Maximum and minimum metabolic rates in birds are flexible traits and such flexibility can be advantageous in variable climates. The climatic variability hypothesis (CVH) posits that more variable climates should result in greater metabolic flexibility for geographically distinct populations. Whether the CVH applies to sympatric species occupying microclimates differing in variability is unknown. Microclimates

The mammalian family Bovidae has been widely studied in ecomorphological research, with important applications to paleoecological and paleohabitat reconstructions. Most studies of bovid craniomandibular features in relation to diet have used linear measurements. In this study, we conduct landmark-based geometric-morphometric analyses to evaluate whether different dietary groups can be distinguished

Different environmental conditions may lead to diverse morphological, behavioral and physiological adaptations of different populations of the same species. Lighting conditions, for example, vary vastly especially between aquatic habitats, and have been shown to elicit adaptations. The availability of short-wave ultraviolet (UV) light is especially fluctuating, as UV wavelengths are attenuated strongly

Foraging, as an energy-consuming behavior, is very important for colony survival in termites. How energy metabolism related to glucose decomposition and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production influences foraging behavior in termites is still unclear. Here, we analyzed the change in energy metabolism in the whole organism and brain after silencing the key metabolic gene isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH)

Characterizing the diversity and structure of host-parasite communities is crucial to understanding their eco-evolutionary dynamics. Malaria and related haemosporidian parasites are responsible for fitness loss and mortality in bird species worldwide. However, despite exhibiting the greatest ornithological biodiversity, avian haemosporidians from Neotropical regions are quite unexplored. Here, we analyse

The increase in the average air temperature due to global warming has produced an early onset of the reproduction in many migratory birds of the Paleartic region. According to the ‘mismatch hypothesis’ this response can lead to a decrease in the breeding output when the conditions that trigger the departure from the wintering areas do not match the availability of food resources in the breeding ground

Socio-sexual environment can have critical impacts on reproduction and survival of animals. Consequently, they need to prepare themselves by allocating more resources to competitive traits that give them advantages in the particular social setting they have been perceiving. Evidence shows that a male usually raises his investment in sperm after he detects the current or future increase of sperm competition

In animal communication systems, individuals that detect a cue (i.e., ‘receivers’) are often influenced by characteristics of the cue emitter. For instance, in many species, receivers avoid chemical cues that are released by emitters experiencing disturbance. These chemical ‘disturbance cues’ appear to benefit receivers by warning them about nearby danger, such as a predator’s approach. While the active

In social insects, it has been suggested that reproduction and the production of particular fertility-linked cuticular hydrocarbons (CHC) may be under shared juvenile hormone control, and this could have been key in predisposing such cues to later evolve into full-fledged queen pheromone signals. However, to date, only few studies have experimentally tested this “hormonal pleiotropy” hypothesis. Here

Injury is common in nature resulting, for example, from fighting, partial predation, or the wear of body parts. Injury is costly, expressed in impaired performance, failure in competition, and a shorter lifespan. A survey of the literature revealed the frequent occurrence of injury in ants and its various causes. We examined whether leg- or antenna injury impacts food-discovery time and reduces the

Consistent inter-individual differences in daily activity rhythms (i.e., chronotypes) can have ecological consequences in determining access to food resources and avoidance of predators. The most common measure to characterize chronotypes in animals as well as humans is the onset of activity (i.e., early or late chronotypes). However, daily activity rhythms may also differ in the relative amount of

In animal vocal communication, the development of adult-like vocalization is fundamental to interact appropriately with conspecifics. However, the factors that guide ontogenetic changes in the acoustic features remains poorly understood. In contrast with a historical view of nonhuman primate vocal production as substantially innate, recent research suggests that inheritance and physiological modification

An increase in ecotourism adversely impacts many animals and contributes to biodiversity loss. To mitigate these impacts, we illustrate the application of a conservation behavior framework towards the development of a sustainable ecotourism management plan. In Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, thousands of tourists annually come to see a unique mass migration of shrimps on land (referred to as “shrimp parading”)

Coevolutionary arms races between brood parasites and hosts provide tractable systems for understanding antagonistic coevolution in nature; however, little is known about the fate of frontline antiparasite defences when the host ‘wins’ the coevolutionary arms race. By recreating bygone species-interactions, using artificial parasitism experiments, lingering defensive behaviors that evolved in the context

The study of the recent colonisation of a symbiont and its interaction with host communities in new locations is an opportunity to understand how they interact. The use of isotopic ratios in trophic ecology can provide measurements of a species’ isotopic niche, as well as knowledge about how the isotopic niches between symbiont and host species overlap. Stable isotope measurements were used to assess

