1. Incorporating the evolutionary history of species into community ecology enhances understanding of community composition, ecosystem functioning and responses to environmental changes. 2. Phylogenetic history might partly explain the impact of fragmentation and land-use change on assemblages of interacting organisms, and even determine potential cascading effects across trophic levels. However, it remains unclear whether phylogenetic diversity of basal resources is reflected at higher trophic levels in the food web. In particular, phylogenetic determinants of community...

Interspecific communication is common in nature, particularly between mutualists. However, whether signals evolved for communication with other species, or are in fact conspecific signals eavesdropped upon by partners, is often unclear. Fork-tailed drongos (Dicrurus adsimilis) associate with mixed-species groups and often produce true alarms at predators, whereupon associating species flee to cover, but also false alarms to steal associating species' food (kleptoparasitism). Despite such deception, associating species respond to drongo non-alarm calls by increasing their...

Dispersal can be motivated by multiple factors including sociality. Dispersal behaviour affects population genetic structure that in turn reinforces social organization. We combined observational information with individual-based genetic data in the Karoo scrub-robin, a facultative cooperatively breeding bird, to understand how social bonds within familial groups affect mating patterns, cause sex asymmetry in dispersal behavior and ultimately influence the evolution of dispersal. Our results revealed that males and females do not have symmetrical roles in...

We conduct a phylogeographic study of the Crested Drongo (Dicrurus forficatus forficatus), a broadly distributed bird species on Madagascar. We first determined the demographic and spatial pattern inferred from mitochondrial and nuclear data, and then compared these results with predictions from a present to 0.120-Myr-old reconstruction of the spatial dynamics of the range of D. f. forficatus on Madagascar, enabling putative areas of stability (lineage persistence) to be detected. Weak genetic structure along an east–west...

One theory to explain the existence of conspicuous solicitation is that it is a way for young to ‘blackmail’ care-givers into provisioning them, by threatening their own destruction. Fledgling birds offer a unique opportunity to investigate the ‘blackmail theory’, as their mobility enables them to influence the predation risk they face. We investigated a novel solicitation behaviour in fledgling pied babblers (Turdoides bicolor), where fledglings use their location to influence provisioning rates. We show that...

Marine no-take zones can have positive impacts for target species and are increasingly important management tools. However, whether they indirectly benefit higher order predators remains unclear. The endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) depends on commercially exploited forage fish. We examined how chick survival responded to an experimental 3-year fishery closure around Robben Island, South Africa, controlling for variation in prey biomass and fishery catches. Chick survival increased by 18% when the closure was initiated, which...

Traits used in communication, such as colour signals, are expected to have positive consequences for reproductive success, but their associations with survival are little understood. Previous studies have mainly investigated linear relationships between signals and survival, but both hump-shaped and U-shaped relationships can also be predicted, depending on the main costs involved in trait expression. Furthermore, few studies have taken the plasticity of signals into account in viability selection analyses. The relationship between signal expression...

As populations shift their ranges in response to global change, local species assemblages can change, setting the stage for new ecological interactions, community equilibria, and evolutionary responses. Here we focus on the range dynamics of four avian brood parasite species and their hosts in southern Africa, in a context of bush encroachment (increase in woody vegetation density in places previously occupied by savanna-grassland mosaics) favouring some species at the expense of others. We first tested...

Homo naledi is a recently discovered species of fossil hominin from South Africa. A considerable amount is already known about H. naledi but some important questions remain unanswered. Here we report a study that addressed two of them: “Where does H. naledi fit in the hominin evolutionary tree?” and “How old is it?” We used a large supermatrix of craniodental characters for both early and late hominin species and Bayesian phylogenetic techniques to carry out...

Woody encroachment in “open” biomes like grasslands and savannas is occurring globally.Both local and global drivers, including elevated CO2, have been implicated in these increases. The relative importance of different processes is unresolved as there are few multisite, multi land-use, evaluations of woody plant encroachment. We measured 70 years of woody cover changes over a 1020km2 area covering four land uses (commercial ranching, conservation with elephants, conservation without elephants and communal rangelands) across a rainfall...

Species selection, the effect of heritable traits in generating between-lineage diversification rate differences, provides a valuable conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between traits, diversification and phylogenetic tree shape. An important challenge, however, is that the nature of real diversification landscapes – curves or surfaces which describe the propensity of species-level lineages to diversify as a function of one or more traits – remains poorly understood. Here we present a novel, time-stratified extension of the...

Understanding resource selection and quantifying habitat connectivity are fundamental to conservation planning for both land-use and species management plans. However, datasets available to management authorities for resource selection and connectivity analyses are often highly limited and fragmentary. As a result, measuring connectivity is challenging, and often poorly integrated within conservation planning and wildlife management. To exacerbate the challenge, scale-dependent resource use makes inference across scales problematic, resource use is often modelled in areas where the...

Objectives It remains unclear whether computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is more effective than other teaching methods in acquiring and retaining ECG competence amongst medical students and residents. Design This systematic review and meta-analysis followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Data sources Electronic literature searches of PubMed, databases via EBSCOhost, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and grey literature were conducted on 28 November 2017. We subsequently reviewed the citation indexes...

In many vertebrates, productivity and survival usually increase with age and then start to decline above a certain age; processes known as reproductive and actuarial senescence. Senescence is widely believed to be driven by the accumulation of somatic damage or mutations. Thus, levels of such cellular damage, and therefore senescence could, in theory, differ between different habitats if they experience different stressors. Urban environments expose animals to a wide range of stressors that pose a...

Occupancy models are widely used in ecology because they explicitly separate the observation and state processes and hence account for imperfect species detection. Traditional occupancy models that record detection/non-detection (DND) of a species typically rely on either spatial or temporal survey replication to estimate model parameters. Recording the time until a species is first encountered after starting a survey is often possible with little extra effort and such time-to-detection (TTD) surveys may be more efficient...

Purpose This study was conducted to assess the impact of the eye care programme on cataract blindness and cataract surgical services in Sokoto, Nigeria over a 12 year period 2005-2016. Methods Data from the 2005 population based cross-sectional study of blindness in Sokoto state was re-analysed to obtain baseline estimates of the prevalence of cataract blindness and cataract surgical coverage for persons 50 years and over in Wurno health zone. A population based survey of...

The considerable threats of invasive rodents to island biodiversity are likely to be compounded by climate change. Forecasts for such interactions have been most pronounced for the Southern Ocean islands where ameliorating conditions are expected to decrease thermal and resource restrictions on rodents. Firm evidence for changing rodent populations in response to climate change, and demonstrations of associated impacts on the terrestrial environment, are nonetheless entirely absent for the region. Using data collected over three...

Prepared core technology illustrates in-depth planning and the presence of a mental template during the core reduction process. This technology is, therefore, a significant indicator in studying the evolution of abstract thought and the cognitive abilities of hominids. Here, we report on Victoria West cores excavated from the Canteen Kopje site in central South Africa, with a preliminary age estimate of approximately 1 Ma (million years ago) for these cores. Technological analysis shows that the...

Early 2019, a chikungunya virus (CHIKV) outbreak hit the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Though seldomly deadly, this mosquito-borne disease presents as an acute febrile (poly)arthralgia often followed by long-term sequelae. Although Aedes aegypti is the primary vector, an amino acid substitution in the viral envelope gene E1 (A226V) is causing concern as it results in increased transmission by Aedes albopictus, a mosquito with a much wider geographical distribution. Between January and March 2019,...