Recently diverged taxa showing marked phenotypic and ecological diversity are optimal systems to understand the genetic processes underlying speciation. We used genome-wide markers to investigate the diversification of the Reunion grey white eye (Zosterops borbonicus) on the small volcanic island of Reunion (Mascarene archipelago), where this species complex exhibits four geographic forms that are parapatrically distributed across the island and differ strikingly in plumage colour. One form restricted to the highlands is separated by a...

Aim The spatiotemporal connectivity of forest patches in lowland agricultural landscapes and their age matter to explain current biodiversity patterns across regional as well as biogeographical extents, to the point that it exceeds the contribution of macroclimate for plant diversity in the understory of temperate forests. Whether this holds true for other taxonomic groups remains largely unknown. Yet, it has important consequences for ecosystem functioning and the delivery of ecosystem services. Focusing on carabid beetle...

1. Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in...

Hypoxia, a major inducer of angiogenesis, triggers major changes in gene expression at the transcriptional level. Furthermore, under hypoxia, global protein synthesis is blocked while internal ribosome entry sites (IRES) allow specific mRNAs to be translated. Here, we report the transcriptome and translatome signatures of (lymph)angiogenic genes in hypoxic HL-1 mouse cardiomyocytes: most genes are induced at the translatome level, including all IRES-containing mRNAs. Our data reveal activation of (lymph)angiogenic factor mRNA IRESs in early...

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...

1. Prey face a trade-off between acquiring food and avoiding predation, but food availability, and therefore its effect, is rarely measured in field studies investigating non-lethal effects of predation. The main aim of this study is to investigate the role of the presence of predators in the functional adjustments of feeding parameters with patch quality in a medium-size herbivore. 2. In Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe), we set up an experiment by manipulating, over two years,...