Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Temperature drives diversification in a model adaptive radiation
The warmer regions harbour more species, attributable to accelerated speciation and increased ecological opportunities for coexistence. While correlations between temperature and energy availability and habitat area have been suggested as major drivers of these biodiversity patterns, temperature can theoretically also have direct effects on the evolution of diversity. Here, we experimentally studied the evolution of diversity in a model adaptive radiation of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens across a temperature gradient. Diversification increased at higher temperatures, driven by both faster generation of genetic vari...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Zhang, Q.-G., Lu, H.-S., Buckling, A. Tags: ecology, evolution Source Type: research

The emergence and selection of reputation systems that drive cooperative behaviour
Reputational concerns are believed to play a crucial role in explaining cooperative behaviour among non-kin humans. Individuals cooperate to avoid a negative social image, if being branded as defector reduces pay-offs from future interactions. Similarly, individuals sanction defectors to gain a reputation as punisher, prompting future co-players to cooperate. But reputation can only effectively support cooperation if a sufficient number of individuals condition their strategies on their co-players' reputation, and if a sufficient number of group members are willing to record and transmit the relevant information about past...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Schlaepfer, A. Tags: behaviour, evolution Source Type: research

Camouflage strategies interfere differently with observer search images
Numerous animals rely on camouflage for defence. Substantial past work has identified the presence of multiple strategies for concealment, and tested the mechanisms underpinning how they work. These include background matching, D-RUP coloration to destroy target edges, and distractive markings that may divert attention from key target features. Despite considerable progress, work has focused on how camouflage types prevent initial detection by naive observers. However, predators will often encounter multiple targets over time, providing the opportunity to learn or focus attention through search images. At present, we know ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Troscianko, J., Skelhorn, J., Stevens, M. Tags: behaviour, cognition, ecology Source Type: research

Social interactions shape individual and collective personality in social spiders
The behavioural composition of a group and the dynamics of social interactions can both influence how social animals work collectively. For example, individuals exhibiting certain behavioural tendencies may have a disproportionately large impact on the group, and so are referred to as keystone individuals, while interactions between individuals can facilitate information transmission about resources. Despite the potential impact of both behavioural composition and interactions on collective behaviour, the relationship between consistent behaviours (also known as personalities) and social interactions remains poorly underst...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Hunt, E. R., Mi, B., Fernandez, C., Wong, B. M., Pruitt, J. N., Pinter-Wollman, N. Tags: behaviour, systems biology, ecology Source Type: research

Jealous females? Female competition and reproductive suppression in a wild promiscuous primate
Female–female competition over paternal care has rarely been investigated in promiscuous mammals, where discreet forms of male care have recently been reported despite low paternity certainty. We investigated female competition over paternal care in a wild promiscuous primate, the chacma baboon (Papio ursinus), where pregnant and lactating females establish strong social bonds (friendships) with males that provide care to their offspring. We tested whether pregnant and lactating females interfere with the sexual activity of their male friend to prevent new conceptions that might lead to the subsequent dilution of his...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Baniel, A., Cowlishaw, G., Huchard, E. Tags: behaviour, evolution Source Type: research

Regional climate and local-scale biotic acceptance explain native-exotic richness relationships in Australian annual plant communities
We present a hierarchical metacommunity framework to explain how contrasting NERRs may emerge across scales and study systems, and then apply this framework to NERRs in an invaded winter annual plant system in southwest Western Australia. We analysed NERRs at increasing spatial scales from neighbourhoods (0.09 m2) to communities (225 m2) to metacommunities (greater than 10 ha) within a multilevel structural equation model. In contrast to many previous studies, native and exotic richness were positively related at the neighbourhood scale and were not significantly associated at larger scales. Heterogeneity in soil surface p...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Towers, I. R., Dwyer, J. M. Tags: ecology, environmental science Source Type: research

Host defences against avian brood parasitism: an endocrine perspective
Host defences against avian brood parasites are the outcome of well-documented coevolutionary arms races, yet important questions about variation in hosts' antiparasitic response traits remain poorly understood. Why are certain defences employed by some species or individuals and not by others? Here, we propose that understanding variability in and the evolution of host defences can be facilitated by the study of the underlying physiological mechanisms. Specifically, because antiparasitic strategies involve behaviours that have been shown to be hormonally regulated in other contexts, we hypothesize that host responses to b...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Abolins-Abols, M., Hauber, M. E. Tags: behaviour, physiology Review articles Source Type: research

Integrating the aesthetic value of landscapes and biological diversity
As a cultural ecosystem service, the aesthetic value of landscapes contributes to human well-being, but studies linking biodiversity and ecosystem services generally do not account for this particular service. Therefore, congruence between the aesthetic perception of landscapes, ecological value and biodiversity remains poorly understood. Here, we describe the conceptual background, current methodologies and future challenges of assessing landscape aesthetics and its relationship with biodiversity. We highlight the methodological gaps between the assessment of landscape aesthetics, ecological diversity and functioning. We ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Tribot, A.-S., Deter, J., Mouquet, N. Tags: ecology Review articles Source Type: research

