in the arid zone of Australia. When heat stress conditions worsened, the social network was more connected (higher density) but with lower internal structure (lower modularity). Furthermore, an individual's social connectivity was affected by its shade use behaviour, and individuals with intermediate shade use were most strongly connected (degree, strength, betweenness).

Human disturbance including rapid urbanization and increased temperatures can have profound effects on the ecology of local populations. Here, we asked how urbanization and incubation temperature influence critical thermal maximum (CT_max) and various ecologically relevant behaviors in three ant species in urban and rural locations. We found that incubation temperature, urbanization status, and species have varying effects on ant behavior and physiology, suggesting that responses to urbanization and shifting temperatures are not universal across species or context.

The individual differentiation of beavers based on images and their scale pattern is a non-invasive method. The evaluation of the images using a SIFT algorithm enables an exact differentiation of the animals. Thus, this approach represents a new non-invasive method for beaver monitoring.

To investigate if the bacterial disease American foulbrood (AFB) affects lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in honeybees, adult bees were collected from colonies with and without AFB during outbreaks in Sweden. We found differences in the abundance of the individual LAB between the different outbreaks.

We introduce the R package stelfi, available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network. This package allows users to fit temporal self-exciting Hawkes models, spatial and spatiotemporal log-Gaussian Cox process models and self-exciting spatiotemporal models. The functionality of stelfi is illustrated using Sasquatch (bigfoot) sightings data shipped with the package.

In our study, we investigated the impact of the invasive herbaceous legume, Lupinus polyphyllus, on soil bacterial communities in southwestern Finland. We used 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing to analyse soil samples collected from ten paired sites (invaded and uninvaded locations), and examined the potential influence of three vegetation variables (vegetation cover, legume cover, and number of plant species) on the soil bacterial community. Our findings indicate that L. polyphyllus has the potential to modify the composition of local soil bacterial community, at least in sites where it has been present for more than a decade.

Social carnivores, such as lions, commonly reside in fission–fusion societies, where individuals may be found alone, in subgroups, or together within a shared territory. While the impact of ecological and anthropogenic conditions on grouping patterns is known at broader scales, the effects of fine-scale variations remain less explored. Lions, as the only truly social felid, exhibit fission–fusion dynamics with frequent and continuous changes in subgroup membership. Through data collected from eight sites across Kenya, we looked at the intricate relationship between ecological and anthropogenic factors and the grouping patterns of lions and observed distinct variations in both group and subgroup sizes at local scales.

This study explores the impact of light–dark cycles and land cover types on soil bacterial communities. It finds that land cover type significantly affects bacterial diversity and that there are time-dependent variations in bacterial network complexity and relative abundance of individual taxa. These findings highlight the influence of light–dark cycles and land cover on soil bacterial composition, emphasising the importance of considering the time of day in soil bacteria sampling.

Plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) are important plant responses to environmental stressors. In this meta-analysis, we test how two stressors – herbivory and non-growing seasonality – affect overall PSM production.

We conducted a comparative analysis to evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the GMMs and deep learning methods in discriminating two closely related oaks, Q. aliena and Q. dentata, using genetics as a priori classification. We found that deep learning is the most cost-efficient method in terms of time and cost, whereas GMMs can confirm the leaf shape of admixture individuals and demonstrate the tendency of leaf contraction and expansion. Moreover, we found that the shape of admixture individuals was close to that of Q. dentata, suggesting that oaks retain high levels of fitness variation, with Q. aliena being more favored by selection in leaf morphological traits.

We examined the host-associated microbiome of Channel Island foxes and island spotted skunks in the context of fine-scale niche differentiation, as it is rare for two endemic, insular mesocarnivores to coexist. We found intraspecific variation between island populations, with greater differentiation observed between more specialist island spotted skunk populations compared to more generalist island fox populations. This pattern may reflect differences in resource utilization following fine-scale niche differentiation, as well as evolutionary differences regarding the timing of intraspecific separation.

We used a variety of behavioral assays to assess the association between a generalist feeder and a highly toxic host fungus. Our results suggest that access to a resource with lower competition may help to maintain this association.

Here, for the first time, we derive divergence rates for nudibranchs using multigene data from a previously undetected geminate pair, with rates exceeding those reported for shelled gastropods. We also erect a new species designation for the Western Atlantic clade, Chromolaichma hemera sp. nov., and we uncover deep divergences within this clade.

Using a long-term monitoring dataset of a wild barn owl population, we investigated how MHC diversity and supertypes are associated with clutch size and fledging success. We found a weak-to-moderate effect of the MHC diversity and specific supertypes of the fathers on the fledging success but not on the clutch size. We showed that the associations between MHC diversity and reproductive success remain scarce and of complex interpretation in the barn owl.

In this study, the MaxEnt model was used to predict the potential suitable area of 12 threatened medicinal plants in the QTP (Qinghai-Tibet Plateau) under the current and future (2050s, 2070s) three climate scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP8.5). We found that the climatically suitable habitats for the threatened medicinal plants were primarily found in the eastern, southeast, southern, and some parts of the central regions on the QTP. Moreover, 25% of the threatened medicinal plants would have reduced suitable habitat areas within the next 30–50 years in the different future global warming scenarios. The climatic suitable habitat for 50% of the threatened medicinal plants would migrate to higher altitudes or higher latitudes regions.

