In peatland ecosystems, plant communities mediate a globally significant carbon store. The effects of global environmental change on plant assemblages are expected to be a factor in determining how ecosystem functions such as carbon uptake will respond. Using vegetation data from 56 Sphagnum-dominated peat bogs across Europe, we show that in these ecosystems plant species aggregate into two major clusters that are each defined by shared response to environmental conditions. Across environmental gradients, we find...

Aim We compare the performance of habitat suitability models using climate data only or climate data together with water chemistry, land cover and predation pressure data to model the distribution of European grayling (Thymallus thymallus). From these models, we (1) investigate the relationship between habitat suitability and genetic diversity; (2) project the distribution of grayling under future climate change and (3) model the effects of habitat mitigation on future distributions. Location United Kingdom Methods Maxent...

1.Restored habitats, such as saltmarsh created through managed realignment, sometimes fail to meet targets for biological equivalence with natural reference sites. Understanding why this happens is important in order to improve restoration outcomes. 2.Elevation in the tidal frame and sediment redox potential are major controls on the distribution of saltmarsh plants. We use niche models to characterize ten species’ responses to these, and test whether differences in species occurrence between restored and natural saltmarshes in...

The central-marginal hypothesis (CMH) posits that range margins exhibit less genetic diversity and greater inter-population genetic differentiation compared to range cores. CMH predictions are based on long-held ‘abundant-centre’ assumptions of a decline in ecological conditions and abundances towards range margins. Although much empirical research has confirmed CMH, exceptions remain almost as common. We contend that mangroves provide a model system to test CMH that alleviates common confounding factors and may help clarify this lack of...

Expansion of many tree species lags behind climate-change projections. Extreme storms can rapidly overcome this lag, especially for coastal species, but how will storm-driven expansion shape intraspecific genetic variation? Do storms provide recruits only from the nearest sources, or from more distant sources? Answers to these questions have ecological and evolutionary implications, but empirical evidence is absent from the literature. Hurricane Irma provided an opportunity to address this knowledge gap at the northern range limit...

The relative importance of global versus local environmental factors for growth and thus carbon uptake of the bryophyte genus Sphagnum – the main peat-former and ecosystem engineer in northern peatlands – remains unclear. 2) We measured length growth and net primary production (NPP) of two abundant Sphagnum species across 99 Holarctic peatlands. We tested the importance of previously proposed abiotic and biotic drivers for peatland carbon uptake (climate, N deposition, water table depth, and vascular...

Cat predation upon bat species has been reported to have significant effects on bat populations in both rural and urban areas. The majority of research in this area has focussed on observational data from bat rehabilitators documenting injuries, and cat owners, when domestic cats present prey. However, this has the potential to underestimate the number of bats killed or injured by cats. Here, we use forensic DNA analysis techniques to analyse swabs taken from injured...

Fission-fusion dynamics allow animals to manage costs and benefits of group living by adjusting group size. The degree of intraspecific variation in fission-fusion dynamics across the geographical range is poorly known. During 2008-2016, 38 adult female Cape buffalo were equipped with GPS collars in three populations located in different protected areas (Gonarezhou National Park and Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe; Kruger National Park, South Africa) to investigate the patterns and environmental drivers of fission-fusion dynamics among...

For migratory birds that specialize on particular benthic macroinvertebrate species, the timing of migration is critical since prey availability may be temporally limited and a function of local ambient temperature. Hence, variation in local ambient temperature can influence the diet composition of migrant birds, and consequently they may be constrained by which stopover and wintering sites they are able to utilize during periods of colder temperatures. Here we use faecal analysis, observer-based population counts, digital...

Preservation of genetic diversity is critical to successful conservation and there is increasing demand for the inclusion of ecologically meaningful genetic information in management decisions. Supportive breeding programmes are increasingly implemented to combat declines in many species, yet their effect on adaptive genetic variation is understudied. This is despite the fact that supportive breeding may interfere with natural evolutionary processes. Here, we assessed the performance of neutral and adaptive markers (Major Histocompatibility Complex; MHC) to...

This data set includes longitudinal abundance of dung beetles at dung-baited pitfall traps, recorded in 2010, 2016 and 2017 (around six years before, six months after and 18 months after the 2015-16 El Niño event, respectively) in the Brazilian Amazon region. Dung beetles were collected during the collaborative projects AFIRE (Assessing ENSO-induced Fire Impacts in tropical Rainforest Ecosystems) and ECOFOR (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning in degraded and recovering Amazonian and Atlantic Forests), which are part...

Kin selection plays a major role in the evolution of cooperative systems. However, many social species exhibit complex within-group relatedness structures, where kin selection alone cannot explain the occurrence of cooperative behaviour. Understanding such social structures is crucial to elucidate the evolution and maintenance of multi-layered cooperative societies. In lamprologine cichlids, intragroup relatedness seems to correlate positively with reproductive skew, suggesting that in this clade dominants tend to provide reproductive concessions to unrelated subordinates to...

