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371 results for “Ecology and Evolution”

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dryad36/100

The effects of ecology and behaviour on the evolution of colouration in Coraciiformes

What drives the evolution of plumage colour in birds? Bird colour is likely to be under both natural and sexual selection where natural selection may favour evolution towards crypsis or camouflage whereas sexual selection may favour evolution towards conspicuousness. The responses to selection are predicted to relate to species' ecology, behaviour, and life history. Key hypotheses have focused on habitat and light environment, breeding strategy, territoriality, and hunting behaviour. We tested these potential causes of colour variation in the Coraciiformes, a colourful clade of non-passerine birds, using phylogenetic comparative methods and data on plumage colouration and brightness measured from museum specimens. We found that correlates of colour evolution in Coraciiformes vary across body regions and depend on the focal colour property (hue or brightness). While light environment showed widespread effects on colouration in multiple body regions for both hue and brightness, selection pressures related to behavioural characteristics had more spatially localized effects (e.g. territoriality on wing feather brightness and hunting strategy on belly hue). Our results reveal both general patterns that may hold across other bird clades and more nuanced effects of selection that are likely to be mediated through the visual ecology of the signaller and receiver and the behavioural characteristics of Coraciiform species.

opencc-zeroJan 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Ecology, sexual dimorphism, and jumping evolution in anurans

Sexual dimorphism is a common feature of animals, and selection for sexually dimorphic traits may affect both functional morphological traits and organismal performance. Trait evolution through natural selection can also vary across environments. However, whether the evolution of organismal performance is distinct between the sexes is rarely tested in a phylogenetic comparative context. Anurans commonly exhibit sexual size dimorphism, which may affect jumping performance given the effects of body size on locomotion. They also live in a wide variety of microhabitats. Yet the relationships among dimorphism, performance, and ecology remain underexamined in anurans. Here, we explore relationships between microhabitat use, body size, and jumping performance in males and females to determine the drivers of dimorphic patterns in jumping performance. Using methods for predicting jumping performance through anatomical measurements, we describe how fecundity selection and natural selection associated with body size and microhabitat have likely shaped female jumping performance. We found that the magnitude of sexual size dimorphism (where females are about 14% larger than males) was much lower than dimorphism in muscle volume, where females had 42% more muscle than males (after accounting for body size). Despite these sometimes-large averages, phylogenetic t-tests failed to show statistical significance of sexual dimorphism for any variable, indicating sexually dimorphic species tend to be closely related. While sexual dimorphism of jumping performance did not vary among microhabitats, we found female jumping velocity and energy differed across microhabitats. Overall, our findings indicate that differences in sex-specific reproductive roles, size, jumping-related morphology, and performance are all important determinants in how selection has led to the incredible ecophenotypic diversity in anurans.

opencc-zeroApr 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Data from: Experimentally simulating the evolution-to-ecology connection: Divergent predator morphologies alter natural food webs

The idea that changing environmental conditions drive adaptive evolution is a pillar of evolutionary ecology. But, the opposite—that adaptive evolution alters ecological processes—has received far less attention yet is critical for eco-evolutionary dynamics. We assessed the ecological impact of divergent values in a key adaptive trait using 16 populations of the brown anole lizard (Anolis sagrei). Mirroring natural variation, we established islands with short- or long-limbed lizards at both low and high densities. We then monitored changes in lower trophic levels, finding that on islands with short-limbed lizards at high-density, web spiders decreased and plants grew more via an indirect positive effect, likely through an herbivore-mediated trophic cascade. Our experiment provides strong support for evolution-to-ecology connections in nature, likely closing an otherwise well-characterized eco-evolutionary feedback loop.

opencc-zeroJun 2023View details →

zenodo36/100

Unveiling global species abundance distributions - Callaghan et al. 2023 - Nature Ecology and Evolution

This repository represents some data and code to reproduce the main figures from Callaghan et al. 2023. Unveiling the global species abundance distributions of Eukaryotes. Nature Ecology and Evolution.

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Ecological correlates of cranial evolution in the megaradiation of dipsadine snakes

Background Dipsadine snakes represent one of the most spectacular vertebrate radiations that have occurred in any continental setting, with over 800 species in South and Central America. Their species richness is paralleled by stunning ecological diversity, ranging from arboreal snail-eating and aquatic eel-eating specialists to terrestrial generalists. Despite the ecological importance of this clade, little is known about the extent to which ecological specialization shapes broader patterns of phenotypic diversity within the group. Here, we test how habitat use and diet have influenced morphological diversification in skull shape across 160 dipsadine species using micro-CT and 3-D geometric morphometrics, and we use a phylogenetic comparative approach to test the contributions of habitat use and diet composition to variation in skull shape among species. Results We demonstrate that while both habitat use and diet are significant predictors of shape in many regions of the skull, habitat use significantly predicts shape in a greater number of skull regions when compared to diet. We also find that across ecological groupings, fossorial and aquatic behaviors result in the strongest deviations in morphospace for several skull regions. We use simulations to address the robustness of our results and describe statistical anomalies that can arise from the application of phylogenetic generalized least squares to complex shape data. Conclusions Both habitat and dietary ecology are significantly correlated with skull shape in dipsadines; the strongest relationships involved skull shape in snakes with aquatic and fossorial lifestyles. This association between skull morphology and multiple ecological axes is consistent with a classic model of adaptive radiation and suggests that ecological factors were an important component in driving morphological diversification in the dipsadine megaradiation.

opencc-zeroJun 2023View details →

zenodo36/100

Graph models underlying templates for annotating a study in ecology and evolution

Schematic representation of the graph models, resources and links to ontologies underlying a set of templates designed to annotate studies in invasion biology, and more generally ecology or evolution. The main template is the “General scoping” template, while each other box would allow a more detailed description of Dataset, Study system, Study design, and research question and hypotheses in Invasion biology. This figure was presented during the <a href="https://hiknowledgeworkshops.com/workshop-2/">June 2023 workshop of the Hi Knowledge initiative</a>.

opencc-by-4.0Sep 2023View details →

dryad36/100