Aim: Animal migration strategies balance trade-offs between mortality and reproduction in seasonal environments. Knowledge of broad-scale biogeographical patterns of animal migration is important for understanding ecological drivers of migratory behaviours. Here we present a flyway-scale assessment of the spatial structure and seasonal dynamics of the Afro-Palearctic bird migration system and explore how phenology of the environment guides long-distance migration. Location: Europe and Africa. Time period: 2009–2017. Major taxa studied: Birds. Methods: We compiled an individual-based...

Declines or mid-elevation peaks in invertebrate diversity with elevation are often attributed to climate and geometric constraints. However, vegetation structure may also drive diversity patterns, especially for tree-dwelling species, via its effects on microhabitat use and competitive interactions. Here we investigate these effects on the diversity and community structure of tree-nesting ants over elevation. We exhaustively sampled ant nests in 1254 trees within continuous plots of primary rainforest at low (200 m a.s.l.), mid (900...

Parental care is an adaptive behaviour increasing the survival of young. Virulent brood parasites, like the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus, avoid the parental care and leave the care for their nestlings to hosts. Although raising a cuckoo is always costly because it kills host’s progeny, to date it is not known whether raising of a brood parasite itself represents an extra cost affecting host’s fitness. We quantified costs of rearing a cuckoo nestling in the...

Background A key aim in wildlife disease ecology is to understand how host and parasite characteristics influence parasite transmission and persistence. Variation in host population density can have strong impacts on transmission and outbreaks, and theory predicts particular transmission-density patterns depending on how parasites are transmitted between individuals. Here, we present the results of a study on the dynamics of Morogoro arenavirus in a population of multimammate mice (Mastomys natalensis). This widespread African rodent, which...

Aim Temporal dynamics of biodiversity along tropical elevational gradients are unknown. We studied seasonal changes of Lepidoptera biodiversity along the only complete forest elevational gradient in the Afrotropics. We focused on shifts of species richness patterns, seasonal turnover of communities, and seasonal shifts of species’ elevational ranges, the latter often serving as an indicator of the global change effects on mountain ecosystems. Location Mount Cameroon, Cameroon. Taxon Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) Methods We quantitatively sampled...

1. Understanding what determines the high elevation limits of trees is crucial for predicting how treelines may shift in response to climate change. Treeline formation is commonly explained by a low-temperature restriction of meristematic activity (sink limitation) rather than carbon assimilation (source limitation). In arid mountains, however, trees face simultaneously low temperature and drought, both potentially restricting their growth and thus setting range limits. However, the mechanisms of treeline formation in high arid mountains are...

Previous research showed that during intermediate stages of primary succession, when vegetation is dominated by ectomycorrhizal (EcM) shrubs and trees, site colonization by earthworms substantially alters plant communities. Research has also shown that EcM shrubs and trees suppress arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) plants in the understory. To determine whether earthworm activity reduces this asymmetric competition, we conducted a full factorial laboratory experiment in which we grew EcM Betula pendula and AM Tripleurospermum inodorum, together or apart,...

In many taxa, the most common form of sex-biased migration timing is protandry – the earlier arrival of males at breeding areas. Here we test this concept across the annual cycle of long-distance migratory birds. Using more than 350 migration tracks of small-bodied trans-Saharan migrants, we quantify differences in male and female migration schedules and test for proximate determinants of sex-specific timing. In spring, males on average departed from the African non-breeding sites about 3...

Classic research on elevational gradients in plant-herbivore interactions holds that insect herbivore pressure is stronger under warmer climates of low elevations. However, recent work has questioned this paradigm, arguing that it oversimplifies the ecological complexity in which plant-insect herbivore interactions are embedded. Knowledge of antagonistic networks of plants and herbivores is however crucial for understanding the mechanisms that govern ecosystem functioning. We examined herbivore damage and insect herbivores of eight species of genus Ficus (105...

1. Assessing drought tolerance and the ability of plants to adjust to changes in available water resources is crucial for understanding current and future distributions of plant species. While turgor loss point (πtlp) has been recognized as a direct determinant of drought tolerance in woody plants, information on it for grassland species is largely missing. 2. We first validated a rapid method to estimate πtlp for grassland species, using osmometry measurements (πtlp-osm) of osmotic potential...

Symbiotic nitrogen (N)‐fixing trees can provide large quantities of new N to ecosystems, but only if they are sufficiently abundant. The overall abundance and latitudinal abundance distributions of N‐fixing trees are well characterised in the Americas, but less well outside the Americas. Here, we characterised the abundance of N‐fixing trees in a network of forest plots spanning five continents, ~5,000 tree species and ~4 million trees. The majority of the plots (86%) were in America...