Biological Reviews最新文献

Hill, M. & Hill, A. (2012). The magnesium inhibition and arrested phagosome hypotheses: new perspectives on the evolution and ecology of Symbiodinium symbioses. Biological Reviews 87, 804-821. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2012.00223.x

In the originally published online version, the first and last names of the authors were erroneously transposed. The correct names are:

Malcolm Hill and April Hill

The online version has been corrected accordingly.

We apologize for this error.

Biological invasions are one of the major drivers of biodiversity decline and have been shown to have far-reaching consequences for society and the economy. Preventing the introduction and spread of alien species represents the most effective solution to reducing their impacts on nature and human well-being. However, implementing effective solutions requires a good understanding of where the species are established and how biological invasions develop over time. Knowledge of the status and trends of biological invasions is thus key for guiding research efforts, informing stakeholders and policymakers, for targeted management efforts, and preparing for the future. However, information about the status and trends of alien species is scattered, patchy, and highly incomplete, making it difficult to assess. Published reports for individual regions and taxonomic groups are available, but large-scale overviews are scarce. A global assessment therefore requires a review of available knowledge with careful consideration of sampling and reporting biases. This paper provides a comprehensive global assessment of the status and trends of alien species for major taxonomic groups [Bacteria, Protozoa, Stramenopila, Alveolata, and Rhizaria (SAR), fungi, plants, and animals] for Intergovernmental Panel of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) regions.

The review provides irrefutable evidence that alien species have been introduced to all regions worldwide including Antarctica and have spread to even the most remote islands. The numbers of alien species are increasing within all taxa and across all regions, and are often even accelerating. Large knowledge gaps exist, particularly for taxonomic groups other than vascular plants and vertebrates, for regions in Africa and Central Asia, and for aquatic realms. In fact, for inconspicuous species, such as Bacteria, Protozoa, and to some degree SAR and fungi, we found records for very few species and regions. Observed status and trends are thus highly influenced by research effort. More generally, it is likely that all lists for alien species of any taxonomic group and region are incomplete. The reported species numbers therefore represent minima, and we can expect additions to all lists in the near future. We identified six key challenges which need to be addressed to reduce knowledge gaps and to improve our ability to assess trends and status of biological invasions.

Territoriality is costly, and animals should adopt strategies to cope with these costs. Seasonal territoriality for breeding – a common strategy in many groups of animals – can reduce costs during the non-breeding season but requires establishing new territories every breeding season. Many seasonal breeders also become more tolerant of conspecifics during the non-breeding season and form social groups containing many individuals. Recent evidence has suggested that these social associations are not random and can entail carry-over effects extending into the following breeding season. Here, we propose that one strategy that seasonal, territorial breeders may employ is to use non-breeding social behaviour to reduce future breeding territoriality costs, through a dear-enemy-like effect. Specifically, by being social during the non-breeding season with previous territorial neighbours, individuals can increase both their and their neighbour's survival, and jointly defend and exploit common territorial areas, ultimately reducing neighbourhood turnover. Reduced neighbourhood turnover can then facilitate re-forming prior territorial boundaries, thereby offsetting the costs of territory establishment and facilitating earlier breeding (which can significantly increase reproductive output). We review evidence supporting our hypothesis and provide predictions and future research directions to bridge current gaps in understanding the link between non-breeding social behaviours and breeding territoriality.

