Body size shapes song in honeyeaters.

Birdsongs are among the most distinctive animal signals. Their evolution is thought to be shaped simultaneously by habitat structure and by the constraints of morphology. Habitat structure affects song transmission and detectability, thus influencing song (the acoustic adaptation hypothesis), while body size and beak size and shape necessarily constrain song characteristics (the morphological constraint hypothesis).

Conservation features of the terrestrial Antarctic Peninsula.

Conserving landscapes used by multiple stakeholder groups requires understanding of what each stakeholder values. Here we employed a semi-structured, participatory approach to identify features of value in the terrestrial Antarctic Peninsula related to biodiversity, science and tourism. Stakeholders identified 115 features, ranging from Adélie penguin colonies to sites suitable for snowshoeing tourists.

Biogeographic survey of soil bacterial communities across Antarctica.

Background: Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are increasingly at risk from the effects of global climate change and other human influences. A significant recent element underpinning strategies for Antarctic conservation has been the development of a system of Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions (ACBRs). The datasets supporting this classification are, however, dominated by eukaryotic taxa, with contributions from the bacterial domain restricted to Actinomycetota and Cyanobacteriota.

Global fine-resolution data on springtail abundance and community structure.

Springtails (Collembola) inhabit soils from the Arctic to the Antarctic and comprise an estimated ~32% of all terrestrial arthropods on Earth. Here, we present a global, spatially-explicit database on springtail communities that includes 249,912 occurrences from 44,999 samples and 2,990 sites. These data are mainly raw sample-level records at the species level collected predominantly from private archives of the authors that were quality-controlled and taxonomically-standardised.

Polar lake microbiomes have distinct evolutionary histories.

Toward the poles, life on land is increasingly dominated by microorganisms, yet the evolutionary origin of polar microbiomes remains poorly understood. Here, we use metabarcoding of Arctic, sub-Antarctic, and Antarctic lacustrine benthic microbial communities to test the hypothesis that high-latitude microbiomes are recruited from a globally dispersing species pool through environmental selection. We demonstrate that taxonomic overlap between the regions is limited within most phyla, even at higher-order taxonomic levels, with unique deep-branching phylogenetic clades being present in each region.

Temperature change exerts sex-specific effects on behavioural variation.

Temperature is a key factor mediating organismal fitness and has important consequences for species' ecology. While the mean effects of temperature on behaviour have been well-documented in ectotherms, how temperature alters behavioural variation among and within individuals, and whether this differs between the sexes, remains unclear. Such effects likely have ecological and evolutionary consequences, given that selection acts at the individual level.

Introduced and invasive alien species of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean Islands.

Open data on biological invasions are particularly critical in regions that are co-governed and/or where multiple independent parties have responsibility for preventing and controlling invasive alien species. The Antarctic is one such region where, in spite of multiple examples of invasion policy and management success, open, centralised data are not yet available. This dataset provides current and comprehensive information available on the identity, localities, establishment, eradication status, dates of introduction, habitat, and evidence of impact of known introduced and invasive alien species for the terrestrial and freshwater Antarctic and Southern Ocean region.

Biogeography and Genetic Diversity of Terrestrial Mites in the Ross Sea Region, Antarctica.

Free-living terrestrial mites (Acari) have persisted through numerous glacial cycles in Antarctica. Very little is known, however, of their genetic diversity and distribution, particularly within the Ross Sea region. To redress this gap, we sampled mites throughout the Ross Sea region, East Antarctica, including Victoria Land and the Queen Maud Mountains (QMM), covering a latitudinal range of 72-85 °S, as well as Lauft Island near Mt.

Globally invariant metabolism but density-diversity mismatch in springtails.

Soil life supports the functioning and biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems. Springtails (Collembola) are among the most abundant soil arthropods regulating soil fertility and flow of energy through above- and belowground food webs. However, the global distribution of springtail diversity and density, and how these relate to energy fluxes remains unknown.

Indigenous and introduced Collembola differ in desiccation resistance but not its plasticity in response to temperature.

Biological invasions have significant ecological and economic impacts. Much attention is therefore focussed on predicting establishment and invasion success. Trait-based approaches are showing much promise, but are mostly restricted to investigations of plants.

