Climate drives the long-term ant male production in a tropical community.

Forecasting insect responses to environmental variables at local and global spatial scales remains a crucial task in Ecology. However, predicting future responses requires long-term datasets, which are rarely available for insects, especially in the tropics. From 2002 to 2017, we recorded male ant incidence of 155 ant species at ten malaise traps on the 50-ha ForestGEO plot in Barro Colorado Island.

Passive accumulation of alkaloids in inconspicuously colored frogs refines the evolutionary paradigm of acquired chemical defenses.

Understanding the origins of novel, complex phenotypes is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Poison frogs of the family Dendrobatidae have evolved the novel ability to acquire alkaloids from their diet for chemical defense at least three times. However, taxon sampling for alkaloids has been biased towards colorful species, without similar attention paid to inconspicuous ones that are often assumed to be undefended.

Unforeseen plant phenotypic diversity in a dry and grazed world.

Earth harbours an extraordinary plant phenotypic diversity that is at risk from ongoing global changes. However, it remains unknown how increasing aridity and livestock grazing pressure-two major drivers of global change-shape the trait covariation that underlies plant phenotypic diversity. Here we assessed how covariation among 20 chemical and morphological traits responds to aridity and grazing pressure within global drylands.

Long-term strict ant-plant mutualism identity characterises growth rate and leaf shearing resistance of an Amazonian myrmecophyte.

Over 125 million years of ant-plant interactions have culminated in one of the most intriguing evolutionary outcomes in life history. The myrmecophyte Duroia hirsuta (Rubiaceae) is known for its mutualistic association with the ant Myrmelachista schumanni and several other species, mainly Azteca, in the north-western Amazon. While both ants provide indirect defences to plants, only M.

Passive accumulation of alkaloids in inconspicuously colored frogs refines the evolutionary paradigm of acquired chemical defenses.

Understanding the origins of novel, complex phenotypes is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Poison frogs of the family Dendrobatidae have evolved the novel ability to acquire alkaloids from their diet for chemical defense at least three times. However, taxon sampling for alkaloids has been biased towards colorful species, without similar attention paid to inconspicuous ones that are often assumed to be undefended.

Hotspots of biogeochemical activity linked to aridity and plant traits across global drylands.

Perennial plants create productive and biodiverse hotspots, known as fertile islands, beneath their canopies. These hotspots largely determine the structure and functioning of drylands worldwide. Despite their ubiquity, the factors controlling fertile islands under conditions of contrasting grazing by livestock, the most prevalent land use in drylands, remain virtually unknown.

Nutrients or resin? - The relationship between resin and food foraging in stingless bees.

Stingless bees are important pollinators in tropical forests. Yet, we know little about their foraging behavior (e.g.

Effects of leaf traits of tropical trees on the abundance and body mass of herbivorous arthropod communities.

In tropical forests, herbivorous arthropods remove between 7% up to 48% of leaf area, which has forced plants to evolve defense strategies. These strategies influence the palatability of leaves. Palatability, which reflects a syndrome of leaf traits, in turn influences both the abundance and the mean body mass not only of particular arthropod taxa but also of the total communities.

Soundscapes and deep learning enable tracking biodiversity recovery in tropical forests.

Tropical forest recovery is fundamental to addressing the intertwined climate and biodiversity loss crises. While regenerating trees sequester carbon relatively quickly, the pace of biodiversity recovery remains contentious. Here, we use bioacoustics and metabarcoding to measure forest recovery post-agriculture in a global biodiversity hotspot in Ecuador.

Catalog of the invertebrate type specimens hosted at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and Escuela Politécnica Nacional natural history collections.

This work updates the invertebrate type specimen catalog published by Donoso et al. (2009). The catalog is increased by 2281 type specimens (from 454 species or subspecies) to a total of 4180 type specimens (from 770 species or subspecies) hosted at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and Escuela Politécnica Nacional natural history collections.

Stratification and recovery time jointly shape ant functional reassembly in a neotropical forest.

Microhabitat differentiation of species communities such as vertical stratification in tropical forests contributes to species coexistence and thus biodiversity. However, little is known about how the extent of stratification changes during forest recovery and influences community reassembly. Environmental filtering determines community reassembly in time (succession) and in space (stratification), hence functional and phylogenetic composition of species communities are highly dynamic.

Grazing and ecosystem service delivery in global drylands.

Grazing represents the most extensive use of land worldwide. Yet its impacts on ecosystem services remain uncertain because pervasive interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil properties, and biodiversity may occur but have never been addressed simultaneously. Using a standardized survey at 98 sites across six continents, we show that interactions between grazing pressure, climate, soil, and biodiversity are critical to explain the delivery of fundamental ecosystem services across drylands worldwide.

