| 31. |
- Dakos, Vasilis, et al.
(författare)
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Ecosystem tipping points in an evolving world
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 3:3, s. 355-362
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is growing concern over tipping points arising in ecosystems because of the crossing of environmental thresholds. Tipping points lead to abrupt and possibly irreversible shifts between alternative ecosystem states, potentially incurring high societal costs. Trait variation in populations is central to the biotic feedbacks that maintain alternative ecosystem states, as they govern the responses of populations to environmental change that could stabilize or destabilize ecosystem states. However, we know little about how evolutionary changes in trait distributions over time affect the occurrence of tipping points and even less about how big-scale ecological shifts reciprocally interact with trait dynamics. We argue that interactions between ecological and evolutionary processes should be taken into account in order to understand the balance of feedbacks governing tipping points in nature.
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| 32. |
- de Boer, Raissa A., et al.
(författare)
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Meta-analytic evidence that animals rarely avoid inbreeding
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; :5, s. 949-964
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Animals are usually expected to avoid mating with relatives (kin avoidance) as incestuous mating can lead to the expression of inbreeding depression. Yet, theoretical models predict that unbiased mating with regards to kinship should be common, and that under some conditions, the inclusive fitness benefits associated with inbreeding can even lead to a preference for mating with kin. This mismatch between empirical and theoretical expectations generates uncertainty as to the prevalence of inbreeding avoidance in animals. Here, we synthesized 677 effect sizes from 139 experimental studies of mate choice for kin versus non-kin in diploid animals, representing 40 years of research, using a meta-analytical approach. Our meta-analysis revealed little support for the widely held view that animals avoid mating with kin, despite clear evidence of publication bias. Instead, unbiased mating with regards to kinship appears widespread across animals and experimental conditions. The significance of a variety of moderators was explored using meta-regressions, revealing that the degree of relatedness and prior experience with kin explained some variation in the effect sizes. Yet, we found no difference in kin avoidance between males and females, choice and no-choice experiments, mated and virgin animals or between humans and animals. Our findings highlight the need to rethink the widely held view that inbreeding avoidance is a given in experimental studies.
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| 33. |
- De Chiara, Matteo, et al.
(författare)
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Domestication reprogrammed the budding yeast life cycle
- 2022
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X .- 2397-334X. ; 6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Domestication of plants and animals is the foundation for feeding the world human population but can profoundly alter the biology of the domesticated species. Here we investigated the effect of domestication on one of our prime model organisms, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, at a species-wide level. We tracked the capacity for sexual and asexual reproduction and the chronological life span across a global collection of 1,011 genome-sequenced yeast isolates and found a remarkable dichotomy between domesticated and wild strains. Domestication had systematically enhanced fermentative and reduced respiratory asexual growth, altered the tolerance to many stresses and abolished or impaired the sexual life cycle. The chronological life span remained largely unaffected by domestication and was instead dictated by clade-specific evolution. We traced the genetic origins of the yeast domestication syndrome using genome-wide association analysis and genetic engineering and disclosed causative effects of aneuploidy, gene presence/absence variations, copy number variations and single-nucleotide polymorphisms. Overall, we propose domestication to be the most dramatic event in budding yeast evolution, raising questions about how much domestication has distorted our understanding of the natural biology of this key model species.
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| 34. |
- De Frenne, Pieter, et al.
(författare)
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Global buffering of temperatures under forest canopies
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 3:5, s. 744-749
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Macroclimate warming is often assumed to occur within forests despite the potential for tree cover to modify microclimates. Here, using paired measurements, we compared the temperatures under the canopy versus in the open at 98 sites across 5 continents. We show that forests function as a thermal insulator, cooling the understory when ambient temperatures are hot and warming the understory when ambient temperatures are cold. The understory versus open temperature offset is magnified as temperatures become more extreme and is of greater magnitude than the warming of land temperatures over the past century. Tree canopies may thus reduce the severity of warming impacts on forest biodiversity and functioning.
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| 35. |
- Denk, Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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Plant fossils reveal major biomes occupied by the late Miocene Old-World Pikermian fauna
- 2018
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - London : Nature Publishing Group. - 2397-334X. ; 2, s. 1864-1870
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Reconstruction of palaeobiomes, ancient communities that exhibit a physiognomic and functional structure controlled by their environment, depends on proxies from different disciplines. Based on terrestrial mammal fossils, the late Miocene vegetation from China to the eastern Mediterranean and East Africa has been reconstructed as a single cohesive biome with increasingly arid conditions, with modern African savannahs the surviving remnant. Here, we test this reconstruction using plant fossils spanning 14–4 million years ago from sites in Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Tian Shan Mountains and Baode County in China, and East Africa. The western Eurasian sites had a continuous forest cover of deciduous or evergreen angiosperms and gymnosperms, with 15% of 1,602 fossil occurrences representing conifers, which were present at all but one of the sites. Raup–Crick analyses reveal high floristic similarity between coeval eastern Mediterranean and Chinese sites, and low similarity between Eurasian and African sites. The disagreement between plant-based reconstructions, which imply that late Miocene western Eurasia was covered by evergreen needleleaf forests and mixed forests, and mammal-based reconstructions, which imply a savannah biome, throws into doubt the approach of inferring Miocene precipitation and open savannah habitats solely from mammalian dental traits. Organismal communities are constantly changing in their species composition, and neither animal nor plant traits by themselves are sufficient to infer entire ancient biomes. The plant fossil record, however, unambiguously rejects the existence of a cohesive savannah biome from eastern Asia to northeast Africa.
