Trends in ecology & evolution最新文献

Life history strategies, which combine schedules of survival, development, and reproduction, shape how natural selection acts on species' heritable traits and organismal fitness. Comparative analyses have historically ranked life histories along a fast-slow continuum, describing a negative association between time allocation to reproduction and development versus survival. However, higher-quality, more representative data and analyses have revealed that life history variation cannot be fully accounted for by this single continuum. Moreover, studies often do not test predictions from existing theories and instead operate as exploratory exercises. To move forward, we offer three recommendations for future investigations: standardizing life history traits, overcoming taxonomic siloes, and using theory to move from describing to understanding life history variation across the Tree of Life.

We develop a conceptual framework for geo-evolutionary feedbacks which describes the mutual interplay between landscape change and the evolution of traits of organisms residing on the landscape, with an emphasis on contemporary timeframes. Geo-evolutionary feedbacks can be realized via the direct evolution of geomorphic engineering traits or can be mediated by the evolution of trait variation that affects the population size and distribution of the specific geomorphic engineering organisms involved. Organisms that modify their local environments provide the basis for patch-scale geo-evolutionary feedbacks, whereas spatial self-organization provides a mechanism for geo-evolutionary feedbacks at the landscape scale. Understanding these likely prevalent geo-evolutionary feedbacks, that occur at timescales similar to anthropogenic climate change, will be essential to better predict landscape adaptive capacity and change.

Accelerating rates of climate change have intensified research on thermal adaptation. Increasing temperature fluctuations, a prominent feature of climate change, means that the persistence of many species depends on both heat and cold tolerance across the entire life cycle. In endotherms, research has focused on specific life stages, with changes in thermoregulation across life rarely being examined. Consequently, there is a need to (i) analyse how heat and cold tolerance mechanisms coevolve, and (ii) test whether antagonistic effects between heat and cold tolerance across different life stages limit thermal adaptation. Information on genes influencing heat and cold tolerance and how they are expressed through life will enable more accurate modelling of species vulnerabilities to future climatic volatility.

The concept of 'co-culture' is introduced as a novel framework for understanding the mutual cultural evolution between animal species, including, but not only, humans. It explores the dynamics of interspecies interactions, particularly in how different species influence each other's behavioural and cognitive adaptations. Various instances of interspecies cultural exchange are highlighted, such as the acquisition of medicinal plants from animals resulting in a shared medicinal culture, adaptive behaviours of urban wildlife, and cooperative behaviours between animal species. Co-culture challenges the notion of species-specific culture, underscoring the complexity and interconnectedness of human and animal societies, and between animal societies. Further research into co-culture is advocating and emphasising its implications for conservation, urban planning, and a deeper understanding of animal cognition and behaviour.

Large herbivores are important components of rewilding. However, populations can grow fast: we predict that, where top-down control is insufficient, herbivores could undermine long-term rewilding goals. To avoid this, nature-mimicking interventions are required to achieve the right amount of herbivory, in the right place, at the right time through the rewilding process.

Group-living animals sleep together, yet most research treats sleep as an individual process. Here, we argue that social interactions during the sleep period contribute in important, but largely overlooked, ways to animal groups' social dynamics, while patterns of social interaction and the structure of social connections within animal groups play important, but poorly understood, roles in shaping sleep behavior. Leveraging field-appropriate methods, such as direct and video-based observation, and increasingly common on-animal motion sensors (e.g., accelerometers), behavioral indicators can be tracked to measure sleep in multiple individuals in a group of animals simultaneously. Sleep proximity networks and sleep timing networks can then be used to investigate the collective dynamics of sleep in wild group-living animals.

Understanding ecosystem responses to global change have long challenged scientists due to notoriously complex properties arising from the interplay between biological and environmental factors. We propose the concept of ecosystem synchrony - that is, similarity in the temporal fluctuations of an ecosystem function between multiple ecosystems - to overcome this challenge. Ecosystem synchrony can manifest due to spatially correlated environmental fluctuations (Moran effect), exchange of energy, nutrients, and organic matter and similarity in biotic characteristics across ecosystems. By taking advantage of long-term surveys, remote sensing and the increased use of high-frequency sensors to assess ecosystem functions, ecosystem synchrony can foster our understanding of the coordinated ecosystem responses at unexplored spatiotemporal scales, identify emerging portfolio effects among ecosystems, and deliver signals of ecosystem perturbations.

Stoichiometric homeostasis is the ability of life to maintain inner chemical constancy despite changes in the environment and resources. Organisms can be stoichiometrically homeostatic to different degrees. This variation can be substantial even within species, but is ignored in most studies of ecological stoichiometry. Recent studies suggest that resource limitations are an important selective pressure behind homeostasis, but are contradictory in direction, likely owing to differences in nutrient storage strategies. Understanding the selective pressures underlying stoichiometric homeostasis, and its potential for rapid evolution, are key to predicting eco-evolutionary dynamics. This calls for the development of an evolutionary theory of stoichiometric homeostasis that incorporates rapid evolution, as well as for empirical studies to test the underlying mechanisms.