The extent of male mate choosiness is driven by a trade-off between various environmental factors associated with the costs of mate acquisition, quality assessment and opportunity costs. Our knowledge about natural variation in male mate choosiness across different populations of the same species, however, remains limited. In the current study, we compared male mate choosiness across ten natural populations

Many behavioral, ecological, and evolutionary processes are closely intertwined with patterns of social interactions, such as the evolution of cooperation (Croft et al. 2006), information and disease transmission (VanderWaal et al. 2014; Aplin et al. 2015), predator–prey dynamics (Ioannou et al. 2012), and dispersal decisions (Blumstein et al. 2009). Even in species where individuals are traditionally

The formalization of multilayer networks allows for new ways to measure sociality in complex social systems, including groups of animals. The same mathematical representation and methods are widely applicable across fields and study systems, and a network can represent drastically different types of data. As such, in order to apply analyses and interpret the results in a meaningful way the researcher

A multilayer network approach combines different network layers, which are connected by interlayer edges, to create a single mathematical object. These networks can contain a variety of information types and represent different aspects of a system. However, the process for selecting which information to include is not always straightforward. Using data on 2 agonistic behaviors in a captive population

Some types of plant accumulate liquid in their inflorescences creating phytotelmata. These environments protect the flowers against florivory, although they may be colonized by aquatic or semi-aquatic florivorous insect larvae, whose effects on the fitness of the plants remain unclear. We tested the hypothesis of floral antagonism by the occupants of phytotelmata, which predicts that florivory by the

Caste differentiation in termites is one of the most conspicuous examples of facultative polyphenism in animals. It is clear that specific cuticular formation occurs in hard exocuticles during caste differentiation. However, the developmental pattern of the soft endocuticle in the differentiation pathways of castes is unknown. To reveal whether the endocuticle is involved in caste differentiation,

Hole-nesting tits belonging to the family Paridae produce a hissing display that resembles the exhalatory hiss of a snake. When a predatory animal enters the nest hole of a tit, tits often hiss vigorously, while lunging their head forward and shaking their wings and tail, until the intruder retreats. We assessed the acoustic similarity between such hiss calls from six species of tits, snake hisses

Cutting-edge technologies are extremely useful to develop new workflows in studying ecological data, particularly to understand animal behaviour and movement trajectories at the individual level. Although parental care is a well-studied phenomenon, most studies have been focused on direct observational or video recording data, as well as experimental manipulation. Therefore, what happens out of our

Personality has been observed in a variety of animal taxa with important implications in ecology and evolution. Exploring the influence of environmental temperature during early life on personality could help to understand the ontogeny of this phenotypic trait in animals. In this study, we reared newborn mosquitofish Gambusia affinis at high (30 °C) and low (25 °C) water temperatures and measured their

AbstractSelective pressures favor morphologies that are adapted to distinct ecologies, resulting in trait partitioning among ecomorphotypes. However, the effects of these selective pressures vary across taxa, especially because morphology is also influenced by factors such as phylogeny, body size, and functional trade-offs. In this study, we examine how these factors impact functional diversification

Climate fluctuations in the past and in the future are likely to result in population expansions, shifts, or the contraction of the ecological niche of many species, and potentially leading to the changes in their geographical distributions. Prediction of suitable habitats has developed as a useful tool for the assessment of habitat suitability and resource conservation to protect wildlife. Here we

As human development expands, environments are increasingly exposed to anthropogenic noise which may disrupt animals in a variety of ways. Anthropogenic noise can be disruptive both as a source of auditory masking, which prevents animals from acquiring acoustic information (Brumm and Slabbekoorn 2005), or as a source of distraction, reallocating an individual’s attention and impairing an animal’s ability

Chromosomal evolution is widely considered an important driver of speciation because it can promote the establishment of reproductive barriers. Karyotypic reorganization is also expected to affect the mean phenotype, as well as its development and patterns of phenotypic integration, through processes such as variation in genetic linkage between quantitative trait loci or between regulatory regions

Animal senses and signals are amazingly diverse, and the major modalities by which animals acquire sensory input from their environments are sound, light, vibration, and chemical signals. Insects mainly rely on visual, nociceptive, and olfactory cues to discriminate between rewards and risks. It has been shown that the visual and olfactory cues of predators substantially affect the adult phenotype

Animals living in extremely high elevations have to adapt to low temperatures and low oxygen availability (hypoxia), but the underlying genetic mechanisms associated with these adaptations are still unclear. The mitochondrial respiratory chain can provide over 95% of the ATP in animal cells, and its efficiency is influenced by temperature and oxygen availability. Therefore, the respiratory chain complexes

