Bird migration is typically associated with a latitudinal movement from north to south and vice versa. However, many bird species migrate seasonally with an upslope or downslope movement in a process termed altitudinal migration. Globally, 830 of the 6579 Passeriformes species are considered altitudinal migrants and this pattern has emerged multiple times across 77 families of this order. Recent work has indicated an association between altitudinal migration and diet, but none have looked at diet...

The aim of animal reintroductions has mainly been species recovery; only few reintroduction initiatives focus on ecosystem restoration. Therefore, reintroduction consequences on ecological interactions are seldom assessed. We used the interaction between a reintroduced population of agoutis (Dasyprocta leporina) and a vulnerable tropical endemic tree (Joannesia princeps) to examine reintroduction effects on seed dispersal and seedling establishment. To test the outcomes of this interaction we tracked seeds of J. princeps in two adjacent forest areas...

Geographic isolation and reduced population sizes can lead to local extinction, low efficacy of selection, and decreased speciation. However, population differentiation is an essential step of biological diversification. In allopatric speciation, geographically isolated populations differentiate and persist until the evolution of reproductive isolation and ecological divergence complete the speciation process. Pitcairnia flammea allow us to study the evolutionary consequences of habitat fragmentation on naturally disjoint rock outcrop species from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest (BAF). Our...

While future climate scenarios predict declines in precipitations in many regions of the world, little is known of the mechanisms underlying community resilience to prolonged dry seasons, especially in “naïve” Neotropical rainforests. Predictions of community resilience to intensifying drought are complicated by the fact that the underlying mechanisms are mediated by species’ tolerance and resistance traits, as well as rescue through dispersal from source patches. We examined the contribution of in situ tolerance-resistance and immigration...

Restoring forest ecosystems has become a global priority. Yet, soil dynamics is still poorly assessed among restoration studies and lacks knowledge on how soil is affected by forest restoration process. Here, we compile information on soil dynamics in forest restoration based on soil physical, chemical and biological attributes in temperate and tropical forest regions. It encompasses 50 scientific papers across 17 different countries and contains 1,469 quantitative information of soil attributes between reference (e.g., old-growth...

Simultaneous molecular dating of population and species divergences is essential in many biological investigations, including phylogeography, phylodynamics, and species delimitation studies. In these investigations, multiple sequence alignments consist of both intra- and inter-species samples (mixed samples). As a result, the phylogenetic trees contain inter-species, inter-population, and within-population divergences. Bayesian relaxed clock methods are often employed in these analyses, but they assume the same tree prior for both inter- and intra-species branching processes and require specification...

This dataset includes all the results of the model runs used to explore the parameters in the Zimbabwe Agro-Pastoral Management Model, archived at ComSES.net (https://doi.org/10.25937/ta23-sn46). This model has been created with and for the researcher-farmers of the Muonde Trust (http://www.muonde.org/), a registered Zimbabwean non-governmental organization dedicated to fostering Indigenous innovation. The results in this dataset were generated using the BehaviorSpace functionality in NetLogo, running headless on a high-performance computing cluster (499,200 runs). The dataset includes...

Activity range – the amount of time spent active per day – is a fundamental aspect contributing to the optimization process by which animals achieve energetic balance. Based on their size and the nature of their diet, theoretical expectations are that larger carnivores need more time active to fulfil their energetic needs than do smaller ones and also more time active than similar-sized non-carnivores. Despite the relationship between daily activity, individual range and energy acquisition,...

Biotic resistance mediated by native plant diversity has long been hypothesized to reduce the success of invading plant species in terrestrial systems in temperate regions. However, still little is known about the mechanisms driving invasion patterns in other biomes or latitudes. We help to fill this gap by investigating how native plant community presence and diversity, and the presence of native phylogenetically closely related species to an invader, would affect invader Hydrilla verticillata establishment success...

Brazil currently has one of the fastest growing SARS-CoV-2 epidemics in the world. Owing to limited available data, assessments of the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on virus spread remain challenging. Using a mobility-driven transmission model, we show that NPIs reduced the reproduction number from >3 to 1–1.6 in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Sequencing of 427 new genomes and analysis of a geographically representative genomic dataset identified >100 international virus introductions in Brazil....

The family Bromeliaceae is essentially Neotropical, with high endemism and diversity in the Atlantic Rainforest Domain. Species circumscription is a major problem in the family systematics, especially in the most diverse genera. Species of the Vriesea procera complex, which occur in forests and restinga (coastal vegetation) along the South American Atlantic coast from Venezuela to southern Brazil, share the same basic vegetative and reproductive morphological patterns. However, they vary widely in the number and position...

We acquired micro-CT images from two carbonate outcrops (Indiana Limestone and Silurian Dolomite), and used it to calculate porosity at each voxel (the samples are considered pure, since Indiana Limestone is 99% calcite, and Silurian Dolomite, 97% dolomite). For thus, we segmented pores (porosity=100%) and 'solid' (porosity=5%) and used the grayscale of these two points to calculate porosity directly in the image. Since there is no voxel with 100% solid at the resolutions used, we...

Innovations in foraging behavior can drive morphological diversity by opening up new ways of interacting with the environment, or limit diversity through functional constraints associated with different foraging behaviors. Several classic examples of adaptive radiations in birds show increased variation in ecologically relevant traits. However, these cases primarily focus on geographically narrow adaptive radiations, consider only morphological evolution without a biomechanical approach, or do not investigate tradeoffs with other non-focal traits that might be affected...

Dinosaur fossils from the Middle Jurassic are rare globally, but the Isle of Skye (Scotland, UK) preserves a varied dinosaur record of abundant trace fossils and rare body fossils from this time. Here we describe two new tracksites from Rubha nam Brathairean (Brothers’ Point) near where the first dinosaur footprint in Scotland was found in the 1980s. These sites were formed in subaerially exposed mudstones of the Lealt Shale Formation of the Great Estuarine Group...