Xenodiagnosis in the wild: A methodology to investigate infectiousness for tick-borne bacteria in a songbird reservoir.

A crucial factor to predict the persistence and spread of infections in natural systems is the capacity of reservoir hosts to maintain the infection and transmit it to others. This is known to greatly vary within and between species and through time, although the latter part of the variation is often less well understood in the wild. is one of the causal agents of Lyme disease in humans and is transmitted among avian hosts by the hard tick .

Unpunctual in diversity: The effect of stand species richness on spring phenology of deciduous tree stands varies among species and years.

Climatic drivers alone do not adequately explain the regional variation in budburst timing in deciduous forests across Europe. Stand-level factors, such as tree species richness, might affect budburst timing by creating different microclimates under the same site macroclimate. We assessed different phases of the spring phenology (start, midpoint, end, and overall duration of the budburst period) of four important European tree species (Betula pendula, Fagus sylvatica, Quercus robur and Tilia cordata) in monocultures and four-species mixture stands of a common garden tree biodiversity experiment in Belgium (FORBIO) in 2021 and 2022.

Divergence in evolutionary potential of life history traits among wild populations is predicted by differences in climatic conditions.

Short-term adaptive evolution represents one of the primary mechanisms allowing species to persist in the face of global change. Predicting the adaptive response at the species level requires reliable estimates of the evolutionary potential of traits involved in adaptive responses, as well as understanding how evolutionary potential varies across a species' range. Theory suggests that spatial variation in the fitness landscape due to environmental variation will directly impact the evolutionary potential of traits.