This study evaluates how body mass, local climate, and pathogen intensity influence heat tolerance and its population-level variation among individuals of the solitary bee Xenoglossa pruinosa. We did not find evidence of microclimate predicting mean heat tolerance in X. pruinosa, but we found that the population-level standard deviation in heat tolerance (CT_max) decreased by 0.72°C with every 1°C increase in maximum temperature. In addition, trypanosome parasite intensity negatively correlated with the CT_max of females, but not males. This study reveals that temperature may act as an environmental filter, and exemplifies the need to evaluate trends in heat tolerance variation within and between populations.

Though herbivore grass dependence has been shown to increase with body size across herbivore species, it is unclear whether this relationship varies between communities in relation to environmental variation. Here we use stable carbon isotope and community occurrence data to investigate how grass dependence scales with body size within herbivore communities throughout eastern and central Africa. We found that dietary grass fraction increased with body size for the majority of herbivore communities considered, but the magnitude of this relationship varied considerably with environmental context, underscoring the fact that, though general rules appear to govern herbivore foraging ecology, some aspects of foraging behavior are indeed dynamic.

This study explores the potential cascading effects of bird extinctions on the Mojave Desert terrestrial community compared to losses of mammals and lizards. Bird species, which are already disappearing from the area, showed relatively low impacts on the modeled network compared to mammal or reptile loss. Avian extinction cascades with year-long resident birds resulted in more secondary extinctions than cascades involving all bird species, with the network's high interconnectivity among avian species enhancing comparative resistance to bird losses.

We document diverse epiphytic diatom assemblages to the base of all sediment cores, which is in marked contrast to seabird-free Arctic ponds—these oligotrophic sites typically record epilithic diatom flora prior to recent warming. Diatoms are likely responding indirectly to seabird nutrients via habitat as nutrients promote the growth of mosses supporting epiphytic diatom communities. Changes in sedimentary chlorophyll a were not consistently synchronous with large changes in ẟ¹⁵N values, suggesting that primary production in ponds is not responding linearly to changes in seabird-derived nitrogen.

Our study explores the use of VGGish acoustic features and UMAP dimensionality reduction for the analysis of marine soundscapes. We combine pre-trained acoustic classification models, dimensionality reduction (UMAP), and balanced random forest algorithms to demonstrate how machine-learned acoustic features capture different aspects of the marine environment.

Very few studies have explored how linked selection, or selection at loci neighboring an altruism locus, impacts the evolution of altruism. We used population genetic simulations to study how negative selection at linked loci, or background selection, affects the evolution of altruism. When altruism occurs between full siblings, we found that background selection has the same effect on altruistic genes in family-structured populations as it does on other, nonsocial, genes.

Iran's freshwater ecosystems are home to 85 endemic fish species. By analyzing distribution records and using a generalized linear model, the researchers identified the Zagros Mountains as having the highest endemic fish richness, followed by a moderate level between the Zagros and Alborz Mountains. They found that precipitation and precipitation change since the Last Glacial Maximum were the key factors influencing fish richness. These findings highlight the importance of prioritizing conservation efforts in the identified areas of high species richness for the protection of Iran's freshwater fish.

Our genomic analysis, based on 21,135 SNPs across 169 individuals, revealed that the Chatham Island smelt was genomically distinct from the mainland New Zealand fish, consistent with a single ancestral colonisation event of Chatham Island in the Pleistocene. Significant genetic structure was also evident within the Chatham Island smelt, with a diadromous Chatham Island smelt group, along with three geographically structured landlocked groups. Coalescent demographic analysis supported three independent landlocking events, with this loss of diadromy significantly pre-dating human colonisation.

Copepods collected in the Long Island Sound were exposed to two different temperature conditions, ambient (18°C) and ocean warming (22°C). Copepods were in experimental conditions for one, three, and >40 generations before assessing temperature and salinity tolerance. Results highlight the importance of plasticity in defining the temperature response of copepods.

As a result of anthropogenic pressures, wild felids worldwide may suffer from severe lesions that may impact their overall fitness, behavior, and/or survival. Despite the severity of skeletal trauma that resulted in limb amputation, two Iberian lynxes, one bobcat, and one snow leopard tagged with telemetry collars didn't show differences in movement patterns compared with healthy conspecifics, highlighting the resilience, adaptation, and plasticity of these individuals.

Springsnails of the genus Pyrgulopsis (Family: Hydrobiidae) are prevalent throughout the western United States where >140 species have been described. Many of the described species are narrow endemics known from a single spring or locality, and it is believed that there are likely many additional species which have yet to be described. We developed a metabarcoding strategy that uses modified COI primers for sensitive detection of Pyrgulopsis sp. springsnails that can be rapidly deployed at landscape scales for use by land managers and conservation efforts.

We quantified the fur color of live eastern red bats (Lasiurus borealis) and demonstrated that they are sexually dichromatic; males had redder, more saturated, and lighter pelages than females. Additionally, juveniles were darker than adults. In an exploratory post-hoc analysis, we showed that body mass (i.e., an index of body condition in bats) strongly predicted fur color, revealing the potential for color to be a sexual signal in this species.

Urban landscapes restrain the distribution of forest-dwelling species. Urban forests can support scorpion assemblages. However, there is a turnover in specialist forest species for opportunistic species