1. Aquatic and terrestrial environments display stark differences in key environmental factors and phylogenetic composition but their consequences for the evolution of species’ life history strategies remain poorly understood. 2. Here, we examine whether and how life history strategies vary between terrestrial and aquatic species. We use demographic information for 685 terrestrial and 122 aquatic animal and plant species to estimate key life history traits. We then use phylogenetically corrected least squares regression to explore...

We explored adaptive factors affecting the preformative molt in the passerine family Cardinalidae, and concluded that the ancestor inhabited forest habitats and underwent a partial preformative molt that included wing coverts but not primaries. Later radiations within the family appeared to be characterized by transitions from forests toward more open habitats, and such transitions also correlated positively with increased preformative molt investment, plumage signaling, and flight. While previous studies had highlighted the role of time...

Aim: to analyse temporal metacommunity dynamics in river networks in relation to hydrological conditions and dispersal. Location: 15 river reaches from the Llobregat, Besòs and Foix catchments in the North-Eastern Iberian Peninsula. Taxon: aquatic macroinvertebrates belonging to 99 different families. Methods: we sampled aquatic macroinvertebrate communities during spring in 20 consecutive years. We built two environmental distances (one related with water chemistry and another one with river flow regime) and two spatial distances (network distance...

1. Changes in marine ecosystems are easier to detect in upper-level predators, like seabirds, which integrate trophic interactions throughout the food web. 2. Here, we examined whether diving parameters and complexity in the temporal organisation of foraging sequences of little penguins (Eudyptula minor) are influenced by sea surface temperature (SST), water stratification and wind speed – three oceanographic features influencing prey abundance and distribution in the water column. 3. Using fractal time series analysis, we...

Concern for megafauna is increasing among scientists and non-scientists. Many studies have emphasized that megafauna play prominent ecological roles and provide important ecosystem services to humanity. But, what precisely are “megafauna”? Here we critically assess the concept of megafauna and propose a goal-oriented framework for megafaunal research. First, we review definitions of megafauna and analyze associated terminology in the scientific literature. Second, we conduct a survey among ecologists and paleontologists to assess the species traits...

The gray mangrove [Avicennia marina (Forsk.) Vierh.] is the most widely distributed mangrove species, ranging throughout the Indo-West Pacific. It presents remarkable levels of geographic variation both in phenotypic traits and habitat, often occupying extreme environments at the edges of its distribution. However, subspecific evolutionary relationships and adaptive mechanisms remain understudied, especially across populations of the West Indian Ocean. High-quality genomic resources accounting for such variability are also sparse. Here we report the first chromosome-level...

The negative impacts of drought on forest growth and productivity last for several years generating legacies, although the factors that determine why such legacies vary across sites and tree species remain unclear. We used an extensive network of tree-ring width (RWI, ring-width index) records of 16 tree species from 567 forests, and high-resolution climate and NDVI datasets across Spain during the common period 1982‒2008 to test the hypothesis that climate conditions and growth features modulate...

Aim: A fundamental question in macroecology centres around understanding the relationship between species’ local abundance and their distribution in geographic and climatic space (i.e. the multi-dimensional climatic space or climatic niche). Here, we tested three macroecological hypotheses that link local abundance to the following range properties: (1) the abundance-range size relationship, (2) the abundance-range centre relationship, and (3) the abundance-suitability relationship. Location: Europe Taxon: Vascular plants Methods: Distribution range maps were extracted from the Chorological...