Royal Society Open Science最新文献

Predation pressure is a major force driving the evolution of anti-predatory traits, yet quantifying its intensity in the wild remains difficult. In this study, we combined three complementary methods to evaluate predation risk in Australian butterfly communities: assessing wing damage on wild butterflies, monitoring attacks on artificial butterfly replicas, and surveying bird communities. Across eight sites in Sydney, Australia, we recorded wing damage on 1070 free-living butterflies from five families, assessed attacks on 1600 butterfly replicas, and surveyed local bird diversity. Of the wild butterflies, 807 showed wing damage, with 169 individuals (16% of all butterflies) exhibiting patterns consistent with bird attacks. Among replicas, 114 (7%) showed evidence of predation, of which 31 (2% of all replicas) were likely to be attacked by birds. Predation on wild butterflies was most strongly associated with bird community composition, bird density, and butterfly size (wingspan), while replica attacks were influenced primarily by bird community composition and density. Our results suggest that butterfly wing damage and replica attacks data provide complementary, but not interchangeable, insights into predation risk. When integrated, they offer a more robust picture of true predation pressure. Our results underscore the critical role of bird community structure in shaping predation risk-an important consideration for any method used to assess predation in natural prey communities.

Calanus hyperboreus plays a key role in the functioning of Arctic ecosystems. It is considered highly vulnerable to ocean warming and marine heatwaves, which would reduce its range, expected to shift northward. Yet, C. hyperboreus is reported as far south as the Skagerrak, where it is considered non-native and transported by ocean currents. We argue that this may be an isolated population adapted to warmer temperatures. To test this hypothesis, we exposed C. hyperboreus from the Oslofjord to temperatures from 0°C to 24°C, for 5 days. We recorded survival to identify the upper threshold of thermal tolerance and DNA damage to detect sublethal effects. The thermal response of C. hyperboreus was compared with that of the dominant copepod species in the Oslofjord, Calanus finmarchicus and Metridia longa. We found that the survival of C. hyperboreus did not decrease before reaching 16°C-20°C which was much higher than 13°C-16°C and 4°C-8°C for C. finmarchicus and M. longa, respectively. Calanus hyperboreus showed the least DNA damage, highlighting the adaptation of its physiology to the Oslofjord. Our results suggest the existence of local adaptations to warming in C. hyperboreus that could determine its fate under climate change.

Adaptive radiations are expected to generate striking differences in species and morphological diversity between closely related groups. Not all hypotheses in evolutionary biology, including these observed disparities, are amenable to experimental manipulation or comparative phylogenetics. In some cases, the use of null hypotheses offers a way to test these scientific conjectures such that their premise can be rejected. We examine the Hydrophis sea snakes (Hydrophiinae: Hydrophiini), a putative example of adaptive radiation based on both its species and morphological diversity. We compared its observed species richness and morphological disparity with the closely related, yet species and morphologically depauperate clade, Aipysurus-Emydocephalus. We used phylogenetic null models and a phylomorphospace approach to test for significant differences in diversification rate and in morphological disparity between these two major sea snake lineages. We found no diversification rate differences between the Hydrophis and Aipysurus-Emydocephalus groups under an equal-rates Markov model of diversification. However, Hydrophis species occupy a significantly larger region of the morphospace than the Aipysurus-Emydocephalus group, consistent with previous conclusions that ecological specialization causes increased levels of morphological disparity. While the Hydrophis and Aipysurus-Emydocephalus lineages do not significantly differ in species numbers, the significant morphological disparity among Hydrophis species further upholds its adaptive radiation.

Prey depletion and human-wildlife conflict threaten the critically endangered West African populations of lion (Panthera leo leo), which occupy less than 1.1% of their historic range in West Africa. These threats may alter behaviour through prey selection and affect exposure to parasites to compromise their health. We extracted DNA from faecal samples collected in four national parks in Benin, Burkina Faso and Senegal to characterize haemoparasites, nemabiome and microbiome. We used microsatellite markers to differentiate individuals and five primer sets to complete molecular analyses. From 20 individuals (12 males and 8 females), we found significant differences in the species richness and composition for all parasite groups across host populations and individual lions. We detected haemoparasites, including Babesia and Sarcocystis species, along with Blechomonas, a kinetoplastid, all of which raise potential health concerns. The nemabiome was dominated by Ancylostoma species (hookworms) with additional detections of lungworms from the genera Oslerus and Troglostrongylus. Significant interactions were found between population-level microbiome richness and both nemabiome and haemoparasite diversity. Our study provides the first effort to determine the parasite diversity among West African lion populations using non-invasive metabarcoding. Our findings highlight metabarcoding as a powerful tool to assess spatial variation in health and parasite diversity metrics for an endangered apex predator.

