1. Elucidating factors that limit the number of offspring produced is fundamental to understanding life-history evolution. Here, we examine the hypothesis that parental ability to maintain an optimal physical developmental environment for all offspring constrains clutch size via effects on offspring quality. 2. Experimental laboratory studies of birds have shown that a <1°C difference in average incubation temperature has diverse effects on fitness-related post-hatching offspring phenotypes. Thus, the inability of parents to maintain optimal incubation...

Sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci Gennadius, is a serious pest of many agricultural crops worldwide. Numerous studies have examined the genetic structure of whitefly populations separated by geographical barriers; however, very few have assessed the population structure of B. tabaci at a farmscape level. A farmscape in this study is defined as heterogenous habitat with crop and non-crop areas spanning about 8 square kilometers. To assess the roles of farmscapes as drivers of B. tabaci genetic...

With ongoing climate change, populations are expected to exhibit shifts in demographic performance that will alter where a species can persist. This presents unique challenges for managing plant populations and may require ongoing interventions, including in-situ management or introduction into new locations. However, few studies have examined how climate change may affect plant demographic performance for a suite of species, or how effective management actions could be in mitigating climate change effects. Over the course...

Parental care is predicted to evolve to mitigate harsh environments, thus adaptive plasticity of care may be an important response to our climate crisis. In biparental species, fitness costs may be reduced with plasticity of behavior among partners. We investigated this prediction with the burying beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis, by exposing them to contrasting benign and harsh thermal environments. We found strong fitness costs under the harsh environment, but rather than select for more care, visualized...

Investment in current reproduction can reduce future fitness by depleting resources needed for maintenance, particularly under environmental stress, and such trade-offs influence life history evolution. We tested whether climate change alters the future-fitness costs of current reproduction in a large-scale field experiment of Boechera stricta (Brassicaceae). Over six years, we simulated climate change along an elevational gradient in the Rocky Mountains through snow removal, which accelerates snowmelt and reduces soil water availability. Costs of reproduction...

Aedes aegypti is an important vector of several pathogenic arboviruses including dengue, chikungunya and Zika. Innovative approaches to control Aedes populations, involving synthetic transgenic modifications as well as Wolbachia bacteria, appear promising. For the various techniques requiring offspring inheritance of a trait, released males must successfully compete for mating partners against wildtype males. However, very little is known about mechanisms of mate selection in mosquitoes in general and in particular about potential correlations between mating...

Dispersal and colonization are among the most important ecological processes for species persistence as they allow species to track changing environmental conditions. During the last glacial maximum (LGM), many cold-intolerant Northern Hemisphere plants retreated to southern glacial refugia. During subsequent warming periods, these species expanded their ranges northward. Interestingly, some tree species with limited seed dispersal migrated considerable distances after the LGM ~19,000 year before present (YBP). It has been hypothesized that indigenous peoples may...

Hybridization is among the evolutionary mechanisms most frequently hypothesized to drive the success of invasive species, in part because hybrids are common in invasive populations. One explanation for this pattern is that biological invasions coincide with a change in selection pressures that limit hybridization in the native range. To investigate this possibility, we studied the introduction of the brown anole (Anolis sagrei) in the southeastern United States. We find that native populations are highly genetically...

Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is a powerful tool that has been rapidly adopted by many ecologists studying microbial communities. Despite the exciting demonstration of NGS technology as a tool for ecological research, cryptic pitfalls inherent to its use can obscure correct interpretation of NGS data. Here, we provide an accessible overview of a NGS process that uses marker gene amplicon sequences (MGAS) that will allow scientists, particularly community ecologists, to make appropriate methodological choices and...

Anthropogenic environmental change threatens many species and can be especially challenging for rare species given their potentially limited capacity for migration and adaptation relative to more common species. The ability to acclimate via phenotypic plasticity could provide an important path to persistence, especially for rare species. We investigated the responses of an endangered plant species endemic to a highly dynamic riparian habitat in southeastern Tennessee, USA, and its most widespread congener to environmental change to...

Understanding genetic influences of traits in non-model organisms is crucial to understanding how novel traits arise. Do new traits require new genes, or are old genes repurposed? How predictable is this process? Here we examine this question for gene expression influencing parenting behavior in a beetle, Nicrophorus vespilloides. Parental care, produced from many individual behaviors, should be influenced by changes of expression of multiple genes and one suggestion is that the genes can be predicted...

Our previous studies indicated that Yiguanjian decoction (YGJ) has an anti-hepatic-fibrosis effect and could regulate macrophage status. To elucidate the mechanism of YGJ in regulating macrophages. Liver cirrhosis was induced by CCl4 for 12 weeks combined with 2-acetylaminofluorene (2-AAF) for the last 4 weeks in male Wistar rats. YGJ (3.56 mg/kg) orally administered in the last 4 weeks, and SORA (1 mg/kg) as control. In vitro, RAW264.7 cells were treated with lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) to induce...

Multiple myeloma (MM), a malignancy of plasma cells mainly derived from the bone marrow, has remained incurable generally. LncRNA MALAT1 has been reported to be upregulated in the MM cells and knockdown of MALAT1 inhibited MM cell cycle progression and enhanced cell apoptosis. Online target prediction showed that two target sites for MALAT1 existed in miR-188-5p, which has been identified as a tumor suppressor in other types of cancers. However, the role of miR-188-5p in...

