The meeting on ‘Genetic Resources in the Face of New Environmental, Economic and Social Challenges’ held in Montpellier (France) from 20–22 September 2011 brought together about 200 participants active in research and management of the genetic diversity ...

The workshop ‘Species distribution models: applications, challenges and perspectives’ held at Belo Horizonte (Brazil), 29–30 August 2011, aimed to review the state-of-the-art in species distribution modelling (SDM) in the neotropical realm. It brought ...

The ability to recognize close relatives in order to cooperate or to avoid inbreeding is widespread across all taxa. One accepted mechanism for kin recognition in birds is associative learning of visual or acoustic cues. However, how could individuals ...

The hormone melatonin is known to play an important role in regulating many seasonal changes in physiology, morphology and behaviour. In birds, unlike in mammals, melatonin has thus far been thought to play little role in timing seasonal reproductive ...

Protein is a limiting resource that is essential to the growth, maintenance and reproduction of tropical frugivores, yet few studies have examined how wild animals maintain protein balance. During chronic periods of fruit scarcity, Bornean orangutans (...

During female mate choice, both the male's phenotype and resources (e.g. his nest) contribute to the chooser's fitness. Animals other than humans are not known to advertise resource characteristics to potential mates through vocal communication; although ...

Optimal investment in offspring is important in maximizing lifetime reproductive success. Yet, very little is known how animals gather and integrate information about environmental factors to fine tune investment. Observing the decisions and success of ...

Male insects rarely collaborate with each other, but pollinator fig wasps (Hymenoptera: Agaonidae) are said to be an exception. Immature fig wasps feed on galled ovules located inside figs, the inflorescences of Ficus species (Moraceae). After mating, ...

In group-living vertebrates, reliable social allies play a decisive role in dealing with stressors. For example, support by social allies is known to dampen glucocorticoid responses. It remains unknown, however, how social embedding affects the sympatho-...

Optimal foraging models predict that large predators should concentrate on large prey in order to maximize their net gain of energy intake. Here, we show that the largest species of sea turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, does not strictly adhere to this ...

A focus on pair bonds between males and females is fundamental to study the evolution of social organization. Because pair bonds are generally identified from direct observations of pairs that maintain physical proximity, pair bonds may have been ...

Although we are relatively naked in comparison with other primates, the human body is covered in a layer of fine hair (vellus and terminal hair) at a relatively high follicular density. There are relatively few explanations for the evolutionary ...

A poor start in life owing to a restricted diet can have readily detectable detrimental consequences for many adult life-history traits. However, some costs such as smaller adult body size are potentially eliminated when individuals modify their ...

Hypotheses proposed to explain the evolution of cooperative behaviour typically require differentiation between either groups of conspecifics (e.g. kin/non-kin) or, more typically, individuals (e.g. reciprocal altruism). Despite this, the mechanisms that ...

Asymmetries in competitive ability can determine the outcome of social interactions in animals and are often expressed through differences in sexual traits. Competitive ability (resource holding potential, RHP), trait expression and ultimately ...

A hatchling reptile's sex, body size and shape, and locomotor performance can be influenced not only by its genes, but also by the temperature that it experiences during incubation. Can incubation temperature also affect a hatchling's cognitive skills? In ...

Eavesdropping on communication is widespread among animals, e.g. bystanders observing male–male contests, female mate choice copying and predator detection of prey cues. Some animals also exhibit signal matching, e.g. overlapping of competitors' acoustic ...

The majority of bird taxa perform water bathing, but little is known about the adaptive value of this behaviour. If bathing is important for feather maintenance then birds that have not bathed should have poorer feather condition, compromised escape ...

Individually distinct vocalizations are widespread among social animals, presumably caused by variation in vocal tract anatomy. A less-explored source of individual variation is due to learned movement patterns of the vocal tract, which can lead to vocal ...

Anuran jumping is one of the most powerful accelerations in vertebrate locomotion. Several species are hypothesized to use a catapult-like mechanism to store and rapidly release elastic energy, producing power outputs far beyond the capability of muscle. ...

We report on a newly discovered cockroach (Saltoblattella montistabularis) from South Africa, which jumps and therefore differs from all other extant cockroaches that have a scuttling locomotion. In its natural shrubland habitat, jumping and hopping ...

Relative to other metazoans, the mammalian integument is thought to be limited in colour. In particular, while iridescence is widespread among birds and arthropods, it has only rarely been reported in mammals. Here, we examine the colour, morphology and ...