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| 36. |
- Dey, Cody J., et al.
(författare)
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Direct benefits and evolutionary transitions to complex societies
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology and Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 1:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The selective forces that drive the evolution of cooperation have been intensely debated. Evolutionary transitions to cooperative breeding, a complex form of cooperation, have been hypothesized to be linked to low degrees of promiscuity, which increases intragroup relatedness and the indirect (that is, kin selected) benefits of helping. However, ecological factors also promote cooperative breeding, and may be more important than relatedness in some contexts. Identifying the key evolutionary drivers of cooperative breeding therefore requires an integrated assessment of these hypotheses. Here we show, using a phylogenetic framework that explicitly evaluates mating behaviours and ecological factors, that evolutionary transitions to cooperative breeding in cichlid fishes were not associated with social monogamy. Instead, group living, biparental care and diet type directly favoured the evolution of cooperative breeding. Our results suggest that cichlid fishes exhibit an alternative path to the evolution of complex societies compared to other previously studied vertebrates, and these transitions are driven primarily by direct fitness benefits.
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| 37. |
- Dominoni, Davide M., et al.
(författare)
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Why conservation biology can benefit from sensory ecology
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology & Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 4:4, s. 502-511
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Anthropogenic sensory pollutants, such as noise, light and chemicals, are affecting biodiversity. This Perspective uses an understanding of animal sensory ecology to explore how these impacts can be mitigated. Global expansion of human activities is associated with the introduction of novel stimuli, such as anthropogenic noise, artificial lights and chemical agents. Progress in documenting the ecological effects of sensory pollutants is weakened by sparse knowledge of the mechanisms underlying these effects. This severely limits our capacity to devise mitigation measures. Here, we integrate knowledge of animal sensory ecology, physiology and life history to articulate three perceptual mechanisms-masking, distracting and misleading-that clearly explain how and why anthropogenic sensory pollutants impact organisms. We then link these three mechanisms to ecological consequences and discuss their implications for conservation. We argue that this framework can reveal the presence of 'sensory danger zones', hotspots of conservation concern where sensory pollutants overlap in space and time with an organism's activity, and foster development of strategic interventions to mitigate the impact of sensory pollutants. Future research that applies this framework will provide critical insight to preserve the natural sensory world.
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| 38. |
- Downing, Philip A., et al.
(författare)
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Group formation and the evolutionary pathway to complex sociality in birds
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology and Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 4:3, s. 479-486
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Group-living species show a diversity of social organization, from simple mated pairs to complex communities of interdependent individuals performing specialized tasks. The advantages of living in cooperative groups are well understood, but why some species breed in small aggregations while others evolve large, complex groups with clearly divided roles is unclear. We address this problem by reconstructing the evolutionary pathways to cooperative breeding across 4,730 bird species. We show that differences in the way groups form at the origin of cooperative breeding predicts the level of group complexity that emerges. Groups that originate through the retention of offspring have a clear reproductive divide with distinct breeder and helper roles. This is associated with reproductive specialization, where breeders invest more in fecundity and less in care. In contrast, groups formed through the aggregation of unrelated adults are smaller and lack specialization. These results help explain why some species have not transitioned beyond simple groups while others have taken the pathway to increased group complexity.
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| 39. |
- Ducatez, S., et al.
(författare)
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Behavioural plasticity is associated with reduced extinction risk in birds
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology and Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 4, s. 788-793
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Behavioural plasticity is believed to reduce species vulnerability to extinction, yet global evidence supporting this hypothesis is lacking. We address this gap by quantifying the extent to which birds are observed behaving in novel ways to obtain food in the wild; based on a unique dataset of >3,800 novel behaviours, we show that species with a higher propensity to innovate are at a lower risk of global extinction and are more likely to have increasing or stable populations than less innovative birds. These results mainly reflect a higher tolerance of innovative species to habitat destruction, the main threat for birds. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
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| 40. |
- Duchenne, F., et al.
(författare)
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Phenological shifts alter the seasonal structure of pollinator assemblages in Europe
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Ecology and Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2397-334X. ; 4:1, s. 115-121
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Pollinators play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems by providing key ecosystem functions and services to wild plants and crops, respectively. The sustainable provision of such ecosystem functions and services requires diverse pollinator communities over the seasons. Despite evidence that climate warming shifts pollinator phenology, a general assessment of these shifts and their consequences on pollinator assemblages is still lacking. By analysing phenological shifts of over 2,000 species, we show that, on average, the mean flight date of European pollinators shifted to be 6 d earlier over the last 60 yr, while their flight period length decreased by 2 d. Our analysis further reveals that these shifts have probably altered the seasonal distribution of pollination function and services by decreasing the overlap among pollinators’ phenologies within European assemblages, except in the most northeastern part of Europe. Such changes are expected to decrease the functional redundancy and complementarity of pollinator assemblages and, therefore, might alter the performance of pollination function and services and their robustness to ongoing pollinator extinctions.
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