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Animals with color vision use color information in intra- and interspecific communication, which in turn may drive the evolution of conspicuous colored body traits via natural and sexual selection. A recent study found that the transparent wings of small flies and wasps in lower-reflectance light environments display vivid and stable structural color patterns, called "wing interference patterns" (
Shallow eutrophic lakes commonly exist in two alternative stable states: a clear-water state and a turbid water state. A number of mechanisms, including both abiotic and biotic processes, buffer the respective states against changes, whereas other mechanisms likely drive transitions between states. Our earlier research shows that a large proportion of zooplanktivorous fish populations in shallow l
We tested whether bacterial communities of subarctic heath soil are adapted to elevated temperature after experimental warming by open-top greenhouses for 7 or 17 years. The long-term warming by 1-2 degrees C significantly decreased bacterial community growth, by 28% and 73% after 7 and 17 years, respectively. The decrease was most likely due to decreased availability of labile substrate under war
The signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus is an invasive species in Sweden, threatening the red-listed nobel crayfish Astacus astacus through spreading the crayfish plague. Time-to-event models can handle censored data on such introduced populations for which the state (successful or not) is only partially known at the last observation, but even though data on introduced populations most often
Young-of-the-year pike Esox lucius foraging on copepods experienced different foraging success depending on prey pigmentation in water visually degraded by brown colouration or algae. Both attack rate and prey consumption rate were higher for E. lucius foraging on transparent prey in brown water, whereas the opposite was true in algal turbid water. Pigments in copepod prey may have a cryptic funct
Environmental conditions and human activities play a significant role in structuring novel assemblages of native and non-native species. Ongoing and future climatic change may alter the performance of native and non-native species and their biotic interactions. In the northern hemisphere, expected climate changes include warmer temperatures and higher precipitation, the latter of which may increas
The McMurdo Dry Valley lakes of Antarctica constitute some of the harshest and most isolated freshwater environments on Earth which might be expected to limit the biogeographical expansion of many organisms. Despite this, we found that the biodiversity of rotifer zooplankton is the highest ever recorded on the Antarctic mainland. We identified in total nine rotifer taxa, of which six are new to th
Spatially variable selection has the potential to result in local adaptation unless counteracted by gene flow. Therefore, barriers to gene flow will help facilitate divergence between populations that differ in local selection pressures. We performed spatially and temporally replicated reciprocal field transplant experiments between inland and coastal habitats using males of the common blue damsel
Streams, rivers and lakes across wide areas of the Northern hemisphere have been subject to an increase in water color over the last decades. This increase, also known as browning, is a result of rising dissolved organic matter (DOM) and iron (Fe) concentrations in the water. Over the years, browning has received ample attention due to its impact on the structure and function of freshwater ecosyst
The eddy-covariance (EC) method is the most direct micrometeorological approach to measure the surface–atmosphere trace gases under turbulent conditions. The measurement of trace gas fluxes by eddy covariance requires fast-response instruments (higher than 1 Hz) to measure the turbulent fluctuations of vertical wind velocity and trace gas mixing ratio. For many trace gas species, such fast respons
Sisal (Agave sisalana) is a climate-resilient crop grown on large-scale farms in semi-arid areas. However, no studies have investigated soil greenhouse gas (GHGs: CO2, N2O and CH4) fluxes from these plantations and how they relate to other land cover types. We examined GHG fluxes (Fs) in a sisal chronosequence at Teita Sisal Estatein southern Kenya. The effects of stand age on Fs were examined usi
I denna rapport redovisas populationstrender för 175 svenska fågelarter för åren 1975–2011. Fåglarna har räknats på vintern och på sommaren enligt strikt standardiserade metoder. Sommar- respektive vinterpunktrutter har räknats sedan 1975, i huvudsak i södra Sverige. Standardrutterna räknas också på sommaren men täcker hela Sverige. De har räknats sedan 1996. Vintern 2010/2011 räknades 75 000 fåglWe present the results of the Swedish Bird Survey, run by the Department of Biology, Lund University, as a part of the National Monitoring Programme of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The results for 2011 include data from 589 winter point count routes in 2010/2011 (36th winter), of which 273 were carried out during the Christmas/New Year count and 262 summer point count routes (37th
Brazil's Atlantic Forest biome is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, whose heterogeneous ecosystems are threatened by habitat loss and climate change. Palaeoecological research can provide essential context for the impacts of anthropogenic climate change in the 21st Century and beyond, but existing studies have notable limitations in the insights they can provide: vegetation proxy data are
Carrion is a frequent but overlooked source of nutrients to the soil. The decomposition of carrion is accelerated by invertebrate scavengers, but the impact of the scavengers on below-ground biota and its functions is scarcely known. We conducted a laboratory experiment to investigate the effects of the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides on the soil community of a temperate broadleaved forest
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the largest budget item in the European Union, but varied data reporting hampers holistic analysis. Here we have assembled the first dataset to our knowledge to report individual CAP payments by standardized CAP funding measures and geolocation. We created this dataset by translating, geolocating to the county or province (NUTS3) level, and consistently harm
Recent studies suggest that oncogenic processes (from precancerous lesions to metastatic cancers) are widespread in wild animal species, but their importance for ecosystem functioning is still underestimated by evolutionary biologists and animal ecologists. Similar to what has been observed in humans, environmental modifications that often place wild organisms into an evolutionary trap and/or expo
Movement and migration are fundamental parts of the life cycle of most organisms on Earth and occur at an astonishing range of spatial and temporal scales, from iconic pole-to-pole migrations of some birds to diel migrations of enormous amounts of millimeter-sized crustaceans through the waters of oceans and lakes. To move or not to move in a certain situation is a decision that is often taken by
Frequency-dependent (FD) selection is a central process maintaining genetic variation and mediating evolution of population fitness. FD selection has attracted interest from researchers in a wide range of biological subdisciplines, including evolutionary genetics, behavioural ecology and, more recently, community ecology. However, the implications of frequency dependence for applied biological pro
The coexistence of ecologically similar species might be counteracted by ecological drift and demographic stochasticity, both of which erode local diversity. With niche differentiation, species can be maintained through performance trade-offs between environments, but trade-offs are difficult to invoke for species with similar ecological niches. Such similar species might then go locally extinct d
Interspecific hybridization is the process where closely related species mate and produce offspring with admixed genomes. The genomic revolution has shown that hybridization is common, and that it may represent an important source of novel variation. Although most interspecific hybrids are sterile or less fit than their parents, some may survive and reproduce, enabling the transfer of adaptive var
