Predators frequently must detect and localize their prey in challenging environments. Noisy environments have been prevalent across the evolutionary history of predator-prey relationships, but now with increasing anthropogenic activities noise is becoming a more prominent feature of many landscapes. Here, we use the gleaning pallid bat, Antrozous pallidus, to investigate the mechanism by which noise disrupts hunting behavior. Noise can primarily function to mask – obscure by spectrally overlapping a cue of interest, or distract...

Recent research suggests that anthropogenic noise can substantially alter animal behavior. Although there are many sources of natural background noise, the relative influence of these sounds on behavior has received much less attention. Using landscape-scale playbacks of rushing rivers and crashing ocean surf, we investigated how habitat appropriate natural noise alters territorial defense behaviors in lazuli buntings (Passerina amoena) occupying riparian areas and spotted towhees (Pipilo maculatus) in riparian and coastal areas when exposed to...

Compilation of sagebrush chemistry and herbivore interaction data from Idaho USA. Chemical data includes percent crude protein, percent nitrogen, coumarins, phenolics, total monoterpenes, monoterpene chemical diversity, and quantifiable amounts of the following monoterpenes: aPinene, Camphene, bPinene, p_cymene, 1,8_cineole, monoterpene "unknown 20.1", Camphor, and Borneol. Herbivore interaction data includes bite mark counts, fecal pellet counts, and/or evidence of foraging presence/absence data for pygmy rabbits and sage grouse at select study sites. At the time of publication...

Plant communities are composed of complex phenotypes that not only differ among taxonomic groups and habitats but also change over time within a species. Restoration projects (e.g., translocations, reseeding) can introduce new functional variation in plants, which further diversifies phenotypes and complicates our ability to identify locally adaptive phenotypes for future restoration. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) offers one approach to detect the chemical phenotypes that differentiate plant species, populations, and phenological states of individual plants over...

Interactions between neighboring plants are critical for biodiversity maintenance in plant populations and communities. Intraspecific trait variation and genome duplication are common in plant species and can drive eco-evolutionary dynamics through genotype-mediated plant-plant interactions. However, few studies have examined how species-wide intraspecific variation may alter interactions between neighboring plants. We investigate how subspecies and ploidy variation in a genetically diverse species, big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata), can alter the demographic outcomes of plant interactions. Using a...

Anthropogenic noise and its effects on acoustic communication have received considerable attention in recent decades. Yet, the natural acoustic environment’s influence on communication and its role in shaping acoustic signals remains unclear. Using landscape-level playbacks of ocean surf and river noise in coastal and riparian habitat, respectively, we investigated how water-generated noise influences spectral and temporal song characteristics in six songbird species. We recorded individuals defending territories across 37 sites, with each site representing one...

Warning signals are well known in the visual system, but rare in other modalities. Some moths produce ultrasonic sounds to warn bats of noxious taste or to mimic unpalatable models. Here we report results from a long-term study across the globe, assaying moth response to playback of bat echolocation. We tested 252 genera, spanning most families of large-bodied moths, and document anti-bat ultrasound production in 52 genera, with eight new subfamily origins described. Based on...

Predicting forest recovery at landscape scales will aid forest restoration efforts. The first step in successful forest recovery is tree recruitment. Forecasts of tree recruit abundance, derived from the landscape-scale distribution of seed sources (i.e. adult trees), could assist efforts to identify sites with high potential for natural regeneration. However, previous work has revealed wide variation in the effect of seed sources on seedling abundance, from positive to no effect. We quantified the relationship between...

Accurate predictions of ecological restoration outcomes are needed across the increasingly large landscapes requiring treatment following disturbances. However, observational studies often fail to account for nonrandom treatment application, which can result in invalid inference. Examining a spatiotemporally extensive management treatment involving post-fire seeding of declining sagebrush shrubs across semiarid areas of the western USA over two decades, we quantify drivers and consequences of selection biases in restoration using remotely sensed data. From following more than...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis has been used in forensics and requires well-established population databases for statistical interpretations. However, high-quality mtDNA data from Vietnamese population samples have been limited. To examine the mtDNA sequences and haplogroup compositions of a Vietnamese population to provide an mtDNA dataset that can further be used to construct a Vietnamese-specific reference database. A total of 173 Vietnamese individuals were analysed for two hypervariable regions (HVI and HVII) of mtDNA. Forensic parameters...

Additional file 2. Frequency of designs with adequate statistical power by method and test.

Additional file 3. Sample size crosstabulation.

Additional file 3. Sample size crosstabulation.

This data set includes raw RGB (red, green, blue) and multispectral (5-band) digital imagery and processed data products (dense point cloud, orthophoto, DSM) collected 2022-06-15 from two sites within the 2013-PONY COMPLEX wildfire boundary (FireCode: ID4329411554820130809, Welty and Jeffries 2020) near Mountain Home Idaho. We used a DJI Mavic 2 Pro with Hasselblad 20MP sensor (RGB) with Map Pilot Pro software and DJI Phantom 4 Multispectral sensor (5 band) with DJI GS Pro software to...