Energycane (Saccharum hyb.) could be a viable bioenergy crop for the Southeast USA. Five energycane cultivars were planted in 2008 at a northern (Watkinsville, GA) and a southern (Tifton, GA) site, and were grown for seven years to compare biomass yields. Plots were arranged in a four replicate randomized complete block design at each site. Energycane was grown under rainfed conditions with 90–112 kg ha-1 N applied annually. Plant height was recorded at least monthly,...

Males have the ability to compete for fertilizations through both pre-copulatory and post-copulatory intrasexual competition. Pre-copulatory competition has selected for large weapons and other adaptations to maximize access to females and mating opportunities while post-copulatory competition has resulted in ejaculate adaptations to maximize fertilization success. Negative associations between these strategies support the hypothesis that there is a trade-off between success at pre- and post-copulatory mating success. Recently, this trade-off has been demonstrated with experimental manipulation....

Vegetation states in savannas are highly sensitive to tree growth rates, which determine whether individual trees can ‘escape’ periodic disturbances. Resprouting trees have lopsided shoot:root ratios and are often multi-stemmed, and these variables can modify post-disturbance growth rates and therefore the probability of escape. To date, few studies have systematically examined the implications of interspecific variation in these factors for escape. We conducted a two-year field experiment in lowveld savanna in South Africa and quantified...

While the cost and time for assembling a genome has drastically decreased, it still remains a challenge to assemble a highly contiguous genome. These challenges are rapidly being overcome by the integration of long-read sequencing technologies. Here, we use long-read sequencing to improve the contiguity of the threespine stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) genome, a prominent genetic model species. Using Pacific Biosciences sequencing, we assembled a highly contiguous genome of a freshwater fish from Paxton Lake....

We present Carpophiline-ID, a matrix-based LucidTM key, for the adult stage of the known species of Carpophilinae (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae) of North America, east of the Mississippi River. We provide an overview of the features and technical specifications used to build the key. The list of terminal taxa used in the key represents the most current regional account for Carpophilinae, a beetle subfamily of agricultural and ecological importance. We discuss the value of matrix-based, free access...

1. Interactions between herbivores and their predators are shaped, in part, by plant phenotype. Consequently, ubiquitous symbionts of plants belowground, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), may influence interactions aboveground between predators and their prey by altering plant phenotype. However, the ecological relevance of belowground organisms on predator-prey interactions under field conditions remains unclear. 2. We assessed how AMF influence herbivore-predator interactions through a field experiment. 3. We planted two milkweed species (Asclepias curassavica, A....

Many frugivorous animals act simultaneously as seed predators and dispersers, and shifts in the abundance and mean phenotype of the frugivore population can alter the prevalence of antagonistic vs mutualistic interactions with seeds. Here, we evaluated how a reduction in the abundance and species richness of large-bodied frugivorous fishes affects their interactions with plants in a Neotropical floodplain. Fisheries selectively harvest large frugivorous fishes, which are the most effective seed dispersers. Thus, functional extinctions of...

Environmental heterogeneity has led to widespread evolution of phenotypic plasticity in all taxonomic groups. Although phenotypic plasticity has been examined from multiple perspectives, few studies have examined evolutionary patterns of plasticity within a phylogeny. We conducted common-garden experiments on 20 species of tadpoles, spanning three families, exposed for 4 weeks to a control, predator cues, or reduced food (i.e., increased intraspecific competition). We quantified tadpole activity, growth, and relative morphology and found widespread differences in...

A growing body of literature links resources of hosts to their risk of infectious disease. Yet most hosts encounter multiple pathogens, and projections of disease risk based on resource availability could be fundamentally wrong if they do not account for interactions among pathogens within hosts. Here, we measured infection risk of grass hosts (Avena sativa) exposed to three naturally-co-occurring viruses either singly or jointly (barley and cereal yellow dwarf viruses [B/CYDVs]: CYDV-RPV, BYDV-PAV, and BYDV-SGV)...

Abiotic stresses, physiological dysfunction, forest stand dynamics, and primary tree attackers (native and non-native) are all recognized as important contributors to both anomalous tree mortality and background tree mortality, and thus as important influences on biogeochemical cycling and habitat for associated terrestrial organisms. Opportunistic and latent tree pathogens and insect pests have largely been left out of this discussion, probably because they are difficult to monitor and their effects sometimes more diffuse, yet they play...

Predator-prey interactions influence prey traits through both consumptive and non-consumptive effects, and variation in these traits can shape vector-borne disease dynamics. Meta-analysis methods were employed to generate predation effect sizes by different categories of predators and mosquito prey. This analysis showed that multiple families of aquatic predators are effective in consumptively reducing mosquito survival, and that the survival of Aedes, Anopheles, and Culex mosquitoes is negatively impacted by consumptive effects of predators. Mosquito larval size...

1. Birds play many roles within agroecosystems including as consumers of crops and pests, carriers of pathogens, and beloved icons. Birds are also rapidly declining across North America, in part due to agricultural intensification. Thus, it is imperative to identify how to manage agroecosystems to best support birds for multi-functional outcomes (e.g., crop production and conservation). Both the average amounts of services/disservices provided and their temporal stability are important for effective farm planning. 2. Here,...