Digest: Clinal variation in plant traits is shaped by plastic and evolutionary responses to water regimes and herbivory.

How do water regime and herbivory shape phenotypic variation in plants along environmental gradients? Using a multifactorial field common garden approach, Jameel et al. (2024) showed that water availability and herbivore abundance influence the expression of foliar and reproductive traits in the perennial forb Boechera stricta. The concordance between phenotypic plasticity, phenotypic clines, and the direction of selection demonstrates the adaptive nature of plasticity in ecologically relevant traits.

Carcass size, not source or taxon, dictates breeding performance and carcass use in a burying beetle.

Small vertebrate carcasses represent critical resources for many terrestrial organisms, including burying beetles, which rely on carcasses for survival and breeding. Carcass attributes can influence the reproduction of burying beetles, yet most studies on their breeding ecology have used laboratory-reared carcasses of limited sizes. We conducted breeding and feeding experiments using a wide size range of lab (laboratory mice) and wild carcasses (wild mammals, birds and reptiles) to investigate how carcass size, source and taxon affect various breeding outcomes (e.