1. Seed dispersal by scatter-hoarder corvids is key for the establishment of important tree species from the Holarctic region such as the walnut (Juglans regia). However, the factors that drive animal decisions to cache seeds in specific locations and the consequences of these decisions on seed fate are poorly understood. 2. We experimentally created four distinct, replicated habitat types in a Mediterranean agricultural landscape where the Eurasian magpie (Pica pica) is a common scatter-hoarder: soft...

The resource-use hypothesis, proposed by E.S. Vrba, states that habitat fragmentation caused by climatic oscillations would affect particularly biome specialists (species inhabiting only one biome), which might show higher speciation and extinction rates than biome generalists. If true, lineages would accumulate biome-specialist species. This effect would be particularly exacerbated for biomes located at the periphery of the global climatic conditions, namely, biomes that have high/low precipitation and high/low temperature such as rainforest (warm-humid), desert (warm-dry),...

To quantify responses to drought from different data sources we take advantage of an extensive network of cross-dated tree-ring data with increment cores from 16 tree species sampled across the Spanish Iberian Peninsula (hereafter abbreviated as RWI-net), and of the Spanish National Forest Inventory (hereafter abbreviated as NFI) sampling tree and plot level data each km in forested areas. We selected the five most severe droughts that have affected each selected RWI-net population in the...