Environmental DNA methods for biosecurity and invasion biology in terrestrial ecosystems: Progress, pitfalls, and prospects.

Analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) enables indirect detection of species without the need to directly observe and sample them. For biosecurity and invasion biology, eDNA-based methods are useful to address biological invasions at all phases, from detecting arrivals to confirming eradication of past invasions. We conducted a systematic review of the literature and found that in biosecurity and invasion biology, eDNA has primarily been used to detect new incursions and monitor spread in marine and freshwater ecosystems, with much slower uptake in terrestrial ecosystems, reflecting a broader trend common to the usage of eDNA tools.

Plants, pollinators and their interactions under global ecological change: The role of pollen DNA metabarcoding.

Anthropogenic activities are triggering global changes in the environment, causing entire communities of plants, pollinators and their interactions to restructure, and ultimately leading to species declines. To understand the mechanisms behind community shifts and declines, as well as monitoring and managing impacts, a global effort must be made to characterize plant-pollinator communities in detail, across different habitat types, latitudes, elevations, and levels and types of disturbances. Generating data of this scale will only be feasible with rapid, high-throughput methods.

Pollen DNA metabarcoding reveals cryptic diversity and high spatial turnover in alpine plant-pollinator networks.

Alpine plant-pollinator communities play an important role in the functioning of alpine ecosystems, which are highly threatened by climate change. However, we still have a poor understanding of how environmental factors and spatiotemporal variability shape these communities. Here, we investigate what drives structure and beta diversity in a plant-pollinator metacommunity from the Australian alpine region using two approaches: pollen DNA metabarcoding (MB) and observations.

Pollen DNA metabarcoding identifies regional provenance and high plant diversity in Australian honey.

Accurate identification of the botanical components of honey can be used to establish its geographical provenance, while also providing insights into honeybee ( L.) diet and foraging preferences. DNA metabarcoding has been demonstrated as a robust method to identify plant species from pollen and pollen-based products, including honey.

Implications of the 2019-2020 megafires for the biogeography and conservation of Australian vegetation.

Australia's 2019-2020 'Black Summer' bushfires burnt more than 8 million hectares of vegetation across the south-east of the continent, an event unprecedented in the last 200 years. Here we report the impacts of these fires on vascular plant species and communities. Using a map of the fires generated from remotely sensed hotspot data we show that, across 11 Australian bioregions, 17 major native vegetation groups were severely burnt, and up to 67-83% of globally significant rainforests and eucalypt forests and woodlands.

Weather Conditions Affect the Visitation Frequency, Richness and Detectability of Insect Flower Visitors in the Australian Alpine Zone.

Weather conditions, such as humidity, temperature, and wind speed, affect insect activity. Understanding how different taxa respond to varying environmental conditions is necessary to determine the extent to which environmental change may impact plant-pollinator networks. This is particularly important in alpine regions where taxa may be more susceptible to extreme climatic events and overall increases in temperature.

Different landscape effects on the genetic structure of two broadly distributed woody legumes, and (Fabaceae).

Restoring degraded landscapes has primarily focused on re-establishing native plant communities. However, little is known with respect to the diversity and distribution of most key revegetation species or the environmental and anthropogenic factors that may affect their demography and genetic structure. In this study, we investigated the genetic structure of two widespread Australian legume species ( and ) in the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), a large agriculturally utilized region in Australia, and assessed the impact of landscape structure on genetic differentiation.

The loss of self-incompatibility in a range expansion.

It is commonly observed that plant species' range margins are enriched for increased selfing rates and, in otherwise self-incompatible species, for self-compatibility (SC). This has often been attributed to a response to selection under mate and/or pollinator limitation. However, range expansion can also cause reduced inbreeding depression, and this could facilitate the evolution of selfing in the absence of mate or pollinator limitation.

Historical reconstruction unveils the risk of mass mortality and ecosystem collapse during pancontinental megadrought.

An important new hypothesis in landscape ecology is that extreme, decade-scale megadroughts can be potent drivers of rapid, macroscale ecosystem degradation and collapse. If true, an increase in such events under climate change could have devastating consequences for global biodiversity. However, because few megadroughts have occurred in the modern ecological era, the taxonomic breadth, trophic depth, and geographic pattern of these impacts remain unknown.

Rapid loss of self-incompatibility in experimental populations of the perennial outcrossing plant Linaria cavanillesii.

Transitions from self-incompatibility to self-compatibility in angiosperms may be frequently driven by selection for reproductive assurance when mates or pollinators are rare, and are often succeeded by loss of inbreeding depression by purging. Here, we use experimental evolution to investigate the spread of self-compatibility from one such population of the perennial plant Linaria cavanillesii into self-incompatible (SI) populations that still have high inbreeding depression. We introduced self-compatible (SC) individuals at different frequencies into replicate experimental populations of L.

Specialization for resistance in wild host-pathogen interaction networks.

Properties encompassed by host-pathogen interaction networks have potential to give valuable insight into the evolution of specialization and coevolutionary dynamics in host-pathogen interactions. However, network approaches have been rarely utilized in previous studies of host and pathogen phenotypic variation. Here we applied quantitative analyses to eight networks derived from spatially and temporally segregated host (Linum marginale) and pathogen (Melampsora lini) populations.

Dynamical transitions in a pollination-herbivory interaction: a conflict between mutualism and antagonism.

Plant-pollinator associations are often seen as purely mutualistic, while in reality they can be more complex. Indeed they may also display a diverse array of antagonistic interactions, such as competition and victim-exploiter interactions. In some cases mutualistic and antagonistic interactions are carried-out by the same species but at different life-stages.

Life history mediates mate limitation and population viability in self-incompatible plant species.

Genetically controlled self-incompatibility systems represent links between genetic diversity and plant demography with the potential to directly impact on population dynamics. We use an individual-based spatial simulation to investigate the demographic and genetic consequences of different self-incompatibility systems for plants that vary in reproductive capacity and lifespan. The results support the idea that, in the absence of inbreeding effects, populations of self-incompatible species will often be smaller and less viable than self-compatible species, particularly for shorter-lived organisms or where potential fecundity is low.

Shifts in pollinator population structure may jeopardize pollination service.

Plant-pollinator interactions are among the best known and ubiquitous plant-animal mutualisms and are crucial for ecosystem functioning and the maintenance of biodiversity. Most pollinators are insects with several life-stages (e.g.

Phenology drives mutualistic network structure and diversity.

Several network properties have been identified as determinants of the stability and complexity of mutualistic networks. However, it is unclear which mechanisms give rise to these network properties. Phenology seems important, because it shapes the topology of mutualistic networks, but its effects on the dynamics of mutualistic networks have scarcely been studied.

Population genetics of duplicated alternatively spliced exons of the Dscam gene in Daphnia and Drosophila.

In insects and crustaceans, the Down syndrome cell adhesion molecule (Dscam) occurs in many different isoforms. These are produced by mutually exclusive alternative splicing of dozens of tandem duplicated exons coding for parts or whole immunoglobulin (Ig) domains of the Dscam protein. This diversity plays a role in the development of the nervous system and also in the immune system.

Limited access to food and physiological trade-offs in a long-distance migrant shorebird. II. Constitutive immune function and the acute-phase response.

In response to unbalanced energy budgets, animals must allocate resources among competing physiological systems to maximize fitness. Constraints can be imposed on energy availability or energy expenditure, and adjustments can be made via changes in metabolism or trade-offs with competing demands such as body-mass maintenance and immune function. This study investigates changes in constitutive immune function and the acute-phase response in shorebirds (red knots) faced with limited access time to food.