Aim Historical changes in community structure underlie modern spatial diversity patterns, but few empirical studies have focused on the variation in the community composition of fossil assemblages at large spatiotemporal scales. We wanted to investigat how the spatial differentiation of mammal communities changed in China throughout the Cenozoic in response to tectonic uplift and paleoclimatic changes and explore the timing of the emergence of the modern spatially structured faunas. Location China Time period Cenozoic (from...

Three mechanisms have been proposed to underlie reciprocation of social behaviors in gregarious animals: ‘calculated reciprocity’, ‘emotional bookkeeping’ and ‘symmetry-based reciprocity’. Among these explanations, emotional book-keeping has received the broadest support from experimental and observational studies. On the other hand, three individual-based models have shown that reciprocation may emerge via ‘symmetry-based reciprocity’, ‘emotional bookkeeping’, or a combination of both mechanisms. Here we use these three models to assess their relative fit with empirical data on...

Dental mesowear is applied as a proxy to determine the general diet of mammalian herbivores based on tooth-cusp shape and occlusal relief. Low, blunt cusps are considered typical for grazers and high, sharp cusps typical for browsers. However, how internal or external abrasives impact mesowear, and the time frame the wear signature takes to develop, still need to be explored. Four different pelleted diets of increasing abrasiveness (lucerne, grass, grass and rice husks, grass, rice...

Predictions of species richness by island area are a classical cornerstone in ecology, while the specific features of barrier islands have been little appreciated. Many shorelines are occupied by barrier islands, which are shaped by offshore sedimentation processes and annual storm tide events. Hence, the appearance of these islands may vary between years if they are not protected by dykes. Here, we analyzed more than 2,990 species across 36 taxonomic groups (including vertebrates, invertebrates and...

Imaging techniques are a cornerstone of contemporary biology. Over the last decades, advances in micro-scale imaging techniques have allowed fascinating new insights into cell and tissue morphology and internal anatomy of organisms across kingdoms. However, most studies so far provided snapshots of given reference taxa, describing organs and tissues under “idealized” conditions. Surprisingly, there is an almost complete lack of studies investigating how an organism´s internal morphology changes in response to environmental drivers. Consequently, ecology...

1. Trap nests are artificially made nesting resources for solitary cavity-nesting bees and wasps and allow easy quantification of multiple trophic interactions between bees, wasps, their food objects and natural enemies. 2. We synthesized all trap nest studies available in the ISI Web of Science™ to provide a comprehensive overview of trap nest research and identify common practical challenges and promising future research directions. 3. Trap nests have been used on all continents and across...

Objective: Prolonged monitoring times (72h) are recommended to detect paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (pAF) after ischemic stroke, but not yet clinical practice; therefore, an individual patient selection for prolonged ECG monitoring might increase the diagnostic yield of pAF in a resource-saving manner. Methods: We used individual patient data from three prospective studies (ntotal=1556) performing prolonged Holter ECG monitoring (at least 72h) and centralized data evaluation after TIA or stroke in patients with sinus rhythm. Based on...

Gastrointestinal nematodes are intensely studied models for host-pathogen interactions in wildlife, yet consequences of infections are not fully understood. Among the potential costs of nematode infection are physiological changes caused by immune system activation, reduction or reallocation of available energy, as well as potential social consequences in terms of decreased social activity or avoidance of infected individuals. We used experimental anthelmintic treatment to investigate effects of strongyle nematode infection in Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus), comparing...

1. Quantifying the variation in community-level fine root (<2mm) traits along ecological gradients or in response to disturbances is essential to unravel the mechanisms of plant community assembly, but available surveys are scarce. Whether fine root traits covary along a one-dimensional economic spectrum, as previously shown for leaves, is highly debated. 2. We measured six fine root traits at the community-level along a 69-year succession, with or without annual mowing, offering a unique design of...

Background: A median, segmented, annelid nerve cord has repeatedly been compared to the arthropod and vertebrate nerve cords and became the most used textbook representation of the annelid nervous system. Recent phylogenomic analyses, however, challenge the hypothesis that a subepidermal rope-ladder-like ventral nerve cord (VNC) composed of a paired serial chain of ganglia and somata-free connectives represents either a plesiomorphic or a typical condition in annelids. Results: Using a comparative approach by combining phylogenomic analyses...

1.Most naturalized and invasive alien plant species were originally introduced to regions for horticultural purposes. However, many regions now face an invasion debt from ornamental alien species, which have not yet naturalized. In this regard, climate change represents a threat as it may lower the barriers to naturalization for some ornamental alien species. Identifying those species is extremely important for anticipating impending invasions. 2.To identify predictors of naturalization, we modelled the effects of climate, nursery...

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win–win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are...

1. Stand structure, mean tree age, deadwood amount and microclimate all change markedly in the course of natural forest dynamics. The last remaining primeval forests of the temperate forest biome are valuable study objects to investigate the effects of forest dynamics and management on forest structure and function as well as phytodiversity, which is not sufficiently understood. 2. Three pairs of Fagus sylvatica primeval and production forests in eastern Slovakia were selected for studying the...