Threat management priorities for conserving Antarctic biodiversity.

Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity faces multiple threats, from invasive species to climate change. Yet no large-scale assessments of threat management strategies exist. Applying a structured participatory approach, we demonstrate that existing conservation efforts are insufficient in a changing world, estimating that 65% (at best 37%, at worst 97%) of native terrestrial taxa and land-associated seabirds are likely to decline by 2100 under current trajectories.

Multiple introductions, polyploidy and mixed reproductive strategies are linked to genetic diversity and structure in the most widespread invasive plant across Southern Ocean archipelagos.

Biological invasions in remote areas that experience low human activity provide unique opportunities to elucidate processes responsible for invasion success. Here we study the most widespread invasive plant species across the isolated islands of the Southern Ocean, the annual bluegrass, Poa annua. To analyse geographical variation in genome size, genetic diversity and reproductive strategies, we sampled all major sub-Antarctic archipelagos in this region and generated microsatellite data for 470 individual plants representing 31 populations.

Protect global values of the Southern Ocean ecosystem.

Climate change and fishing present dual threats.

Male Mediterranean fruit flies prefer warmer temperatures that improve sexual performance.

Females and males have divergent strategies of energy investment, so the thermal preference of each sex in insects may differ because energetic conversion of metabolic reserves is dependent on temperature. We determined the thermal preference of virgin, sexually mature Mediterranean fruit flies, Ceratitis capitata, and found that males preferred a significantly higher temperature (23.8 ± 0.

Half a century of thermal tolerance studies in springtails (Collembola): A review of metrics, spatial and temporal trends.

Global changes in soil surface temperatures are altering the abundances and distribution ranges of invertebrate species worldwide, including effects on soil microarthropods such as springtails (Collembola), which are vital for maintaining soil health and providing ecosystem services. Studies of thermal tolerance limits in soil invertebrates have the potential to provide information on demographic responses to climate change and guide assessments of possible impacts on the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Here, we review the state of knowledge of thermal tolerance limits in Collembola.

Emerging biological archives can reveal ecological and climatic change in Antarctica.

Anthropogenic climate change is causing observable changes in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean including increased air and ocean temperatures, glacial melt leading to sea-level rise and a reduction in salinity, and changes to freshwater water availability on land. These changes impact local Antarctic ecosystems and the Earth's climate system. The Antarctic has experienced significant past environmental change, including cycles of glaciation over the Quaternary Period (the past ~2.

The rising threat of climate change for arthropods from Earth's cold regions: Taxonomic rather than native status drives species sensitivity.

Polar and alpine regions are changing rapidly with global climate change. Yet, the impacts on biodiversity, especially on the invertebrate ectotherms which are dominant in these areas, remain poorly understood. Short-term extreme temperature events, which are growing in frequency, are expected to have profound impacts on high-latitude ectotherms, with native species being less resilient than their alien counterparts.

Parthenogenesis without costs in a grasshopper with hybrid origins.

The rarity of parthenogenetic species is typically attributed to the reduced genetic variability that accompanies the absence of sex, yet natural parthenogens can be surprisingly successful. Ecological success is often proposed to derive from hybridization through enhanced genetic diversity from repetitive origins or enhanced phenotypic breadth from heterosis. Here, we tested and rejected both hypotheses in a classic parthenogen, the diploid grasshopper .

Simultaneous detection of multiple pathogens with the TaqMan Array Card.

Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is a gold standard method for the detection and quantification of pathogenic organisms. Standard qPCR is inexpensive, sensitive and highly specific to the pathogen of interest. While qPCR assays can be multiplexed to allow the detection of multiple organisms in one reaction, it is prohibitively labour intensive to screen large numbers of samples for several pathogens at the same time.

Improving species-based area protection in Antarctica.

Area protection is a major mechanism deployed for environmental conservation in Antarctica. Yet, the Antarctic protected areas network is widely acknowledged as inadequate, in part because the criteria for area protection south of 60°S are not fully applied. The most poorly explored of these criteria is the type locality of species, which provides the primary legal means for Antarctic species-based area protection and a method for conserving species even if little is known about their habitat or distribution.