The global distribution of known and undiscovered ant biodiversity.

Invertebrates constitute the majority of animal species and are critical for ecosystem functioning and services. Nonetheless, global invertebrate biodiversity patterns and their congruences with vertebrates remain largely unknown. We resolve the first high-resolution (~20-km) global diversity map for a major invertebrate clade, ants, using biodiversity informatics, range modeling, and machine learning to synthesize existing knowledge and predict the distribution of undiscovered diversity.

Comparison of traditional and DNA metabarcoding samples for monitoring tropical soil arthropods (Formicidae, Collembola and Isoptera).

The soil fauna of the tropics remains one of the least known components of the biosphere. Long-term monitoring of this fauna is hampered by the lack of taxonomic expertise and funding. These obstacles may potentially be lifted with DNA metabarcoding.

Hydrogenated or oxyfunctionalized turpentine: options for automotive fuel components.

Many concerns, such as economic and technical viability and social and ethical aspects, must be considered for a feedstock selection for advanced biofuels. Industrialized countries promote the use of industrial waste or by-products for this purpose. In particular, turpentine has several properties which make it an attractive source for biofuels, including its possible industrial waste origin.

Male ant reproductive investment in a seasonal wet tropical forest: Consequences of future climate change.

Tropical forests sustain many ant species whose mating events often involve conspicuous flying swarms of winged gynes and males. The success of these reproductive flights depends on environmental variables and determines the maintenance of local ant diversity. However, we lack a strong understanding of the role of environmental variables in shaping the phenology of these flights.

Rapid ant community reassembly in a Neotropical forest: Recovery dynamics and land-use legacy.

Regrowing secondary forests dominate tropical regions today, and a mechanistic understanding of their recovery dynamics provides important insights for conservation. In particular, land-use legacy effects on the fauna have rarely been investigated. One of the most ecologically dominant and functionally important animal groups in tropical forests are the ants.

Biodiversity and ecosystem functions depend on environmental conditions and resources rather than the geodiversity of a tropical biodiversity hotspot.

Biodiversity and ecosystem functions are highly threatened by global change. It has been proposed that geodiversity can be used as an easy-to-measure surrogate of biodiversity to guide conservation management. However, so far, there is mixed evidence to what extent geodiversity can predict biodiversity and ecosystem functions at the regional scale relevant for conservation planning.

WLTC and real-driving emissions for an autochthonous biofuel from wine-industry waste.

Residues from the wine industry constitute an abundant feedstock for biodiesel production in wine-producing countries. The use of grapeseed oil, together with bioethanol obtained from distillation of wine surplus or grape skins and stalks and wine lees, as reagents in the transesterification reaction, results in a mixture of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE), which is a fully renewable, autochthonous, and waste-derived biofuel. In this work, a blend of FAEE produced from grape seed oil with diesel fuel was selected based on a study of fuel properties, and the optimal blend, with 30% v/v of FAEE, was tested in a Euro 6 engine following the Worldwide harmonized Light-duty Test Cycle (WLTC) and a Real Driving Emissions Cycle (RDE), as required in the new certification procedures.

Nutritional niches reveal fundamental domestication trade-offs in fungus-farming ants.

During crop domestication, human farmers traded greater productivity for higher crop vulnerability outside specialized cultivation conditions. We found a similar domestication trade-off across the major co-evolutionary transitions in the farming systems of attine ants. First, the fundamental nutritional niches of cultivars narrowed over ~60 million years of naturally selected domestication, and laboratory experiments showed that ant farmers representing subsequent domestication stages strictly regulate protein harvest relative to cultivar fundamental nutritional niches.

Optimized Production of Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters (FAEE) from Waste Frying Oil by Response Surface Methodology.

Abstract: In Europe, recent regulations on advanced biofuels have prompted a search for new fuel sources and the development of synthesis methods meeting the demanding specifications of the sector. However, in developing countries such as Algeria, where a significant stock of frying oil is unused, the use of diesel engines powered with waste-oil-derived biofuels must be explored. In this work, the variables related to the transesterification reaction from this frying oil with ethanol are analyzed using response surface methodology.

sp. nov. (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), a new conspicuous trap-jaw ant from Ecuador.

One of the largest species in its genus, Hoenle, Lattke & Donoso, is described from workers and queens collected at lowland forests in the Chocó-Darién bioregion in coastal Ecuador. The workers are characterized by their uniform red coloration, their large size (16-18 mm body length), and their frontal head striation that reaches the occipital margin. DNA barcodes (COI) and high resolution 2D images of the type material are provided, as well as an updated key for the Neotropical species of .