Global change processes affect seasonal dynamics of salt marshes and thereby their plant and animal communities. However, these changes have been little investigated for microarthropod communities. We studied the effect of seasonality and changes in sea level on oribatid mites in the natural salt marsh and on artificial islands in the back-barrier environment of the island Spiekeroog (Wadden Sea, Germany). Three zones of the artificial islands were filled with transplanted sods from the lower salt...

Background: Hybridization of species with porous genomes can eventually lead to introgression via repeated backcrossing. The potential for introgression between species is reflected by the extent of segregation distortion in later generation hybrids. Here we studied a population of hybrids between Salix purpurea and S. helvetica that has emerged within the last 30 years on a glacier forefield in the European Alps due to secondary contact of the parental species. We used 5,758 biallelic SNPs...

1. The ecological implications of body size extend from the biology of individual organisms to ecosystem–level processes. Measuring body mass for high numbers of invertebrates can be logistically challenging, making length-mass regressions useful for predicting body mass with minimal effort. However, standardised sets of scaling relationships covering a large range in body length, taxonomic groups, and multiple geographical regions are scarce. 2. We collected 6212 arthropods from 19 higher-level taxa in both temperate and tropical...

1. Belowground resource partitioning is among the most prominent hypotheses for driving the positive biodiversity-ecosystem function relationship. However, experimental tests of this hypothesis in biodiversity experiments are scarce, and the available evidence is not consistent. 2. We tested the hypothesis that resource partitioning in space, in time, or in both space and time combined drives the positive effect of diversity on both plant productivity and community resource uptake. At the community level, we predicted that...

In decomposer systems, fungi show diverse phenotypic responses to volatile organic compounds of microbial origin (volatiles). The mechanisms underlying such responses and their consequences for the performance and ecological success of fungi in a multitrophic community context have rarely been tested explicitly. We used a laboratory‐based approach in which we investigated a tripartite yeast–mold–insect model decomposer system to understand the possible influence of yeast‐borne volatiles on the ability of a chemically defended mold fungus to...

Objective: To validate an amended protocol for clinical diagnosis of sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (sCJD) including Real-Time Quaking-induced Conversion (RT-QuIC) and to observe its utilization in CJD surveillance. Methods: In the framework of a prospective epidemiological study, all neuropathological confirmed sCJD cases that received CSF RT-QuIC analysis during diagnostic work up (n=65) and a control group of non- CJD cases (n=118) were selected to investigate the accuracy of an amended diagnostic protocol. The patients had been...

1) Autonomous sound recording is a promising survey method for birds and other vocalising terrestrial wildlife. However, while there are clear advantages of sound recording methods over classical point counts conducted by humans, it has been difficult to quantitatively assess how they compare in their sampling performance. Quantitative comparisons of bird species richness between acoustic recorders and human point counts have previously been hampered by the differing and often unknown detection ranges among sampling methods....

1. Tropical cyclones (TCs) are large-scale disturbances that regularly impact tropical forests. Although long-term impacts of TCs on forest structure have been proposed, a global test of the relationship between forest structure and TC frequency and intensity is lacking. We test on a pantropical scale whether TCs shape the structure of tropical and subtropical forests in the long-term. 2. We compiled forest structural features (stem density, basal area, mean canopy height and maximum tree size)...

1. Conversion of rainforest into agricultural land affects multiple facets of tropical plant diversity. While the effects of tropical land use change and intensification on species diversity are comparatively well studied, the effects on phylogenetic diversity and structure of plant communities are largely unknown. Furthermore, it is not clear how the loss of native species and addition of alien species collectively affect phylogenetic diversity and structure. 2. We investigated the phylogenetic diversity and structure of...

1.Facultative bacterial endosymbionts can protect their aphid hosts from natural enemies such as hymenopteran parasitoids. As such, they have the capability to modulate interactions between aphids, parasitoids and hyperparasitoids. However, the magnitude of these effects in natural aphid populations and their associated parasitoid communities is currently unknown. Moreover, environmental factors such as plant fertilization and landscape complexity are known to affect aphid‐parasitoid interactions but it remains unclear how such environmental factors affect the interplay between...

Addressing widespread livestock losses to carnivores requires information on which livestock categories are preferentially selected. We analyzed an individual-based database of cattle grazing in forest (n = 932) and having been killed (n = 70) by leopards (Panthera pardus) in the Hyrcanian forest, Iran. We calculated Jacobs’ selectivity index for cattle age, sex and coloration across four scales: the study area as a whole, three sites, nine villages and 60 cattle owners. Naturally colored cattle...

1. Illegal hunting of ungulates can reduce the prey base of carnivores, which can increase human-carnivore conflict (HCC) through livestock depredation. However, the relationship between ungulate poaching, wild prey abundance and livestock depredation has rarely been empirically studied. 2. We surveyed 18 sites across the Hyrcanian forest in northern Iran; a global biodiversity hotspot under pressure of illegal hunting of ungulates, prey depletion, livestock grazing and HCC. We conducted three field surveys across 1204 km...