Right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) were extirpated from the eastern North Atlantic by commercial whaling. Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) disappeared from the entire North Atlantic in still-mysterious circumstances. Here we test the hypotheses that both of these species previously occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, an area not currently considered part of their historical range. We used ancient DNA barcoding and collagen fingerprinting methods to taxonomically identify a rare set of 10 presumed whale bones from Roman...

Understanding the proceses of biological diversification is a central topic in evolutionary biology. The South African Cape fynbos, one of the major plant biodiversity hotspots out of the tropics, has prompted several hypotheses about the causes of generation and maintenance of biodiversity. Fire has been traditionally invoked as a key element to explain high levels of biodiversity in highly speciose fynbos taxa, such as the genus Erica. In this study, we have implemented a microevolutionary...

1. Multiple ecosystem functions need to be considered simultaneously to manage and protect the many ecosystem services that are essential to people and their environments. Despite this, cost effective, tangible, relatively simple, and globally-relevant methodologies to monitor in situ soil multifunctionality, i.e. the provision of multiple ecosystem functions by soils, have not been tested at the global scale. 2. We combined correlation analysis and structural equation modelling to explore whether we could find easily measured,...

Efficient and unbiased sampling of ecological interactions is essential to our understanding of the functions they mediate. Seed dispersal by frugivorous birds is a key mutualism for plant regeneration and community dynamics. Mist-netting is one of the most widely used methods to sample avian seed dispersal through the identification of seeds in droppings of captured birds kept inside cloth bags. However, birds may drop seeds on the ground before being extracted from the net, leading...

Microsites where seeds arrive during the dispersal process determine plant reproductive success, affecting the quality of dispersal. Despite their crucial role for plant recruitment, very few studies have addressed spatio-temporal variations in microsites of seed arrival in complex seed-disperser networks. Using an endozoochorous dispersal system, we characterized the microsites of seed arrival of eight fleshy-fruited plant species dispersed by five mammal species during two consecutive seasons across three sites in a Mediterranean environment (n =...

Large‐scale losses of seagrass areas have been associated with eutrophication events, which have led to an overproduction of photosynthetic organisms including epiphytes. Grazers that feed on epiphytes can exert a significant top–down control in the system, but the effects of physical factors on grazing activity and feeding behaviour have been rarely examined. We addressed the combination of hydrodynamic regime and seagrass shoot density can alter the feeding and foraging behaviours of mesograzers. A full factorial...

1. Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) have been proposed to mitigate the impact of agriculture on both taxonomic and functional biodiversity. However, a better knowledge of the mechanisms involved in the loss of agrobiodiversity is needed to implement efficient AES. An unbalanced effort on research towards arable lands compared to permanent crops, and on fauna relative to plants, is patent, which limits the generalization of AES effectiveness. 2. We evaluated the effects of agricultural management and landscape...

1. Quantifying interactive effects of environmental drivers on population dynamics can be critical for a robust analysis of population viability. Fire regimes, among the most widespread disturbances driving population dynamics, are increasingly modified by and interact with human activities. However, viability of fire-adapted species is typically assessed overlooking disturbance interactions, potentially resulting in suboptimal management actions. 2. We investigated whether increasing human disturbances in fire-prone ecosystems may pose a threat or an opportunity to improve...

Research on seed-dispersal mutualisms has been highly unbalanced towards the plants, largely overlooking the fitness effects of fruit resources on frugivorous animals. Moreover, despite morphological mismatches like gape limitation may reduce the abundance of fruits that are actually accessible to a frugivore species, there is very little evidence on the trait-matching implications from a frugivore’s perspective. Here, we refine recent resource-provisioning models to comprehensively test the joint effects of fruit abundance and trait matching on...

Phytoplankton and bacterioplankton represent the base of the aquatic food webs. The changes in the structure of their communities at different levels, from taxonomic and functional composition to single cells traits, and the degree of coupling among them has strong impact on transfer of energy to higher trophic levels and finally on the fate of organic matter. Changes in the structural pattern of the microbial community at different levels have been studied in temperate estuaries,...

Genomes of animals as different as sponges and humans show conservation of global architecture. Here we show that multiple genomic features including transposon diversity, developmental gene repertoire, physical gene order, and intron-exon organization are shattered in the tunicate Oikopleura, belonging to the sister group of vertebrates and retaining chordate morphology. Ancestral architecture of animal genomes can be deeply modified and may therefore be largely nonadaptive. This rapidly evolving animal lineage thus offers unique perspectives on...

Many habitat specialist species are originally composed of small, discontinuous populations because their habitats are naturally fragmented or patchy. They may have suffered the long-term effects of natural patchiness. Mediterranean heathlands, a representative habitat in the Strait of Gibraltar region, are associated with nutrient-poor, acidic sandstone soils. Sandstone soil patches in the African side of the Strait (Tangier) are, in general, smaller and more scattered than in the European side (Algeciras). In this study, we...

The transcriptomes of the venom glands of 13 closely related species of vermivorous cones endemic to West Africa from genera Africonus and Varioconus were sequenced and venom repertoires compared within a phylogenetic framework. The total number of conotoxin precursors per species varied between 108 and 221. Individuals of the same species shared about one fourth of the total conotoxin precursors. The number of common sequences was drastically reduced in the pairwise comparisons between closely related...

1. Trophic relationships have inherent spatial dimensions associated with the sites where species interactions, or their delayed effects, occur. Trophic networks among interacting species may thus be coupled with spatial networks linking species and habitats whereby animals connect patches across the landscape thanks to their high mobility. This trophic and spatial duality is especially inherent in processes like seed dispersal by animals, where frugivores consume fruit species and deposit seeds across habitats. 2. We analysed...

Fine roots are a key component of carbon and nutrient dynamics in forest ecosystems. Rising atmospheric [CO2] (eCO2) is likely to alter the production and activity of fine roots, with important consequences for forest carbon storage. Yet empirical evidence of the role of eCO2 in driving root dynamics in low-nutrient forested ecosystems is limited, particularly for grassy woodlands, an ecosystem type of global importance. We sampled fine roots across seasons over a two-year period to...

Aim: We investigated taxonomic and functional beta diversity of bird communities inhabiting Mediterranean olive groves subject to either intensive or extensive management of the ground cover and located in landscapes with different degrees of complexity. Location: Andalusia, southern Spain. Methods: We partitioned taxonomic and functional beta diversity into its two additive components, turnover and nestedness. We also explored the contributions of single sites to overall beta diversity (LCBD) and separated the effects of species replacement...