Theory predicts that facultatively asexual animals, which can leverage the advantages of both sexual and asexual reproduction, should outcompete obligately sexual and obligately asexual animals. Yet, paradoxically, obligate sexual reproduction predominates in many animal lineages, while the most flexible form of facultative asexuality (i.e. facultative parthenogenesis) appears to be rare. Recent theoretical work suggests that sexual conflict could help to resolve this paradox. Males that coercively fertilise females' eggs may, in the process, prevent alleles for parthenogenesis from spreading by limiting opportunities for asexual reproduction. Coercive males may also inhibit asexual reproduction by making resistance to sex disproportionately costly for females. In this review, we outline evidence of interactions with males that could impose costs on parthenogenetic females or hinder their ability to reproduce parthenogenetically in diverse animal taxa. The evidence suggests that such interactions between the sexes have the potential to mediate sexual conflict over mating and reproductive mode, both within facultative species and between closely related sexual and asexual taxa. However, the relative costs of sex and parthenogenesis are clearly context dependent, and much remains unknown. The most direct evidence for male inhibition of parthenogenesis comes from stick insects, but several other systems offer promising avenues for further investigation. Further research on the costs of mating and resistance in such systems could shed light on the reasons for the puzzling rarity of facultative parthenogenesis in nature.

Sharks have often been perceived to play a critical role in the dynamics of coral reef ecosystems globally. Yet, there is relatively little evidence to support this idea across all but a limited set of species and contexts. Research on the roles and importance of reef sharks has been complicated by logistical challenges in collecting data on sharks compounded by widespread declines in shark populations and reef state due to anthropogenic stressors. However, a better understanding of ecological roles is essential to uncover when, where, how, and to what degree sharks contribute to the function of coral reefs. To address this lack of understanding, we present a standardized framework for determining the ecological roles of reef sharks, including how different streams of data related to movement ecology, trophic ecology, demographics, and ecological context can be combined within specific functional components that collectively define the ecological roles of reef sharks. A series of steps and questions are used to guide research on individual species and promote collection of necessary data. We explore what data in real-world examples can mean for uncovering roles and how data can be interpreted from a functional perspective. Although the framework is centred around breaking down ecological roles into simpler components, it forces researchers to complete a comprehensive evaluation of the animal's ecology and consider how data from each of these components complements each other in a broader context. The need for a detailed and directed approach for researchers to explore the mechanisms, patterns, and causes that comprise reef shark ecological roles is supported by a literature review showing expansive knowledge gaps that persist for most coral-reef-resident and smaller-bodied species. Existing research on the movement and trophic ecology of reef sharks is diverse and spans a broad range of topics and contexts, indicating potential for combining and re-evaluating existing data to improve current knowledge of roles. Resident species with relatively large amounts of published research included grey reef (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos), blacktip reef (Carcharhinus melanopterus), and whitetip reef sharks (Triaenodon obesus), which are among the most widely abundant sharks on coral reefs. As ongoing changes to coral reefs may alter rates of ecological processes, understanding the roles and importance of reef sharks will be crucial to predicting future reef states and enacting effective conservation and management strategies to preserve key functions.

The environment experienced by a mother influences offspring phenotype through maternal effects, which can have significant adaptive benefits for both the mother and the offspring. However, the ways in which maternal environments influence offspring development are extremely diverse, and empirical studies using an outcome-based approach often fail to support different maternal effect hypotheses. We argue that this is in part because such studies overlook the ontogeny of the maternal phenotype. Here, we review how the environments experienced by a mother across different life stages influence the development of the maternal phenotype. Then, we propose a new framework that differentiates between two main processes of maternal effects according to the life stage at which a specific maternal trait is developed and how long its effect persists during the mother's reproductive life. The “consistent” maternal phenotype is developed mainly during a mother's early life and consistently affects the phenotype of all offspring produced during her lifetime, whereas the “flexible” maternal phenotype changes in response to environmental conditions experienced during her adult life and affects the phenotype of her subsequent offspring. We review how consistent and flexible maternal effects can contribute to different maternal effect processes, such as condition-transfer effects, cascading effects, intergenerational plasticity and developmental programming. We also provide empiricists with a quantitative genetic method, which integrates the ontogenetic scope into maternal effect testing, to determine how the early or late environments shape the maternal phenotype across ontogeny and then examine how this maternal phenotype affects offspring phenotype. We highlight that this conceptual and methodological framework of disassembling the multiple processes by which genes and environments interactively influence the maternal and offspring phenotypes will help us to explain the astonishing variation in maternal strategies and life-history trade-off patterns.