Trends in ecology & evolution最新文献

Tropical and subtropical regions hold most of Earth's biodiversity. These regions have often been considered unsuitable for ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) research due to assumptions about poor DNA preservation. Recent studies challenge this view: they show that aeDNA can persist and provide ecological insights under warm and humid conditions. We review aeDNA research across these regions, synthesising methodological and geographic patterns. We also identify obstacles related to preservation, reference databases, infrastructure, and research capacity. Despite challenges, tropical aeDNA is beginning to reveal past biodiversity trends, human impacts, and ecosystem resilience for up to a million years. Methodological refinements and inclusive collaborations in aeDNA research open powerful opportunities to reconstruct deep-time ecological histories in the world's most dynamic and threatened environments.

Disease risk varies among ecological communities because species differ in their host quality, that is, their contribution to parasite fitness. We propose a four-component framework of host quality that harmonizes terminology across plant and animal domains. Using this framework, we demonstrate how the host defense strategies of resistance and tolerance relate to distinct components of host quality. Easily extendable to multi-parasite systems, the framework also helps to identify new ways of examining the continuum between specialist and generalist parasites. Ultimately, breaking down and formalizing the components of host quality helps with synthesizing disease ecology across domains and unlocking relationships between biodiversity and disease risk.

Recent advances in climate modeling and remote sensing have increased the expectation that finer-grained climate data will improve biological relevance. However, the appropriate scale for biology depends on the system and the question posed, and finer-grained data do not always improve inference in ecology and evolution. In this review we synthesize knowledge from micrometeorology, physiology, and landscape ecology to develop a framework integrating climatic and biological lenses for understanding the scales of climate exposure. This framework can aid multiscale investigation of microclimate effects on individuals, populations, and communities. We newly conceptualize systems of climate scale, provide recommendations for trait-based approaches to determine the scales relevant to climate-biology interactions, and highlight opportunities offered by novel methods and technologies.

We live in a time of ecological crisis, with natural systems widely depauperated, biodiversity indicators in ongoing decline, and concerns that environmental tipping points are being approached or crossed. Given the scale of these challenges and the limited resource brought to bear on addressing them, it seems reasonable to argue that in response the discipline of ecology and its research community be put on something more akin to an emergency footing. Multiple arguments have been made for why ecology should not become mission-oriented. None seems compelling. Rather, in addition to improved planetary outcomes, there is an array of potential benefits, particularly if institutions, funders, and other ecological community actors support researchers as they shift research priorities to more mission-relevant avenues.

A century after Turesson introduced ecotypes as locally adapted subunits of species, their origins and nature remain debated. Recent advances in molecular ecology have breathed new life into the ecotype concept and significantly expanded our understanding of how ecotypes form. Here, we clarify how ecotypes can be distinguished from other forms of local adaptation, outline criteria for their recognition, and synthesise evidence on the ecological and evolutionary processes that give rise to them. We then evaluate what genomics has uncovered about the origin of ecotypes, revealing pronounced roles of pre-existing variation, large-effect loci, structural variants, gene regulation, and complex demographic histories. Our framework refines Turesson's concept and highlights outstanding questions about the predictability, persistence, and evolutionary significance of ecotypes.

Human or 'social' dimensions are increasingly prominent in the conservation translocation literature yet in practice they tend to be infrequently or narrowly applied. To assist biophysical scientists and practitioners to act upon social dimensions, we distinguish four ways of thinking about the social dynamics of translocations: identified stakeholders, processes of decision-making, visions of nature, and values in science. We use three case studies to show how working through these four social dimensions together can help to illuminate the multiple meanings and effects of translocations. We discuss how biophysical scientists and practitioners can take responsibility for each social dimension and thus make better choices for people and nature.

While populations can adapt to rapid environmental change in the Anthropocene, adaptation costs may limit evolutionary rescue, even when standing population genetic variation is high. Here, we argue that adaptation costs are linked to evolutionary trade-offs involving scenario- or system-specific traits that usually promote environmental specialization and species coexistence. Adaptation costs can be cryptic, and are more likely to emerge in populations under fluctuating environments or under multiple stressors. Adaptation costs mediated by ecological processes such as competition and symbiosis can limit population growth and species ranges. We advocate for considering adaptation costs in global change studies to improve predictions of future population responses, biological production, and ecosystem resilience.

The literature on domestication commonly calls the association between human domesticators and their plant and animal domesticates mutualistic, yet this designation is rarely examined critically. Here, we assess its validity based on the long-accepted ecological definition of mutualism and current evidence for origins, subsequent evolution, and present features of domesticator-domesticate interactions. We argue that it is difficult to wholly align these associations with standard concepts of mutualism. Instead, domesticator-domesticate interactions vary across domestication pathways and have changed throughout domestication timelines, spanning antagonism to commensalism to mutualism. We argue that the later stages of domestication in some intensively domesticated species form exploitative rather than mutualistic interactions. Moving away from conceptualizing domestication as mutualistic raises new questions regarding its ecology and evolution.

Climate change threatens coral reefs globally. Birkart and Alvarez-Filip document local extirpation of a keystone coral species in Mexico following unprecedented heat stress, suggesting similar outcomes for ∼70% of the Greater Caribbean's shallow-water reefs. This highlights the need to upscale surveys using emerging technologies to locate, protect, and propagate surviving corals.

Affiliative social relationships have clear links to fitness in many species, yet exactly why that is the case remains elusive. We unify theory from socioecology and network science to set forth testable predictions of how individuals should invest in their social relationships given the relative benefits of different social strategies across environmental contexts. We propose that relationship quality provides access to social support, which can help animals faced with local pressures such as contest competition, while relationship quantity provides access to social tolerance, which can help with global pressures such as predation. The Adaptive Relationships Framework sets the foundation for the systematic study of how social and ecological pressures drive adaptive variation in the quality and quantity of social relationships.