Limited contributions of plant pathogens to density-dependent seedling mortality of mast fruiting Bornean trees.

Fungal pathogens are implicated in driving tropical plant diversity by facilitating strong, negative density-dependent mortality of conspecific seedlings (C-NDD). Assessment of the role of fungal pathogens in mediating coexistence derives from relatively few tree species and predominantly the Neotropics, limiting our understanding of their role in maintaining hyper-diversity in many tropical forests. A key question is whether fungal pathogen-mediated C-NDD seedling mortality is ubiquitous across diverse plant communities.

Shifting spaces: Which disparity or dissimilarity measurement best summarize occupancy in multidimensional spaces?

Multidimensional analysis of traits are now common in ecology and evolution and are based on trait spaces in which each dimension summarizes the observed trait combination (a morphospace or an ecospace). Observations of interest will typically occupy a subset of this space, and researchers will calculate one or more measures to quantify how organisms inhabit that space. In macroevolution and ecology, these measures called disparity or dissimilarity metrics are generalized as space occupancy measures.

Accurately quantifying the shape of birds' eggs.

Describing the range of avian egg shapes quantitatively has long been recognized as difficult. A variety of approaches has been adopted, some of which aim to capture the shape accurately and some to provide intelligible indices of shape. The objectives here are to show that a (four-parameter) method proposed by Preston (1953, , 70, 160) is the best option for quantifying egg shape, to provide and document an R program for applying this method to suitable photographs of eggs, to illustrate that intelligible shape indices can be derived from the summary this method provides, to review shape indices that have been proposed, and to report on the errors introduced using photographs of eggs at rest rather than horizontal.