Plumage divergence can function as a strong premating barrier when species come into secondary contact. When it fails to do so, the results are often genome homogenization and phenotypic hybrids at the zone of contact. This is not the case in the largely sympatric masked woodswallow and white-browed woodswallow species (Passeriformes: Artamidae: Artamus spp) complex in Australia where phenotypic integrity is sustained despite no discernible mitochondrial structure in earlier work. This lack of structure may...

The talk using these slides has been presented at the TDWG 2022 conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was part of session "INT19 - The role of the Wikimedia ecosystem in linking biodiversity data". For the corresponding conference abstract see https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.6.93787.

Bats emit echolocation calls to orientate in their predominantly dark environment. Recording of species-specific calls can facilitate species identification, especially when mist-netting is not feasible. However, some taxa, such as Myotis bats are hard to distinguish acoustically. In crowded situations where calls of many individuals overlap the subtle differences between species are additionally attenuated. Here we sought to non-invasively study the phenology of Myotis bats during autumn swarming at a prominent hibernaculum. To do so...

Morphometrics are fundamental for statistical analyses of fossils, particularly because soft parts or DNA are rarely preserved and thus hard parts such as shells are commonly the only source of information. Geometric morphometrics i.e. landmark analysis has been successfully established but exhibits a couple of shortcomings. On the one hand landmarking is rather subjective and on the other hand the application at the level of micro-sculpture is difficult. With the aid of high-resolution 3D scanning...

The biggest known mass extinction in the history of animal life occurred at the Permian-Triassic boundary and has often been linked to global warming. Previous studies suggested that a geologically rapid (less than 40 kyr) temperature increase of more than 10°C occurred simultaneously with the main extinction pulse. This hypothesis is challenged by geochemical and palaeontological data indicating profound environmental perturbations and a temperature rise prior to the main extinction. Using Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry...

Recent advances in phylogenomics allow for the use of large amounts of genetic information in phylogenetic inference. Ideally, the increased resolution and accuracy of such inferences facilitate improved understanding of macroevolutionary processes. Here, we integrate ultraconserved elements (UCEs) with fossil and biogeographic range data to explore diversification and geographic range evolution in the diverse turtle ant genus Cephalotes. We focus on the potential role of the uplift of the Panamanian land bridge and the putative...

How sauropod dinosaurs were able to withstand the forces associated with their immense size represents one of the most challenging biomechanical scenarios in the evolution of terrestrial tetrapods, but also one lacking robust biomechanical testing. Here, we use finite element analyses to quantify the biomechanical effects of foot skeletal postures with and without the presence of a soft tissue pad in sauropodomorphs. We find that none of the models can maintain bone stresses that fall...

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),...

Host plant specialization across herbivorous insects varies dramatically, but while the molecular mechanisms of host-plant adaptations are increasingly known, we often lack a comprehensive understanding of the selective forces that favor specialization. The milkweed bugs (Heteroptera: Lygaeinae) are engaged in ancestrally specialized associations with plants of the Apocynaceae from which they commonly sequester cardiac glycosides for defense, facilitated by resistant Na+/K+-ATPases and adaptations for transport, storage and discharge of toxins. Here, we show that three...

DNA obtained from invertebrates (iDNA) can be metabarcoded in order to survey vertebrate communities. Here, we tested for specialization by sampling the dung and carrion fly community of a swamp forest remnant along a disturbance gradient (10 sites: 80–310 m from a road). This dataset contains Illumina and MinION datasets corresponding to metabarcoding experiments on 435 fly faecal samples. This involved the amplification of 3 genes (COI 244-bp fragment, COI 313-bp fragment, and 16S) from...