Best environmental predictors of breeding phenology differ with elevation in a common woodland bird species.

Temperatures in mountain areas are increasing at a higher rate than the Northern Hemisphere land average, but how fauna may respond, in particular in terms of phenology, remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was to assess how elevation could modify the relationships between climate variability (air temperature and snow melt-out date), the timing of plant phenology and egg-laying date of the coal tit (). We collected 9 years (2011-2019) of data on egg-laying date, spring air temperature, snow melt-out date, and larch budburst date at two elevations (~1,300 m and ~1,900 m asl) on a slope located in the Mont-Blanc Massif in the French Alps.

Demographic history and genomics of local adaptation in blue tit populations.

Understanding the genomic processes underlying local adaptation is a central aim of modern evolutionary biology. This task requires identifying footprints of local selection but also estimating spatio-temporal variations in population demography and variations in recombination rate and in diversity along the genome. Here, we investigated these parameters in blue tit populations inhabiting deciduous evergreen forests, and insular mainland areas, in the context of a previously described strong phenotypic differentiation.

Similar factors underlie tree abundance in forests in native and alien ranges.

Aim: Alien plant species can cause severe ecological and economic problems, and therefore attract a lot of research interest in biogeography and related fields. To identify potential future invasive species, we need to better understand the mechanisms underlying the abundances of invasive tree species in their new ranges, and whether these mechanisms differ between their native and alien ranges. Here, we test two hypotheses: that greater relative abundance is promoted by (a) functional difference from locally co-occurring trees, and (b) higher values than locally co-occurring trees for traits linked to competitive ability.

Genetic architecture and balancing selection: the life and death of differentiated variants.

Balancing selection describes any form of natural selection, which results in the persistence of multiple variants of a trait at intermediate frequencies within populations. By offering up a snapshot of multiple co-occurring functional variants and their interactions, systems under balancing selection can reveal the evolutionary mechanisms favouring the emergence and persistence of adaptive variation in natural populations. We here focus on the mechanisms by which several functional variants for a given trait can arise, a process typically requiring multiple epistatic mutations.

Making sense of the relationships between Ne, Nb and Nc towards defining conservation thresholds in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).

Effective population size over a generation (Ne) or over a reproductive cycle (Nb) and the adult census size (Nc) are important parameters in both conservation and evolutionary biology. Ne provides information regarding the rate of loss of genetic diversity and can be tracked back in time to infer demographic history of populations, whereas Nb may often be more easily quantified than Nc for short-term abundance monitoring. In this study, we propose (1) an empirical context to Waples et al.

Condition dependence of male and female reproductive success: insights from a simultaneous hermaphrodite.

Sexually selected traits are predicted to show condition dependence by capturing the genetic quality of its bearer. In separate-sexed organisms, this will ultimately translate into condition dependence of reproductive success of the sex that experiences sexual selection, which is typically the male. Such condition dependence of reproductive success is predicted to be higher in males than females under conditions promoting intense sexual selection.

eHALOPH a Database of Salt-Tolerant Plants: Helping put Halophytes to Work.

eHALOPH (http://www.sussex.ac.

Assessing multivariate constraints to evolution across ten long-term avian studies.

Background: In a rapidly changing world, it is of fundamental importance to understand processes constraining or facilitating adaptation through microevolution. As different traits of an organism covary, genetic correlations are expected to affect evolutionary trajectories. However, only limited empirical data are available.