Phenotypic plasticity is wide-spread in animals, but how plastic responses to predation threat affect traits under sexual selection and influence mating preferences is not well understood. Here, we examined how chronic predation risk during development and acute predation risk during mate choice affect the expression of male secondary sexual traits and female mating preference in the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Males reared under chronic predation risk developed less intense red breeding colouration but showed higher...

Uncertainties surrounding tree carbon allocation to growth are a major limitation to projections of forest carbon sequestration and response to climate change. The prevalence and extent to which carbon assimilation (source) or cambial activity (sink) mediate wood production are fundamentally important and remain elusive. We quantified source-sink relations across biomes by combining eddy-covariance gross primary production with extensive on-site and regional tree ring observations. We found widespread temporal decoupling between carbon assimilation and tree growth,...

1. Soil C is the largest C pool in forest ecosystems that contributes to C sequestration and mitigates climate change. Tree diversity enhances forest productivity, so diversifying the tree species composition, notably in managed forests, could increase the quantity of organic matter being transferred to soils, and alter other soil properties relevant to the C cycle. 2. A ten-year-old tree diversity experiment was used to study the effects of tree identity and diversity (functional and...

Accurate heritability estimates for fitness-related traits are required to predict an organism’s ability to respond to global change. Heritability estimates are theoretically expected to be inflated if, due to limited dispersal, individuals that share genes are also likely to share similar environments. However, if relatives occupy similar environments due, at least partly, to genetic variation for habitat selection, then accounting for environmental similarity in quantitative genetic models may result in diminished heritability estimates in wild...

Understanding the drivers of successful species invasions is important for conserving native biodiversity and for mitigating the economic impacts of introduced species. However, whole-genome resolution investigations of the underlying contributions of neutral and adaptive genetic variation in successful introductions are rare. Increased propagule pressure should result in greater neutral genetic variation, while environmental differences should elicit selective pressures on introduced populations, leading to adaptive differentiation. We investigated neutral and adaptive variation among nine introduced brook...

Spatial environmental gradients can promote adaptive differences among conspecific populations as a result of local adaptation or phenotypic plasticity. Such divergence can be opposed by various constraints, including gene flow, limited genetic variation, temporal fluctuations, or developmental constraints. We focus on the constraint that can be imposed when some populations are found in locations characterized by low levels of an essential nutrient. We use scales of wild fish to investigate phenotypic effects of spatial variation...

1. Quantifying trait-environment associations can help elucidate the processes underpinning the structure of species assemblages. However, most work has focused on trait variation across rather than within species, meaning that processes operating at the intraspecific levels cannot be detected. Incorporating intraspecific trait variation in community-wide analyses can provide valuable insights about the role of morphological adaptation and plasticity on species persistence and the composition of ecological communities. 2. Here, we assessed geographic variation in the...

Evidence from natural populations shows that changes in environmental conditions can cause rapid modifications in the evolutionary potential of phenotypes, partly through genotype-by-environment interactions (G×E). Therefore, the overall rate of microevolution should depend on fluctuations in environmental conditions, even when directional selection is sustained over several generations. We tested this hypothesis in a preindustrial human population that experienced a microevolutionary change in age at first reproduction (AFR) of mothers, using the annual infant mortality rate...

Post-harvest recovery of biodiversity is one of the important goals in modern forestry. A variable retention (VR) approach has been of particular interest in North America because it promotes rapid faunal recovery while minimizing the negative lasting impacts of logging on the natural fauna. We studied responses of rove beetles (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) to a broad range of retention harvests (2, 10, 20, 50, and 75 % retention) in comparison to uncut controls as part of...

Visual information can influence animal behavior and habitat use in diverse ways. Visibility is the property that relates 3D habitat structure to accessibility of visual information. Despite the importance of visibility in animal ecology, this property remains largely unstudied. Our objective was to assess how habitat structure from diverse environments and animal position within that structure can influence visibility. We gathered terrestrial lidar data (1 cm at 10 m) in four ecosystems (forest, shrub-steppe, prairie,...

Individual diet specialization (IDS) is widespread and can affect the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations in significant ways. Extrinsic factors (e.g., food abundance) and individual variation in energetic needs, morphology, or physiology, have been suggested as drivers of IDS. Behavioral traits like exploration and boldness can also impact foraging decisions, although their effects on IDS have not yet been investigated. Specifically, variation among individuals in exploratory behavior and their position along the exploration/exploitation trade-off...

This dataset originates from an experiment using black widow spiders (Latrodectus hesperus) originally collected from Davis, California, United-States and brought to the University of Arizona, where they were maintained under laboratory condition for 12 months. Spiders were then transferred to Pierre-Olivier Montiglio's laboratory in Montreal in Canada, where they were kept for a month prior to the experiment. During this time, spiders were housed in individual plastic containers (946 ml) at 23˚C ± 1.50 and...