Protected areas provide essential habitats for wildlife by conserving natural and semi-natural habitats and reducing human disturbance. However, whether breeding birds vulnerable to nest predation can benefit from strict land management in the protected area is unclear. Here, we compare the nesting performance of two groups of a ground-nesting shorebird, the Kentish plover (Charadrius alexandrinus), in the protected area (Liaohekou Natural Reserve, hereinafter PA) and the control non-protected area (Non-PA) around the Liaohekou Natural Reserve,...

Vocalizations are widely used to signal behavioural intention in animal communication, but may also carry additional information encoded in the signal, in particular, vocalisations may carry acoustic signatures unique to the calling individual. Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) are nocturnal seabirds that breed in dense colonies, where they must recognize and locate mates among thousands of conspecifics calling in the dark. There is evidence for individual vocal signatures in two shearwater species, but quantitative data on...

Ultrasound imaging is a well-recognised technique for the study of static tissues but its suitability for studying tissue dynamics depends upon accurate frame time information, which may not always be available to users. Here we present methods to quantify the inter-frame interval (IFI) variability, and evaluate different procedures for collecting temporal information from two ultrasound-imaging devices. The devices tested exhibited variable IFIs that could only be confirmed by direct measures of timing signals, available by...

Change in our language when deceiving is attributable to differences in the affective and cognitive experience of lying compared to truth telling, yet these experiences are also subject to substantial individual differences. On the basis of previous evidence of cultural differences in self-construal and remembering, we predicted and found evidence for cultural differences in the extent to which truths and lies contained self (versus other) references and perceptual (versus social) details. Participants (N = 320)...

Ecotourism generates important revenue in many developing economies, but poorly regulated ecotourism can threaten the long-term viability of key biological resources. We determined the effects of tourism, boat traffic, and natural disturbances on parrot geophagy (soil consumption) across seven riverine claylicks in the lowlands of Madre de Dios, Peru. Claylick use significantly decreased when visitors did not follow good practice guidelines and tourist numbers exceeded the capacity of the observation blinds. Otherwise, tourist presence and...

Loss of plant biodiversity can result in reduced abundance and diversity of associated species with implications for ecosystem functioning. In ecosystems low in plant species diversity, such as Neotropical mangrove forests, it is thought that genetic diversity within the dominant plant species could play an important role in shaping associated communities. Here, we used a manipulative field experiment to study the effects of maternal genotypic identity and genetic diversity of the red mangrove Rhizophora mangle...

Effective reintroduction strategies require accurate estimates of vital rates and the factors that influence them. We estimated vital rates of hirola (Beatragus hunteri) populations exposed to varying levels of predation and rangeland quality from 2012 to 2015, and then built population matrices to estimate the finite rate of population change (λ) and demographic sensitivities. Mean survival for all age classes and population growth was highest in the low predation/high-rangeland quality setting (λ = 1.08 ±...

Mate choice can continue after mating via chemical communication between the female reproductive system and sperm. While there is a growing appreciation that females can bias sperm use and paternity by exerting cryptic female choice for preferred males, we know surprisingly little about the mechanisms underlying these post-mating choices. In particular, whether chemical signals released from eggs (chemoattractants) allow females to exert cryptic female choice to favour sperm from specific males remains an open question,...

1. Due to a warming climate, mangrove populations within the Gulf of Mexico and along the Florida Atlantic coastline are expanding their range poleward. As mangroves expand their range limit, leading edge individuals are more likely to experience an increased incidence of freeze events. However, we still lack a clear understanding of the mechanisms used by mangroves to survive freezing conditions. 2. Here, we conducted common garden experiments at different locations experiencing variable winter freeze...

Temperature plays an important role in determining the breeding phenology of birds in temperate climates, with higher spring temperatures associated with earlier breeding. However, the effect of localised territory-scale temperature variations is poorly understood, with relationships between temperature and breeding phenology mostly studied using coarse-grained climatic indices. Here, we interpolate spring temperatures recorded at 150 m2 grid intersections encompassing 417 ha of forest to examine the influence of territory-scale temperature, and its interaction with mean...

2021-30 has been designated the UN decade of ecosystem restoration. A landscape scale peatland restoration project is being undertaken on Chat Moss, Greater Manchester, UK, with conservation translocations an important component of this work. The Manchester Argus Coenonympha tullia ssp. davus, a specialist butterfly of lowland raised bogs in the northwest of England, UK is under threat due to severe habitat loss and degradation. A species reintroduction was planned for spring 2020. This study aimed...

Geographic isolation in rainforest refugia and local adaptation to ecological gradients may both be important drivers of evolutionary diversification. However, their relative importance and the underlying mechanisms of these processes remain poorly understood because few empirical studies address both putative processes in a single system. A key question is to what extent is divergence in signals that are important in mate and species recognition driven by isolation in rainforest refugia or by divergent selection across...