Infant experiences have lifetime implications for individuals' social competence. Therefore, lifelong trajectories can be informed by a nuanced understanding of who developing individuals connect with (i.e. connectivity) and how invested they are in those connections (i.e. quality). Though simple in premise, the practice of examining social connectivity and quality relies on a nuanced understanding of how individuals temporally shift their behavioural repertoire within, or across, partners. We measured peer-peer relationships throughout the first 3 years of life among 49 rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) in large outdoor-housed mixed-sex home groups. We recorded five social behaviours and built multiplex temporal networks. We examined the auto- and cross-correlations of these behaviours using a multivariate multiple response time series model to understand the behavioural dynamics of relationship connectivity and quality. We demonstrate known principles of relationship formation driven by pre-pubescents' and peer partners' traits (i.e. rank, sex, age, kinship). Coupled dynamics suggest that proximity was broadly associated with social dynamics (including aggression), while contact was associated with prosocial dynamics (excluding aggression). Directed behaviours were less associated with each other. These results highlight the dynamic nature of social development across multiple behaviours, underscoring how early social choices shape the formation, stability and maintenance of relationships.

Interspecific species interactions are fundamental evolutionary forces that shape the traits and adaptive strategies of biological communities. However, their diversity and dynamics in deep-sea ecosystems are poorly understood because of their inaccessibility. Here, we report and describe a newly identified species-specific, hermit crab-associated sea anemone named Paracalliactis tsukisome sp. nov. The sea anemone secretes and constructs a unique shell-like structure known as a carcinoecium, which expands the host hermit crab's living space. Stable isotope analyses (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) suggested that P. tsukisome sp. nov. consumes nutritional benefits by consuming host faeces and suspended organic particles from the surrounding environment. Three-dimensional computed tomography imaging elucidated a unidirectional attachment pattern, which was consistently positioned near the shell aperture or carcinoecium edge-a likely adaptation linked to feeding behaviour and carcinoecium formation. The host, Oncopagurus monstrosus (Alcock, 1894), substantially benefits from this association, attaining larger body sizes than other Oncopagurus species, highlighting the functional role of the carcinoecium as an effective shell enhancement in the deep-sea environment. This study provides the first quantitative evidence of mutualism in carcinoecium-forming associations, highlighting a remarkable example of deep-sea symbiosis and hypothesizing how reciprocal benefits are refined over time, fostering the evolution of carcinoecium-forming abilities and species-specific mutualistic relationships.

Player tracking data remain out of reach for many professional football teams, as their video feeds are not sufficiently high quality for computer vision technologies to be used. To help bridge this gap, we present a method that can estimate continuous full-pitch tracking data from discrete data made from broadcast footage. Such data could be collected by clubs or players at a similar cost to event data, which are widely available down to the semi-professional level. We test our method using open-source tracking data and include a version that can be applied to a large set of over 200 games with such discrete data.

Claims have been made about the presumed role of Australia's First Peoples in the extinction of some of Australia's megafauna. However, evidence used to suggest butchering may instead demonstrate fossil collection by Australia's First Peoples. Using micro-computed tomography scanning and microscopic wear analysis, we analysed a cut sthenurine tibia from Mammoth Cave, Western Australia, previously interpreted as evidence of butchering. Our analyses suggest the cut occurred long after death and probably after fossilization. We investigated the possibility of long-distance transportation of a premolar of Zygomaturus trilobus gifted by First Peoples in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. This species is otherwise unknown from northern Australia but common in southern Australia. Using X-ray fluorescence, we tested the potential provenance of the premolar and found that it was elementally indistinguishable from Mammoth Cave premolars. These results suggest that First Peoples may have collected fossils in southern Australia before carrying them to the Kimberley region. A review of other recent claims of killing and/or butchering of extinct megafaunal species suggests they too may have been collected as fossils. We argue that fossils were valued, being collected and transported long distances by the First Peoples in Australia in all probability thousands of years before Europeans arrived on this continent.

This study utilized faecal samples from synanthropic rodents collected during September-December of 2020 from a public park in southern Mexico City, previously identified as positive for SARS-CoV-2, to perform molecular identification of the viral variant. Typing was successful for two Mus musculus and one Rattus norvegicus, revealing Omicron variants BA.5.2 (from a rat) and BA.5.1.17 (from mice). Additionally, confirmation from a reference centre and Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) analysis verified the presence of the Omicron variant. By considering three primary hypotheses regarding Omicron's origin and integrating these findings with concurrent events in Mexico during the initial wave of SARS-CoV-2, it is reasonable to suggest that the variant's emergence may stem from a combination of a 'silent spread' (indicating circulation among populations with limited viral monitoring and sequencing) and a 'mouse origin' (where the progenitor of Omicron transitioned from humans to mice, acquiring mutations that enhanced its ability to infect that host, before re-emerging in humans). Consequently, our results indicate that Omicron was present in urban rodents a year prior to its official emergence, amplified by the conditions existing during the first wave of COVID-19 in Mexico.

This study introduces a systematic framework for analysing heterogeneity through three principal measure classes: dispersion-based, expected-difference and divergent approaches. I demonstrate that these classes capture distinct structural aspects, with graph heterogeneity measures incorporating global topology beyond degree counts while degree-focused approaches quantify connectivity variation. Key findings establish that apparent inconsistencies across measures reflect heterogeneity's complex nature rather than methodological flaws. The framework enables context-appropriate measure selection for applications ranging from epidemiological modelling to cyber security, while highlighting the critical distinction between degree-focused and topology-aware heterogeneity quantification. The work advances network science by mapping methodological trade-offs and proposing future development of tunable hybrid measures for complex systems analysis.