Strong spatial sorting of genetic variation in contiguous populations is often explained by local adaptation or secondary contact following allopatric divergence. A third explanation, spatial sorting by stochastic effects of range expansion, has been considered less often though theoretical models suggest it should be widespread, if ephemeral. In a study designed to delimit species within a clade of venomous coralsnakes, we identified an unusual pattern within the Texas coral snake (Micrurus tener): strong spatial sorting...

Hypotheses of community assembly include limitation through habitat physical attributes, as well as competition among species. Such hypotheses must be resolved through experimental tests. Previous experiments have shown that: (i) fire ants of the monogyne social form occur mostly in highly disturbed habitat where they do not compete with mature colonies of co-occurring ants; (ii) in native pine forests of northern Florida, habitat disturbance favours fire ants while simultaneously reducing native ants; (iii) fire ants...

Dormant life stages are often critical for population viability in stochastic environments, but accurate field data characterizing them are difficult to collect. Such limitations may translate into uncertainties in demographic parameters describing these stages, which then may propagate errors in the examination of population-level responses to environmental variation. Expanding on current methods, we 1) apply data-driven approaches to estimate parameter uncertainty in vital rates of dormant life stages and 2) test whether such estimates provide...

Natural and anthropogenic disturbances co-occur in most systems, but how they interact to shape demographic outcomes remains poorly understood. Such interactions may alter dynamics of populations in non-additive ways, making demographic predictions challenging when focusing on only one disturbance. Thus, understanding the interactive effects of such disturbances is critically important to determine the population viability of most species under a diversity of stressors. We used a hierarchical integral projection model (IPM), parameterized with 13 years...