Heteranthery, the presence of distinct stamen types within a flower, is commonly explained as functional adaptation to alleviate the ‘pollen dilemma’, defined as the dual and conflicting function of pollen as pollinator food resource and male reproductive agent. A single primary hypothesis, ‘division of labour’, has been central in studies on heteranthery. This hypothesis postulates that one stamen type functions in rewarding pollen-collecting pollinators and the other in reproduction, thereby minimizing pollen loss. Only recently,...

The Pacific region has the highest density of naturalized plant species worldwide, which makes it an important area for research on the ecology, evolution and biogeography of biological invasions. While different data sources on naturalized plant species exist for the Pacific, there is no taxonomically and spatially harmonized database available for different subsets of species and islands. A comprehensive, accessible database containing the distribution of naturalized vascular plant species in the Pacific will enable new...

In invasive parasites, generalism is considered advantageous during the initial phase of introduction. Thereafter, fitness costs to parasites, such as host-specific mortality, can drive parasites towards specialism to avoid costly hosts. It is important to determine changes in host specificity of invasive populations to understand host-parasite dynamics and their effects on vulnerable host populations. We examined changes in mortality in the introduced avian vampire fly (Philornis downsi) (Diptera: Muscidae), a generalist myasis-causing ectoparasite, between 2004...

When different introduced species across trophic levels (ectoparasite, predator) invade island systems, they may pose significant threats to nesting birds. In this study, we measure nesting height and causes of offspring mortality in the critically endangered Medium Tree Finch (Camarhynchus pauper), an island endemic restricted to Floreana Island on the Galápagos archipelago. Considering all nests at which a male built a nest, sang and attempted to attract a female (N = 222 nests), only 10.4%...

Sharks have a long and rich fossil record that consists predominantly of isolated teeth due to the poorly mineralized cartilaginous skeleton. Tiger sharks (Galeocerdo), which represent apex predators in modern oceans, have a known fossil record extending back into the early Eocene (ca. 56 Ma) and comprise 22 recognised extinct and one extant species to date. However, many of the fossil species remain dubious, resulting in a still unresolved evolutionary history of the tiger shark...

Phylogenetic diversity metrics have been used to tackle an increasing number of questions in ecology and evolutionary biology. Here we present a novel use of phylogenetic diversity metrics namely the investigation of insect herbivore assemblages on select plant species in order to investigate possible drivers shaping the phylogenetic structure of those assemblages. We investigated the phylogenetic structure of lepidopteran herbivore assemblages on 208 species of central European vascular plants. A dataset of 2553 species of...

Predation has strongly shaped past and modern marine ecosystems, but the scale dependency of patterns in drilling predation, the most widely used proxy for predator-prey interactions in the fossil record, is a matter of debate. To assess the effects of spatial and taxonomic scale on temporal trends in the drilling frequencies (DF), we analyzed Holocene molluscan assemblages of different benthic habitats and nutrient regimes from the northern Adriatic shelf in a sequence stratigraphic context. Although...

Aim: Alpine habitats support unique biodiversity confined to high-elevation areas in the current interglacial. Plant diversity in these habitats responds to area, environment, connectivity and isolation, yet these factors have been rarely evaluated in concert. Here we investigate major determinants of regional species pools in alpine grasslands, and the responses of their constituent species groups. Location: European mountains below 50ºN. Time Period: Between 1928 and 2019. Major Taxa Studied: Vascular plants. Methods: We compiled species...

Epiphyte trait data for the paper Hietz et al. 2021 Putting vascular epiphytes on the traits map. Journal of Ecology Plant functional traits impact the fitness and environmental niche of plants. Major plant functional types have been characterized by their trait spectrum, and the environmental and phylogenetic imprints on traits have advanced several ecological fields. Yet very few trait data on epiphytes, which represent almost 10% of vascular plants, are available. We collated >80,000 mostly...

Local weather conditions may be used as environmental cues by animals to optimize their breeding behaviour, and could be affected by climate change. We measured associations between climate, breeding phenology, and reproductive output in greylag geese (Anser anser) across 29 years (1990-2018). The birds are individually marked, which allows accurate long-term monitoring of life-history parameters for all pairs within the flock. We had three aims: (1) identify climate patterns at a local scale in Upper...

Extant members of the ancient insect order of stoneflies exhibit a disjunct, antitropical distribution, with one major lineage exclusively occurring in the Southern Hemisphere and the other, with few exceptions, on the Northern continents. Here, we address the biogeographic distribution and phylogenetic relationships of stoneflies using a phylogenetic workflow that combines both transcriptomic and Sanger sequence datasets with heterogeneous taxon coverage. We used a dataset comprising 2997 genes derived from the transcriptomes of 30 species...

Assessment of nitrogen (N) saturation of forests is critical to evaluate how ecosystems will respond to current and future global changes such as N deposition. However, quantifying N saturation remains a challenge. We developed a conceptual model of N saturation stages in forest ecosystems based on i) a hypothetical relative rate of ammonification, nitrification, and denitrification, ii) concentrations of ammonium and nitrate in the soil, and iii) 15N enrichment pattern of bulk soil N, ammonium,...

