Differences in temporal patterns of activity can modulate the ambient conditions to which organisms are exposed, providing an important mechanism for responding to environmental change. Such differences may be particularly relevant to ecological ...

When imperilled by a threatening process, the choice is often made to conserve threatened species on offshore islands that typically lack the full suite of mainland predators. While keeping the species extant, this releases the conserved population from ...

G. L. Stebbins’ most effective pollinator principle states that when pollinators are not limiting, plants are expected to specialize and adapt to the most abundant and effective pollinator species available. In this study, we quantify the effectiveness of ...

Endothermy, production and retention of heat by the body, appeared convergently in mammals, birds and four spiny-rayed teleost fish lineages. Of these, red-muscle endothermy over most or all of the body has only appeared in two groups: tunas and the opah (...

Ecological differences between the sexes are often interpreted as evidence of within-species ecological character displacement (ECD), a hypothesis with almost no direct tests. Here, we experimentally test two predictions that are direct corollaries of ECD ...

Insecticide resistance has evolved in disease vectors worldwide, creating the urgent need to either develop new control methods or restore insecticide susceptibility to regain use of existing tools. Here we show that phenotypic susceptibility can be ...

Evidence for transgenerational effects of senescence, whereby offspring from older parents have a reduced lifetime reproductive success, is increasing. Such effects could arise from compromised germline maintenance in old parents, potentially reflected in ...

Understanding micro-evolutionary responses of mating systems to contemporary selection requires estimating sex-specific additive genetic variances and cross-sex genetic covariances in key reproductive strategy traits. One key trait comprises the ...

By definition, mating between individuals is infrequent in highly selfing organisms, and so too, therefore, hybridization should be rare between genetically divergent lineages in predominantly self-fertilizing species. Notwithstanding these expectations, ...

Striking faunal turnover across Asia and Australasia, most famously along the eastern edge of the Sunda Shelf or ‘Wallace's Line’, has been a focus of biogeographic research for over 150 years. Here, we investigate the origins of a highly threatened ...

Only few fish species have successfully colonized subterranean habitats, but the underlying biological constraints associated with this are still poorly understood. Here, we investigated the influence of permanent darkness on spinal-column development in ...

Intralocus sexual conflicts arise whenever the fitness optima for a trait expressed in both males and females differ between the sexes and shared genetic architecture constrains the sexes from evolving independently towards their respective optima. Such ...

Mothers can influence prenatal conditions by varying the amount of nutrients, hormones or antioxidants they provide to their developing young. Some of these substances even affect the transfer of these compounds in the next generation, but it is less ...

Ecological assemblages are inherently uneven, with numerically dominant species contributing disproportionately to ecosystem services. Marked biodiversity change due to growing pressures on the world's ecosystems is now well documented. However, the ...

The giant clam Tridacna crocea, native to Indo-Pacific coral reefs, is noted for its unique ability to bore fully into coral rock and is a major agent of reef bioerosion. However, T. crocea's mechanism of boring has remained a mystery despite decades of ...

Reconstructing evolutionary histories requires accurate phylogenetic trees. Recent simulation studies suggest that probabilistic phylogenetic analyses of morphological data are more accurate than traditional parsimony techniques. Here, we use empirical ...

Within jawed vertebrates, pelvic appendages have been modified or lost repeatedly, including in the most phylogenetically basal, extinct, antiarch placoderms. One Early Devonian basal antiarch, Parayunnanolepis, possessed pelvic girdles, suggesting the ...

For free-ranging animals, field metabolic rate (FMR) is the sum of their energy expenditure over a specified period. This quantity is a key component of ecological processes at every biological level. We applied a phylogenetically informed meta-analytical ...

The ability to perceive the Earth's magnetic field, or magnetoreception, exists in numerous animals. Although the mechanism underlying magnetoreception has not been clearly established in any species, in salmonid fish, it is hypothesized to occur by means ...

Mistletoes are a widespread group of plants often considered to be hemiparasitic, having detrimental effects on growth and survival of their hosts. We studied the effects of the Pacific mistletoe, Phoradendron villosum, a member of a largely autotrophic ...

The Palearctic–African migratory circuit has been typically associated with birds. Very few insects are known to endure annual trans-Saharan circuits, but the Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa cardui) is an exception. While it was demonstrated that this ...

Macroalgae form the most extensive and productive benthic marine vegetated habitats globally but their inclusion in Blue Carbon (BC) strategies remains controversial. We review the arguments offered to reject or include macroalgae in the BC framework, and ...