Unraveling the genomic landscape of wrens along western Ecuador's precipitation gradient: Insights into hybridization, isolation by distance, and isolation by the environment.

Environmental gradients have the potential to influence genetic differentiation among populations ultimately leading to allopatric speciation. However, environmental gradients can also facilitate hybridization between closely related taxa. We investigated a putative hybrid zone in western Ecuador, involving two polytypic wren species (Aves: Troglodytidae), and .

Intraspecific variation in Janzen-Connell effect is mediated by stress and plant-soil feedbacks.

Janzen-Connell (JC) effects, hypothesized to be partially driven by negative plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs), are considered to be a key mechanism that regulates tropical forest plant diversity and coexistence. However, intraspecific variation in JC effects may weaken this mechanism, with the strength of PSFs being a potentially key variable process. We conducted a manipulated experiment with seedlings from two populations of (Sapindaceae), a tropical tree species in southwest China.

Nor climate nor human impact factors: Chytrid infection shapes the skin bacterial communities of an endemic amphibian in a biodiversity hotspot.

The bacterial communities of the amphibian skin (i.e., the bacteriome) are critical to the host's innate immune system.

Survival, growth, and functional traits of tropical wet forest tree seedlings across an experimental soil moisture gradient in Puerto Rico.

Droughts are predicted to become more frequent and intense in many tropical regions, which may cause shifts in plant community composition. Especially in diverse tropical communities, understanding how traits mediate demographic responses to drought can help provide insight into the effects of climate change on these ecosystems. To understand tropical tree responses to reduced soil moisture, we grew seedlings of eight species across an experimental soil moisture gradient at the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico.

GOgetter: A pipeline for summarizing and visualizing GO slim annotations for plant genetic data.

Premise: The functional annotation of genes is a crucial component of genomic analyses. A common way to summarize functional annotations is with hierarchical gene ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology (GO) Resource. GO includes information about the cellular location, molecular function(s), and products/processes that genes produce or are involved in.

Feeding the fever: Complex host-pathogen dynamics along continuous resource gradients.

Food has long been known to perform dual functions of nutrition and medicine, but mounting evidence suggests that complex host-pathogen dynamics can emerge along continuous resource gradients. Empirical examples of nonmonotonic responses of infection with increasing host resources (e.g.

Internal vertebral morphology of bony fishes matches the mechanical demands of different environments.

Fishes have repeatedly evolved characteristic body shapes depending on how close they live to the substrate. Pelagic fishes live in open water and typically have narrow, streamlined body shapes; benthic and demersal fishes live close to the substrate; and demersal fishes often have deeper bodies. These shape differences are often associated with behavioral differences: pelagic fishes swim nearly constantly, demersal fishes tend to maneuver near the substrate, and benthic fishes often lie in wait on the substrate.

Hindcast-validated species distribution models reveal future vulnerabilities of mangroves and salt marsh species.

Rapid climate change is threatening biodiversity via habitat loss, range shifts, increases in invasive species, novel species interactions, and other unforeseen changes. Coastal and estuarine species are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to sea level rise and may be severely impacted in the next several decades. Species distribution modeling can project the potential future distributions of species under scenarios of climate change using bioclimatic data and georeferenced occurrence data.

Intimacy across species boundaries: Interspecific allopreening between Spot-necked () and Nonggang Babblers ().

Allopreening occurs in many species of birds and is known for providing hygienic and social benefits. While this behavior has been extensively studied among conspecifics, its occurrence among different species remains little known. Outside of captive environments, only a few records of interspecific allopreening exist.

Assessing ex situ genetic and ecogeographic conservation in a threatened but widespread oak after range-wide collecting effort.

Although the genetic diversity and structure of in situ populations has been investigated in thousands of studies, the genetic composition of ex situ plant populations has rarely been studied. A better understanding of how much genetic diversity is conserved ex situ, how it is distributed among locations (e.g.

The factors that favor adaptive habitat construction versus non-adaptive environmental conditioning.

