Archetype models upscale understanding of natural pest control response to land-use change.

Control of crop pests by shifting host plant availability and natural enemy activity at landscape scales has great potential to enhance the sustainability of agriculture. However, mainstreaming natural pest control requires improved understanding of how its benefits can be realized across a variety of agroecological contexts. Empirical studies suggest significant but highly variable responses of natural pest control to land-use change.

Growth rate mediates hidden developmental plasticity of female yellow dung fly reproductive morphology in response to environmental stressors.

Understanding how environmental variation influences even cryptic traits is important to clarify the roles of selection and developmental constraints in past evolutionary divergence and to predict future adaptation under environmental change. Female yellow dung flies (Scathophaga stercoraria) typically have three sperm storage compartments (3S), but occasionally four (4S). More spermathecae are thought to be a female adaptation facilitating sperm sorting after mating, but the phenotype is very rare in nature.

Comprehensive thermal performance curves for yellow dung fly life history traits and the temperature-size-rule.

Ambient temperature strongly determines the behaviour, physiology, and life history of all organisms. The technical assessment of organismal thermal niches in form of now so-called thermal performance curves (TPC) thus has a long tradition in biological research. Nevertheless, several traits do not display the idealized, intuitive dome-shaped TPC, and in practice assessments often do not cover the entire realistic or natural temperature range of an organism.

Heritable responses to combined effects of heat stress and ivermectin in the yellow dung fly.

In current times of global change, several sources of stress such as contaminants and high temperatures may act synergistically. The extent to which organisms persist in stressful conditions will depend on the fitness consequences of multiple simultaneously acting stressors and the genetic basis of compensatory genetic responses. Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug used in livestock that is excreted in dung of treated cattle, causing severe negative consequences on non-target fauna.

Elevated temperature increases genome-wide selection on de novo mutations.

Adaptation in new environments depends on the amount of genetic variation available for evolution, and the efficacy by which natural selection discriminates among this variation. However, whether some ecological factors reveal more genetic variation, or impose stronger selection pressures than others, is typically not known. Here, we apply the enzyme kinetic theory to show that rising global temperatures are predicted to intensify natural selection throughout the genome by increasing the effects of DNA sequence variation on protein stability.

Evaluating a trait-based approach to compare natural enemy and pest communities in agroforestry vs. arable systems.

Diversified farming systems, for example those that incorporate agroforestry elements, have been proposed as a solution that could maintain and improve multiple ecosystem services. However, habitat diversification in and around arable fields has complex and inconsistent effects on invertebrate crop pests and their natural enemies. This hinders the development of policy recommendations to promote the adoption of such management strategies for the provision of natural pest control services.

Behavior underpins the predictive power of a trait-based model of butterfly movement.

Dispersal ability is key to species persistence in times of environmental change. Assessing a species' vulnerability and response to anthropogenic changes is often performed using one of two methods: correlative approaches that infer dispersal potential based on traits, such as wingspan or an index of mobility derived from expert opinion, or a mechanistic modeling approach that extrapolates displacement rates from empirical data on short-term movements.Here, we compare and evaluate the success of the correlative and mechanistic approaches using a mechanistic random-walk model of butterfly movement that incorporates relationships between wingspan and sex-specific movement behaviors.

The importance of including habitat-specific behaviour in models of butterfly movement.

Dispersal is a key process affecting population persistence and major factors affecting dispersal rates are the amounts, connectedness and properties of habitats in landscapes. We present new data on the butterfly Maniola jurtina in flower-rich and flower-poor habitats that demonstrates how movement and behaviour differ between sexes and habitat types, and how this effects consequent dispersal rates. Females had higher flight speeds than males, but their total time in flight was four times less.

Integrating the influence of weather into mechanistic models of butterfly movement.

Background: Understanding the factors influencing movement is essential to forecasting species persistence in a changing environment. Movement is often studied using mechanistic models, extrapolating short-term observations of individuals to longer-term predictions, but the role of weather variables such as air temperature and solar radiation, key determinants of ectotherm activity, are generally neglected. We aim to show how the effects of weather can be incorporated into individual-based models of butterfly movement thus allowing analysis of their effects.

Implications of existing local (mal)adaptations for ecological forecasting under environmental change.

Standing genetic variation represents a genetic load on population fitness but can also support a rapid response to short-term environmental change, and the greatest potential source of such standing genetic variation typically exists among locally adapted populations living along an environmental gradient. Here, we develop a spatially explicit simulation model to quantify the contribution of existing genetic variation arising from migration-mutation-selection-drift balance to time to extinction under environmental change. Simulations reveal that local adaptation across a species range associated with an underlying environmental gradient could extend time to extinction by nearly threefold irrespective of the rate of environmental change.

Cold spot microrefugia hold the key to survival for Brazil's Critically Endangered Araucaria tree.

Brazil's Araucaria tree (Araucaria angustifolia) is an iconic living fossil and a defining element of the Atlantic Forest global biodiversity hotspot. But despite more than two millennia as a cultural icon in southern Brazil, Araucaria is on the brink of extinction, having lost 97% of its extent to 20th-century logging. Although logging is now illegal, 21st-century climate change constitutes a new-but so far unevaluated-threat to Araucaria's future survival.

Constant strain accumulation rate between major earthquakes on the North Anatolian Fault.

Earthquakes are caused by the release of tectonic strain accumulated between events. Recent advances in satellite geodesy mean we can now measure this interseismic strain accumulation with a high degree of accuracy. But it remains unclear how to interpret short-term geodetic observations, measured over decades, when estimating the seismic hazard of faults accumulating strain over centuries.

Near-field fault slip of the 2016 Vettore M 6.6 earthquake (Central Italy) measured using low-cost GNSS.

The temporal evolution of slip on surface ruptures during an earthquake is important for assessing fault displacement, defining seismic hazard and for predicting ground motion. However, measurements of near-field surface displacement at high temporal resolution are elusive. We present a novel record of near-field co-seismic displacement, measured with 1-second temporal resolution during the 30 October 2016 M 6.

Quantitative genetic divergence and standing genetic (co)variance in thermal reaction norms along latitude.

Although the potential to adapt to warmer climate is constrained by genetic trade-offs, our understanding of how selection and mutation shape genetic (co)variances in thermal reaction norms is poor. Using 71 isofemale lines of the fly Sepsis punctum, originating from northern, central, and southern European climates, we tested for divergence in juvenile development rate across latitude at five experimental temperatures. To investigate effects of evolutionary history in different climates on standing genetic variation in reaction norms, we further compared genetic (co)variances between regions.

Modelling dispersal of a temperate insect in a changing climate.

We construct a novel individual-based random-walk model to assess how predicted global climate change might affect the dispersal rates of a temperate insect. Using a novel approach we obtained accurate field measurements of daily movements for individuals over time to parameterize our model. Males were found to move significantly further on average than females.

The temperature-size rule in ectotherms: may a general explanation exist after all?

The majority of ectotherms mature at a larger size at lower rearing temperatures. Although this temperature-size rule is well established, a general explanation for this phenomenon has remained elusive. In this article, we address the problem by exploring the proximate and ultimate reasons for why a temperate grasshopper, Chorthippus brunneus, is an exception to the temperature-size rule.

Evidence for motor axon depolarization in Fabry disease.

To investigate the pathophysiology of neuropathy in Fabry disease, multiple nerve excitability properties of median motor axons in 20 patients with this disorder but without hyperkalemia were compared with 35 age-matched normal controls. In the patients, depolarizing threshold electrotonus was reduced (P < 0.0001) and superexcitability was reduced (P < 0.