For social primates, fast and accurate recognition of facial expressions in other individuals is crucial for regulating social interactions and group cohesion. However, the adaptive function of facial expression recognition remains largely unknown. Here, we tested whether golden snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana) can discriminate facial expressions in different contexts, and how they respond

AbstractSelective pressures favor morphologies that are adapted to distinct ecologies, resulting in trait partitioning among ecomorphotypes. However, the effects of these selective pressures vary across taxa, especially because morphology is also influenced by factors such as phylogeny, body size, and functional trade-offs. In this study, we examine how these factors impact functional diversification

In sexually dimorphic species characterized by exaggerated male ornamentation, behavioral isolation is often attributed to female preferences for conspecific male signals. Yet, in a number of sexually dimorphic species, male mate choice also results in behavioral isolation. In many of these cases, the female traits that mediate species boundaries are unclear. Females in sexually dimorphic species typically

Scale remains a foundational concept in ecology. Spatial scale, for instance, has become a central consideration in the way we understand landscape ecology and animal space use. Meanwhile, scale-dependent social processes can range from fine-scale interactions to co-occurrence and overlapping home ranges. Furthermore, sociality can vary within and across seasons. Multilayer networks promise the explicit

Microbial associates are widespread in insects, some conferring a protection to their hosts against natural enemies like parasitoids. These protective symbionts may affect the infection success of the parasitoid by modifying behavioral defenses of their hosts, the development success of the parasitoid by conferring a resistance against it or by altering life-history traits of the emerging parasitoids

Reinforcement can occur when maladaptive hybridization in sympatry favors the evolution of conspecific preferences and target traits that promote behavioral isolation. In many systems, enhanced behavioral isolation is due to increased female preference for conspecifics. In others, behavioral isolation is driven by male preference, and in other systems both sexes exert preferences. Some of these patterns

Small mammals that are specialists in homeothermic thermoregulation reduce their self-maintenance costs of normothermy to survive the winter. By contrast, heterothermic ones that are considered generalists in thermoregulation can lower energy expenditure by entering torpor. It is well known that different species vary the use of their strategies to cope with harsh winters in temperate zones; however

Chemosensation is the most ubiquitous sense in animals, enacted by the products of complex gene families that detect environmental chemical cues and larger-scale sensory structures that process these cues. While there is a general conception that olfactory receptor (OR) genes evolve rapidly, the universality of this phenomenon across vertebrates, and its magnitude, are unclear. The supposed correlation

Key innovations may allow lineages access to new resources and facilitate the invasion of new adaptive zones, potentially influencing diversification patterns. Many studies have focused on the impact of key innovations on speciation rates, but far less is known about how they influence phenotypic rates and patterns of ecomorphological diversification. We use the repeated evolution of pharyngognathy

Social organisms often show collective behaviors such as group foraging or movement. Collective behaviors can emerge from interactions between group members and may depend on the behavior of key individuals. When social interactions change over time, collective behaviors may change because these behaviors emerge from interactions among individuals. Despite the importance of, and growing interest in

AbstractRapid advances in Ribonucleic Acid sequencing (or RNA-seq) technology for analyzing entire transcriptomes of desired tissue samples, or even of single cells at scale, have revolutionized biology in the past decade. Increasing accessibility and falling costs are making it possible to address many problems in biology that were once considered intractable, including the study of various social

Contemporary methods for visualizing phenotypic evolution, such as phylomorphospaces, often reveal patterns which depart strongly from a naïve expectation of consistently divergent branching and expansion. Instead, branches regularly crisscross as convergence, reversals, or other forms of homoplasy occur, forming patterns described as “birds’ nests”, “flies in vials”, or less elegantly, “a mess”. In

AbstractRapid advances in Ribonucleic Acid sequencing (or RNA-seq) technology for analyzing entire transcriptomes of desired tissue samples, or even of single cells at scale, have revolutionized biology in the past decade. Increasing accessibility and falling costs are making it possible to address many problems in biology that were once considered intractable, including the study of various social

In domestic dogs Canis familiaris, vocal traits have been investigated for barks and growls, and the relationship between individual body size and vocal traits investigated for growls, with less corresponding information for whines. In this study, we examined frequency and temporal traits of whines of 20 adult companion dogs (9 males, 11 females), ranging in body weight from 3.5 to 70.0 kg and belonging

The development of multilayer network techniques is a boon for researchers who wish to understand how different interaction layers might influence each other, and how these in turn might influence group dynamics. Here, we investigate how integration between male and female grooming and aggression interaction networks influences male power trajectories in vervet monkeys Chlorocebus pygerythrus. Our

Environmental temperature variation may play a significant role in the adaptive evolutionary divergence of ectotherm thermal performance curves (TPCs). However, divergence in TPCs may also be constrained due to various causes. Here, we measured TPCs for swimming velocity of temperate and tropical mayflies (Family: Baetidae) and their stonefly predators (Family: Perlidae) from different elevations.