Adaptive habitat construction is a process by which individuals alter their environment so as to increase their (inclusive) fitness. Such alterations are a subset of the myriad ways that individuals condition their environment. We present an individual-based model of habitat construction to explore what factors might favor selection when the benefits of environmental alterations are shared by individuals of the same species.

The soil microbiome increases plant survival and modifies interactions with root endosymbionts in the field.

Evidence is accumulating that the soil microbiome-the community of microorganisms living in soils-has a major effect on plant traits and fitness. However, most work to date has taken place under controlled laboratory conditions and has not experimentally disentangled the effect of the soil microbiome on plant performance from the effects of key endosymbiotic constituents. As a result, it is difficult to extrapolate from existing data to understand the role of the soil microbiome in natural plant populations.

Niche dynamics of in Sri Lanka: Distribution patterns, climate change effects, and conservation priorities.

Recent climate projections have shown that the distribution of organisms in island biotas is highly affected by climate change. Here, we present the result of the analysis of niche dynamics of a plant group, , in Sri Lanka, an island, using species occurrences and climate data. We aim to determine which climate variables explain current distribution, model how climate change impacts the availability of suitable habitat for , and determine conservation priority areas for Sri Lankan .

Gut microbial ecology of the Critically Endangered Fijian crested iguana (): Effects of captivity status and host reintroduction on endogenous microbiomes.

Animals often exhibit distinct microbial communities when maintained in captivity as compared to when in the wild. Such differentiation may be significant in headstart and reintroduction programs where individuals spend some time in captivity before release into native habitats. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, we (i) assessed differences in gut microbial communities between captive and wild Fijian crested iguanas () and (ii) resampled gut microbiota in captive iguanas released onto a native island to monitor microbiome restructuring in the wild.

High-throughput methods for efficiently building massive phylogenies from natural history collections.

Premise: Large phylogenetic data sets have often been restricted to small numbers of loci from GenBank, and a vetted sampling-to-sequencing phylogenomic protocol scaling to thousands of species is not yet available. Here, we report a high-throughput collections-based approach that empowers researchers to explore more branches of the tree of life with numerous loci.

Methods: We developed an integrated Specimen-to-Laboratory Information Management System (SLIMS), connecting sampling and wet lab efforts with progress tracking at each stage.

A target enrichment probe set for resolving the flagellate land plant tree of life.

Premise: New sequencing technologies facilitate the generation of large-scale molecular data sets for constructing the plant tree of life. We describe a new probe set for target enrichment sequencing to generate nuclear sequence data to build phylogenetic trees with any flagellate land plants, including hornworts, liverworts, mosses, lycophytes, ferns, and all gymnosperms.

Methods: We leveraged existing transcriptome and genome sequence data to design the GoFlag 451 probes, a set of 56,989 probes for target enrichment sequencing of 451 exons that are found in 248 single-copy or low-copy nuclear genes across flagellate plant lineages.

Leaf-footed bugs possess multiple hidden contrasting color signals, but only one is associated with increased body size.

Antipredatory displays that incorporate hidden contrasting coloration are found in a variety of different animals. These displays are seen in organisms that have drab coloration at rest, but when disturbed reveal conspicuous coloration. Examples include the bright abdomens of mountain katydids and the colorful underwings of hawk moths.

Maximizing human effort for analyzing scientific images: A case study using digitized herbarium sheets.

Premise: Digitization and imaging of herbarium specimens provides essential historical phenotypic and phenological information about plants. However, the full use of these resources requires high-quality human annotations for downstream use. Here we provide guidance on the design and implementation of image annotation projects for botanical research.

Using clear plastic CD cases as low-cost mini-rhizotrons to phenotype root traits.

Premise: We developed a novel low-cost method to visually phenotype belowground structures in the plant rhizosphere. We devised the method introduced here to address the difficulties encountered growing plants in seed germination pouches for long-term experiments and the high cost of other mini-rhizotron alternatives.

Methods And Results: The method described here took inspiration from homemade ant farms commonly used as an educational tool in elementary schools.