The exceptionally high species richness of arthropods in tropical rainforests hinges on the complexity of the forest itself: that is, on features such as the high plant diversity, the layered nature of the canopy and the abundance and the diversity of ...

The control of primary sex-ratio by vertebrates has become a major focus in biology in recent years. Evolutionary theory predicts that a differential effect of maternal characteristics on the fitness of sons and daughters is an important route, whereby ...

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes determine immune repertoires and social preferences of vertebrates. Immunological regulation of microbial assemblages associated with individuals influences their sociality, and should also affect their life-...

Parental effects on offspring life-history traits are common and increasingly well-studied. However, the extent to which these effects persist into offspring in subsequent generations has received less attention. In this experiment, maternal and paternal ...

Endosymbiotic bacteria of the genus Wolbachia induce diverse reproductive alterations in their insect hosts. Wolbachia (wSca) infecting the moth Ostrinia scapulalis causes unusual male killing, in which males (genotype: ZZ) selectively die during ...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been proposed as a promising new class of antimicrobials despite warnings that therapeutic use could drive the evolution of pathogens resistant to our own immunity peptides. Using experimental evolution, we demonstrate ...

Fusions between individuals are a common feature of organisms with modular, indeterminate life forms, including plants, marine invertebrates and fungi. The consequences of fusion for an individual fungus are poorly understood. We used wild-type and fusion ...

In many species of animals, individuals advertise their quality with sexual signals to obtain mates. Chemical signals such as volatile pheromones are species specific, and their primary purpose is to influence mate choice by carrying information about the ...

Adult reproductive success can account for a large fraction of male fitness, however, we know relatively little about the susceptibility of reproductive traits to mutation-accumulation (MA). Estimates of the mutational rate of decline for adult fitness ...

Synergies between invasive species and climate change are widely considered to be a major biodiversity threat. However, invasive species are also hypothesized to be susceptible to population collapse, as we demonstrate for a globally important invasive ...

The endosymbiotic relationship between coral hosts and dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium is critical for the growth and productivity of coral reef ecosystems. Here, synchrotron radiation-based infrared microspectroscopy was applied to examine ...

Small cruising zooplankton depend on remote prey detection and active prey capture for efficient feeding. Direct, passive interception of prey is inherently very inefficient at low Reynolds numbers because the viscous boundary layer surrounding the ...

Dietary segregation is essential for the coexistence of closely related species of animals. However, little is known about how changes in availability of food resources might affect trophic interactions of wild animals breeding in sympatry. Here, we ...

The eukaryotic porin superfamily consists of two families, voltage-dependent anion channel (VDAC) and Tom40, which are both located in the mitochondrial outer membrane. In Trypanosoma brucei, only a single member of the VDAC family has been described. We ...

Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze cuing. In the present paper, we aimed to address whether the social status of the cuing face modulates this phenomenon. Participants ...

Almost all gnathostomes or jawed vertebrates (including osteichthyans, chondrichthyans, ‘acanthodians’ and most placoderms) possess paired pectoral and pelvic fins. To date, it has generally been believed that antiarch placoderms (extinct armoured jawed ...

High-resolution phase-contrast X-ray computed tomography (CT) reveals the phoretic deutonymph of a fossil astigmatid mite (Acariformes: Astigmata) attached to a spider's carapace (Araneae: Dysderidae) in Eocene (44–49 Myr ago) Baltic amber. Details of ...

Although only discovered in 1999, the symbiotic filamentous actinobacteria present on the integument of certain species of leaf-cutting ants have been the subject of intense research. These bacteria have been shown to specifically suppress fungal garden ...

The development rate of parasites and pathogens within vectors typically increases with temperature. Accordingly, transmission intensity is generally assumed to be higher under warmer conditions. However, development is only one component of parasite/...

Hypertrophy of the flight muscles is regularly observed in birds prior to long-distance migrations. We tested the hypothesis that a large migratory bird would increase flight behaviour prior to migration, in order to cause hypertrophy of the flight ...

Many species of snakes use constriction—the act of applying pressure via loops of their trunk—to subdue and kill their prey. Constriction is costly and snakes must therefore constrict their prey just long enough to ensure death. However, it remains ...

Metapopulation models are widely used to study species that occupy patchily distributed habitat, but are rarely applied to migratory species, because of the difficulty of identifying demographically independent subpopulations. Here, we extend ...