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.

Artificial light at night decreases metamorphic duration and juvenile growth in a widespread amphibian
Artificial light at night (ALAN) affects over 20% of the earth's surface and is estimated to increase 6% per year. Most studies of ALAN have focused on a single mechanism or life stage. We tested for indirect and direct ALAN effects that occurred by altering American toads' (Anaxyrus americanus) ecological interactions or by altering toad development and growth, respectively. We conducted an experiment over two life stages using outdoor mesocosms and indoor terraria. In the first phase, the presence of ALAN reduced metamorphic duration and periphyton biomass. The effects of ALAN appeared to be mediated through direct effec...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - July 4, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Dananay, K. L., Benard, M. F. Tags: ecology Source Type: research

Evolution of thermal tolerance and its fitness consequences: parallel and non-parallel responses to urban heat islands across three cities
The question of parallel evolution—what causes it, and how common it is—has long captured the interest of evolutionary biologists. Widespread urban development over the last century has driven rapid evolutionary responses on contemporary time scales, presenting a unique opportunity to test the predictability and parallelism of evolutionary change. Here we examine urban evolution in an acorn-dwelling ant species, focusing on the urban heat island signal and the ant's tolerance of these altered urban temperature regimes. Using a common-garden experimental design with acorn ant colonies collected from urban and ru...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - July 4, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Diamond, S. E., Chick, L. D., Perez, A., Strickler, S. A., Martin, R. A. Tags: evolution Source Type: research

Multiple adaptive and non-adaptive processes determine responsiveness to heterospecific alarm calls in African savannah herbivores
Heterospecific alarm calls may provide crucial survival benefits shaping animal behaviour. Multispecies studies can disentangle the relative importance of the various processes determining these benefits, but previous studies have included too few species for alternative hypotheses to be tested quantitatively in a comprehensive analysis. In a community-wide study of African savannah herbivores, we here, for the first time to our knowledge, partition alarm responses according to distinct aspects of the signaller–receiver relationship and thereby uncover the impact of several concurrent adaptive and non-adaptive proces...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - July 4, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Meise, K., Franks, D. W., Bro-Jorgensen, J. Tags: behaviour, ecology Source Type: research

Correction to 'Experiential contributions to social dominance in a rat model of fragile-X syndrome
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Saxena, K., Webster, J., Hallas-Potts, A., Mackenzie, R., Spooner, P. A., Thomson, D., Kind, P., Chattarji, S., Morris, R. G. M. Tags: behaviour, cognition Corrections Source Type: research

Correction to 'Reproduction triggers adaptive increases in body size in female mole-rats
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Thorley, J., Katlein, N., Goddard, K., Zöttl, M., Clutton-Brock, T. Tags: behaviour, physiology, ecology Corrections Source Type: research

Correction to 'Phagocytic intracellular digestion in amphioxus (Branchiostoma)
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: He, C., Han, T., Liao, X., Zhou, Y., Wang, X., Guan, R., Tian, T., Li, Y., Bi, C., Lu, N., He, Z., Hu, B., Zhou, Q., Hu, Y., Chen, J.- Y., Lu, Z. Tags: evolution Corrections Source Type: research

Correction to 'Complex gaze stabilization in mantis shrimp
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Daly, I. M., How, M. J., Partridge, J. C., Roberts, N. W. Tags: behaviour, ecology Corrections Source Type: research

Tip-dating and homoplasy: reconciling the shallow molecular divergences of modern gharials with their long fossil record
Simultaneously analysing morphological, molecular and stratigraphic data suggests a potential resolution to a major remaining inconsistency in crocodylian evolution. The ancient, long-snouted thoracosaurs have always been placed near the Indian gharial Gavialis, but their antiquity (ca 72 Ma) is highly incongruous with genomic evidence for the young age of the Gavialis lineage (ca 40 Ma). We reconcile this contradiction with an updated morphological dataset and novel analysis, and demonstrate that thoracosaurs are an ancient iteration of long-snouted stem crocodylians unrelated to modern gharials. The extensive similaritie...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Lee, M. S. Y., Yates, A. M. Tags: palaeontology, taxonomy and systematics, evolution Palaeobiology Source Type: research