Associating with relatives in social groups can bring benefits such as reduced risk of aggression and increased likelihood of cooperation. Competition among relatives over limited resources, on the other hand, can induce individuals to alter their patterns of association. Population density might further affect the costs and benefits of associating with relatives by altering resource competition or

Sexual selection often leads to evolution of conspicuous signals, raising the chances of attracting not only potential mates, but also predators. In lacertid lizards, ultraviolet-blue spots on flanks and shoulders represent such a trait. Some level of correlation between male and female ornamentation is also known to exist. Therefore, the phenotype of females may change in the absence of sexual selection

Parasites are globally widespread pathogenic organisms, which impose important selective forces upon their hosts. Thus, in accordance with the Adjustment to parasite pressure hypothesis, it is expected that defences among hosts vary relative to the selective pressure imposed by parasites. According to the latitudinal gradient in diversity, species richness and abundance of parasites peak near the equator

There is a growing body of research indicating that drones can disturb animals. However, it is usually unclear whether the disturbance is due to visual or auditory cues. Here, we examined the effect of drone flights on the behaviour of great dusky swifts Cypseloides senex and white-collared swifts Streptoprocne zonaris in two breeding sites where drone noise was obscured by environmental noise from

Individuals which have invaded urbanized environments are reported to engage in riskier behaviours, possibly influenced by the scarcity of predators in urbanized areas. Here, we studied the risk-taking behaviour of birds which had invaded a new natural environment, rather than an artificial urban environment, using recently established populations of the bull-headed shrike Lanius bucephalus, which

insular gigantismlizardPacific islandssexual size dimorphism

A fundamental question in biology is how diversity evolves and why some clades are more diverse than others. Phenotypic diversity has often been shown to result from morphological adaptation to different habitats. The role of behavioral interactions as a driver of broadscale phenotypic diversity has received comparatively less attention. Behavioral interactions, however, are a key agent of natural

External coloration in animals depends on the interaction of several different factors including the genetics and epigenetics processes that underlie the color expression, the mechanisms of color perception, and the general mechanisms controlling color evolution and function. Among all, camouflages from predators and conspicuousness are of particular interest because pose animal to choose between opposite

Consistent among-individual variation in behavior, or animal personality, is present in a wide variety of species. This behavioral variation is maintained by both genetic and environmental factors. Parental effects are a special case of environmental variation and are expected to evolve in populations experiencing large fluctuations in their environment. They represent a non-genetic pathway by which

Short-term elevation of glucocorticoids (GCs) is one of the major physiological mechanisms by which vertebrates cope with challenging environmental or social factors (stressors). However, when exposure to stressors occurs repeatedly or over a prolonged period of time, animals may experience chronic elevation of GCs, which reduces the immune response efficiency and can lead to higher intensity of parasitic

Leadership is a key issue in the study of collective behavior in social animals. Affiliation-leadership models predict that dyadic partner preferences based on grooming relationships or alliance formation positively affect an individual’s decision to follow or support a conspecific. In the case of many primate species, females without young infants are attracted to mother-infant dyads. However, the

Many animals mimic the behavior or the appearance of venomous snakes. When humans or other potential predators place their hand near the nest of tits belonging to the family Paridae (and a few other species), the incubating female performs a hissing display that mimics the inhalation hiss of a viper or another snake. They hiss vigorously while lunging their head forward and shaking their wings and

Two parapatric Rattus norvegicus subspecies, R. n. humiliatus (RNH) and R. n. caraco (RNC), are classified according to morphological divergence and are mainly distributed in North and NE China. Here, we aimed to explore the population genetic structure, genetic boundary and gene flow in these rats using 16 microsatellite loci. Structure analysis and PCA revealed three ancestral clusters. We found

Amphibians play a key role in structuring biological assemblages of agricultural landscapes, but they are threatened by global agricultural intensification. Landscape structure is an important variable influencing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. However, in the Yangtze River Delta, where a ‘farmland-orchard-fishpond’ agricultural pattern is common, the effects of landscape construction on