This data set includes raw RGB (red, green, blue) and multispectral (5-band) digital imagery and processed data products collected 2022-05-25 at the 2010-SOUTH TRAIL wildfire boundary (FireCode: ID4301711528820100724, Welty and Jeffries 2020) near Hammett Idaho, approximately one hour southeast of Boise Idaho off Interstate-84. We used a DJI Mavic 2 Pro with Hasselblad 20MP sensor (RGB) with Map Pilot Pro software and DJI Phantom 4 Multispectral sensor (5 band) with DJI GS Pro software to...

An uppermost Gzhelian bioherm discovered in the central highlands of Timor Leste contains abundant foraminifera belonging to 17 genera. Representatives of the families Biseriamminidae, Biwaellidae, Bradyinidae, Cornuspiridae, Lasiodiscidae, Palaeotextulariidae, Pseudotaxidae, Ozawainellidae, Schubertellidae, Schwagerinidae, Staffellidae and Textrataxidae are present, including 21 species referred to known types and 12 species left in open nomenclature. Two new Schwagerina species are described: Schwagerina timorensis new species, and Schwagerina maubissensis new species. The assemblage belongs to the uppermost Gzhelian Schwagerina...

Butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are one of the major super-radiations of insects, comprising nearly 160,000 described extant species. As herbivores, pollinators, and prey, Lepidoptera play a fundamental role in almost every terrestrial ecosystem. Lepidoptera are also indicators of environmental change and serve as model organisms for research on mimicry and genetics. They have been central to the development of co-evolutionary hypotheses, such as butterflies with flowering plants, and moths' evolutionary arms race with echolocating bats....

Understanding behavioral responses of animals to the thermal environment is of increasing importance under changing climate regimes. Thermoregulatory behaviors, such as exploitation of thermal refugia or temporal partitioning of activity, can buffer organisms against hot and cold thermal extremes but may conflict with other life history needs. Our objective was to evaluate strategies for behavioral thermoregulation by a small-bodied endotherm to test hypotheses about tradeoffs between thermal and security needs across seasons. We quantified the...

Oxygen plays a crucial role in energetic metabolism of most eukaryotes. Yet, adaptations to low oxygen concentrations leading to anaerobiosis have independently arisen in many eukaryotic lineages, resulting in a broad spectrum of reduced and modified mitochondrial organelles (MROs). In this study, we present the discovery of two new class-level lineages of free-living marine anaerobic ciliates, Muranotrichea, cl. nov. and Parablepharismea, cl. nov., that, together with the class Armophorea, form a major clade of obligate...

Genetic diversity within and among 42 native populations of Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass) was characterized within two regions, the eastern Mediterranean and the western Mediterranean. Two hypotheses were tested for the genetic diversity of these populations: 1) populations from the eastern Mediterranean are more genetically diverse compared with populations to the west, a potential consequence of the species’ westward dispersal with the spread of agriculture and 2) populations across the Mediterranean contain comparable genetic diversity but...

Prey transmit sensory illusions to redirect predatory strikes, creating a discrepancy between what a predator perceives and reality. We use the acoustic arms race between bats and moths to investigate the evolution and function of a sensory illusion. The spinning hindwing tails of silk moths (Saturniidae) divert bat attack by reflecting sonar to create a misleading echoic target. We characterized geometric morphometrics of moth hindwings across silk moths, mapped these traits onto a new, robust...

Natural sensory environments, despite strong potential for structuring systems, have been neglected in ecological theory. Here, we test the hypothesis that intense natural acoustic environments shape animal distributions and behavior by broadcasting whitewater river noise in montane riparian zones for two summers. We find that both birds and bats avoid areas with high sound levels, while birds avoid frequencies that overlap with birdsong, and bats avoid higher frequencies more generally. Behaviorally, intense sound levels decrease...

For tropical forest restoration to result in long‐term biodiversity gains, native trees must establish self‐sustaining populations in degraded sites. While many have asked how seedling recruitment varies between restoration treatments, the long‐term fate of these recruits remains unknown. We address this research gap by tracking natural recruits of 27 species during the first 7 years of a tropical forest restoration experiment that included both planted and naturally regenerating plots. We used an individual‐based model to...

Conservation and restoration projects often involve starting new populations by introducing individuals into portions of their native or projected range. Such efforts can help meet many related goals, including habitat creation, ecosystem service provisioning, assisted migration, and the reintroduction of imperiled species following local extirpation. The outcomes of reintroduction efforts, however, are highly variable, with results ranging from local extinction to dramatic population growth; reasons for this variation remain unclear. Here, we ask whether population...

Data and code files included within release v1.0 from the Sagebrush_in_vitro_prop GitRepo. Please visit the associated project website for specific details about project protocols and workflow. Basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata subsp. tridentata) is a keystone species of the sagebrush steppe, a widespread ecosystem of western North America threatened by climate change. The study’s goal was to develop an in vitro method of propagation for this taxon to support genome sequencing and genotype-by-environment research on...