Reproductive manipulation by endosymbiotic Wolbachia can cause unequal inheritance, allowing the manipulator to spread and potentially impacting evolutionary dynamics in infected hosts. Tramp and invasive species are excellent models to study the dynamics of host-Wolbachia associations because introduced populations often diverge in their microbiomes after colonizing new habitats, resulting in infection polymorphisms between native and introduced populations. Ants are the most abundant group of insects on earth, and numerous ant species are classified as highly...

Changes in behavior often drive rapid adaptive evolution and speciation. However, the mechanistic basis for behavioral shifts is largely unknown. The tephritid fruit fly Rhagoletis pomonella is an example of ecological specialization and speciation in action via a recent host plant shift from hawthorn to apple. These flies primarily utilize specific odors to locate fruit, and because they mate only on or near host fruit, changes in odor preference for apples versus hawthorns translate directly...

This paper analyzes the conditions for local adaptation in a metapopulation with infinitely many islands under a model of hard selection, where population size depends on local fitness. Each island belongs to one of two distinct ecological niches or habitats. Fitness is influenced by an additive trait which is under habitat-dependent directional selection. Our analysis is based on the diffusion approximation and accounts for both genetic drift and demographic stochasticity. By neglecting linkage disequilibria, it...

Factors ranging from ecological opportunity to genome composition might explain why only some lineages form adaptive radiations. While being rare, particular systems can provide natural experiments within an identical ecological setting where the factors promoting increased species numbers and phenotypic divergence in two closely related lineages is notably different. We investigated one such natural experiment using two de novo assembled and 40 re-sequenced genomes and asked why two closely related Neotropical cichlid fish lineages, the...

Aims: The rapid increase in the number of species that have naturalized beyond their native range is among the most apparent features of the Anthropocene. How alien species will respond to other processes of future global changes is an emerging concern and remains largely misunderstood. We therefore ask whether naturalized species will respond to climate and land-use change differently than those species not yet naturalized anywhere in the world. Location: Global Methods: We investigated future...

Many animals communicate by performing elaborate displays that are incredibly extravagant and wildly bizarre. So, how do these displays evolve? One idea is that innate sensory biases arbitrarily favor the emergence of certain display traits over others, leading to the design of an unusual display. Here, we study how physiological factors associated with signal production influence this process, a topic that has received almost no attention. We focus on a tropical frog, whose males compete...

In many species, individuals can develop into strikingly different morphs, which are determined by a simple Mendelian locus. How selection shapes loci that control complex p henotypic differences remains poorly understood. In the spider gibbosus, males either develop into a ‘hunched’morph with conspicuous head structures or as a fast developing ‘flat’morph with a female- like appearance. We show that the hunched differs from the f lat-determinin g allele by a hunch-specific genomic fragment of approximately...

This dataset could be used to test whether the commonly observed positive range size–niche breadth relationship, as posited by the “niche breadth hypothesis”, exists for Fagus, one of the most dominant and widespread broad‐leaved deciduous tree genera in temperate forests of the Northern Hemisphere. There are many ways to estimate niche breadth. Here, we estimated biotic and climatic niche breadths per species using plot‐based co‐occurrence data and climate data, respectively. The range sizes of the...

Pollination is a key ecological process both in wild plant species and in economically important crops. Global land use change and urbanization are known to alter plant-pollinator interactions, but our understanding of how the local (i.e. size of green area, food resource availability) and landscape (surrounding green area) context affect pollinators in urban landscapes remains understudied. We selected two co-occurring clover species, Trifolium pratense and T. repens. to assess whether mixed stands of common wildflowers...

Understanding when learning begins is critical for identifying the factors that shape both the developmental course and the function of information acquisition. Until recently, sufficient development of the neural substrates for any sort of vocal learning to begin in songbirds was thought to be reached well after hatching. New research shows that embryonic gene activation and the outcome of vocal learning can be modulated by sound exposure in ovo. We tested whether avian embryos across...

Microscale processes are critically important to soil ecology and biogeochemistry yet are difficult to study due to soil’s opacity and complexity. To advance the study of soil processes, we constructed transparent soil microcosms that enable the visualization of microbes via fluorescence microscopy and the non-destructive measurement of microbial activity and carbon uptake in situ via Raman microspectroscopy. We assessed the polymer Nafion and the crystal cryolite as optically transparent soil substrates. We demonstrated that both...

Emerging epidemics and local infection clusters are initially prone to stochastic effects that can substantially impact the epidemic trajectory. While numerous studies are devoted to the deterministic regime of an established epidemic, mathematical descriptions of the initial phase of epidemic growth are comparatively rarer. Here, we review existing mathematical results on the epidemic size over time, and derive new results to elucidate the early dynamics of an infection cluster started by a single infected individual....

The large-scale impact of urbanization on wildlife is rather well documented; however, the mechanisms underlying the effects of urban environments on animal physiology and behaviour are still poorly understood. Here, we focused on one major urban pollutant - artificial light at night (ALAN) - and its effects on the capacity to mount an innate immune response in wild great tit (Parus major) nestlings. Exposure to ALAN alters circadian rhythms of physiological processes, by disrupting the...