Indirect ecological effects interact with community genetic effects in a host-parasite system and dramatically reduce parasite burden
Community genetic (CG) effects and ecological factors create a complex set of interactions that are key drivers of evolutionary dynamics in ecological systems. To date, most studies investigating trait variation have focused on either effects of intraspecific genetic variation or on genotype by environment (GxE) interactions in isolation. Poorly investigated but very important are the interactions between CGs and indirect ecological effects (IEEs) that are caused by plant–soil interactions. Here, we tested how CGs in a cabbage host and its aphid parasite depended on the ecological conditions under which the host was ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - September 5, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Khudr, M. S., Purkiss, S. A., Hager, R. Tags: ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Difference in control between spring and autumn migration in birds: insight from seasonal changes in hypothalamic gene expression in captive buntings
We hypothesized differences in molecular strategies for similar journeys that migrants undertake to reproduce in spring and to overwinter in autumn. We tested this in redheaded buntings (Emberiza bruniceps) photoinduced into spring and autumn migratory states, with winter and summer non-migratory states as controls. Compared with controls, buntings fattened, gained weight and showed Zugunruhe (nocturnal migratory restlessness) in the migratory state. Spring migration was associated with greater fat and body mass, and higher intensity of Zugunruhe, compared with autumn migration. Circulating corticosterone levels were highe...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 29, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Sharma, A., Singh, D., Malik, S., Gupta, N. J., Rani, S., Kumar, V. Tags: behaviour Source Type: research

Testing the sensory trade-off hypothesis in New World bats
Detection of evolutionary shifts in sensory systems is challenging. By adopting a molecular approach, our earlier study proposed a sensory trade-off hypothesis between a loss of colour vision and an origin of high-duty-cycle (HDC) echolocation in Old World bats. Here, we test the hypothesis in New World bats, which include HDC echolocators that are distantly related to Old World HDC echolocators, as well as vampire bats, which have an infrared sensory system apparently unique among bats. Through sequencing the short-wavelength opsin gene (SWS1) in 16 species (29 individuals) of New World bats, we identified a novel SWS1 po...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 29, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Wu, J., Jiao, H., Simmons, N. B., Lu, Q., Zhao, H. Tags: genetics, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Microparasite dispersal in metapopulations: a boon or bane to the host population?
Although connectivity can promote host species persistence in a metapopulation, dispersal may also enable disease transmission, an effect further complicated by the impact that parasite distribution may have on host–parasite population dynamics. We investigated the effects of connectivity and initial parasite distribution (clustered or dispersed) on microparasite–host dynamics in experimental metapopulations, using guppies and Gyrodactylus turnbulli. We created metapopulations of guppies divided into four subpopulations and introduced either a low level of parasites to all subpopulations (dispersed) or a high l...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 29, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Tadiri, C. P., Scott, M. E., Fussmann, G. F. Tags: ecology, health and disease and epidemiology Source Type: research

Context-dependent colonization of terrestrial habitat 'islands by a long-distance migrant bird
Landscape context can affect how individuals perceive patch quality during colonization. However, although context-dependent colonization has been observed in aquatic environments, it has rarely been studied in terrestrial environments or at large spatial scales. In this paper, we assessed how landscape context influenced colonization rates in a large-scale (ca 7000 km2) terrestrial system where colonizers (Willow Warbler Phylloscopus trochilus) are capable of rapid, long-distance movements. Bioacoustic recorders were used to detect first song dates (an indicator of colonization or re-colonization) and settlement in 23 nat...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 29, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Whytock, R. C., Fuentes-Montemayor, E., Watts, K., Macgregor, N. A., Williams, L., Park, K. J. Tags: behaviour, ecology Source Type: research

Stress and early experience underlie dominance status and division of labour in a clonal insect
Cooperation and division of labour are fundamental in the ‘major transitions’ in evolution. While the factors regulating cell differentiation in multi-cellular organisms are quite well understood, we are just beginning to unveil the mechanisms underlying individual specialization in cooperative groups of animals. Clonal ants allow the study of which factors influence task allocation without confounding variation in genotype and morphology. Here, we subjected larvae and freshly hatched workers of the clonal ant Platythyrea punctata to different rearing conditions and investigated how these manipulations affected...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 29, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Bernadou, A., Schrader, L., Pable, J., Hoffacker, E., Meusemann, K., Heinze, J. Tags: behaviour, genomics, evolution Source Type: research

Increased reproductive investment associated with greater survival and longevity in Cassin's auklets
Individuals increase lifetime reproductive output through a trade-off between investment in future survival and immediate reproductive success. This pattern may be obscured in certain higher quality individuals that possess greater reproductive potential. The Cassin's auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus) is a long-lived species where some individuals exhibit greater reproductive ability through a behaviour called double brooding. Here, we analyse 32 years of breeding histories from marked known-age auklets to test whether double brooding increases lifetime fitness despite the increased mortality and reduced lifespan higher rep...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - August 29, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Johns, M. E., Warzybok, P., Bradley, R. W., Jahncke, J., Lindberg, M., Breed, G. A. Tags: behaviour, ecology, evolution Source Type: research