Body mass predicts isotope enrichment in herbivorous mammals
Carbon isotopic signatures recorded in vertebrate tissues derive from ingested food and thus reflect ecologies and ecosystems. For almost two decades, most carbon isotope-based ecological interpretations of extant and extinct herbivorous mammals have used a single diet–bioapatite enrichment value (14). Assuming this single value applies to all herbivorous mammals, from tiny monkeys to giant elephants, it overlooks potential effects of distinct physiological and metabolic processes on carbon fractionation. By analysing a never before assessed herbivorous group spanning a broad range of body masses—sloths—w...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Tejada-Lara, J. V., MacFadden, B. J., Bermudez, L., Rojas, G., Salas-Gismondi, R., Flynn, J. J. Tags: palaeontology, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Little plant, big city: a test of adaptation to urban environments in common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia)
A full understanding of how cities shape adaptation requires characterizing genetically-based phenotypic and fitness differences between urban and rural populations under field conditions. We used a reciprocal transplant experiment with the native plant common ragweed, (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), and found that urban and rural populations have diverged in flowering time, a trait that strongly affects fitness. Although urban populations flowered earlier than rural populations, plants growing in urban field sites flowered later than plants in rural field sites. This counter-gradient variation is consistent adaptive divergence...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Gorton, A. J., Moeller, D. A., Tiffin, P. Tags: genetics, ecology, evolution Special feature Source Type: research

Lower bumblebee colony reproductive success in agricultural compared with urban environments
Urbanization represents a rapidly growing driver of land-use change. While it is clear that urbanization impacts species abundance and diversity, direct effects of urban land use on animal reproductive success are rarely documented. Here, we show that urban land use is linked to long-term colony reproductive output in a key pollinator. We reared colonies from wild-caught bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) queens, placed them at sites characterized by varying degrees of urbanization from inner city to rural farmland and monitored the production of sexual offspring across the entire colony cycle. Our land-use cluster analysis ide...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Samuelson, A. E., Gill, R. J., Brown, M. J. F., Leadbeater, E. Tags: ecology, environmental science Source Type: research

Fitness consequences of threshold trait expression subject to environmental cues
Most cases of alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) are thought to represent conditional strategies, whereby high-status males express highly competitive phenotypes, whereas males below a certain status threshold resort to sneaky tactics. The underlying evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) model assumes that males of high competitive ability achieve higher fitness when expressing the territorial phenotype, whereas the less competitive males are more fit as sneakers, caused by fitness functions for the ARTs having different slopes and intersecting at a threshold value of competitive ability. The model, however, is notorio...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Michalczyk, Łukasz, Dudziak, M., Radwan, J., Tomkins, J. L. Tags: behaviour, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Muscles provide an internal water reserve for reproduction
The use of fat to support the energy needs of reproduction (i.e. capital breeding) has been studied in a diversity of taxa. However, despite reproductive output (i.e. young or eggs) being approximately 70% water, little is known about the availability of internal resources to accommodate the hydric demands of reproduction. Recent research suggests that dehydration increases the catabolism of muscle as a means of maintaining water balance. Accordingly, we investigated the interactive effects of reproductive investment and water deprivation on catabolism and reproductive output in female Children's pythons (Antaresia childre...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Brusch, G. A., Lourdais, O., Kaminsky, B., DeNardo, D. F. Tags: physiology Development and physiology Source Type: research

Cascading speciation among mutualists and antagonists in a tree-beetle-fungi interaction
Cascading speciation is predicted to occur when multiple interacting species diverge in parallel as a result of divergence in one species promoting adaptive differentiation in other species. However, there are few examples where ecological interactions among taxa have been shown to result in speciation that cascades across multiple trophic levels. Here, we test for cascading speciation occurring among the western pine beetle (Dendroctonus brevicomis), its primary host tree (Pinus ponderosa), and the beetle's fungal mutualists (Ceratocystiopsis brevicomi and Entomocorticium sp. B). We assembled genomes for the beetle and a ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Bracewell, R. R., Vanderpool, D., Good, J. M., Six, D. L. Tags: genomics, ecology, evolution Source Type: research

High-altitude shorebird migration in the absence of topographical barriers: avoiding high air temperatures and searching for profitable winds
Nearly 20% of all bird species migrate between breeding and nonbreeding sites annually. Their migrations include storied feats of endurance and physiology, from non-stop trans-Pacific crossings to flights at the cruising altitudes of jetliners. Despite intense interest in these performances, there remains great uncertainty about which factors most directly influence bird behaviour during migratory flights. We used GPS trackers that measure an individual's altitude and wingbeat frequency to track the migration of black-tailed godwits (Limosa limosa) and identify the abiotic factors influencing their in-flight migratory beha...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - June 27, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Senner, N. R., Stager, M., Verhoeven, M. A., Cheviron, Z. A., Piersma, T., Bouten, W. Tags: behaviour, physiology, ecology Source Type: research