Application of the DRASTIC Model to Assess the Vulnerability of Groundwater Contamination Near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to have a devastating effect on the well-being of Ukrainians and their environment. We evaluated a major environmental hazard caused by the war: the potential for groundwater contamination in proximity to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). We quantified groundwater vulnerability with the DRASTIC index, which was originally developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and has been used at various locations worldwide to assess relative pollution potential.

Female reproductive ageing persists despite high infanticide risk in chacma baboons and geladas.

Across mammals, fertility and offspring survival are often lowest at the beginning and end of females' reproductive careers. However, extrinsic drivers of reproductive success-including infanticide by males-could stochastically obscure these expected age-related trends. Here, we modelled reproductive ageing trajectories in two cercopithecine primates that experience high rates of male infanticide: the chacma baboon () and the gelada ().

Warming-induced changes in seasonal priority effects drive shifts in community composition.

Shifting community assembly dynamics are an underappreciated mechanism by which warming will alter plant community composition. Germination timing (which can determine the order in which seedlings emerge within a community) will likely shift unevenly across species in response to warming. In seasonal environments where communities reassemble at the beginning of each growing season, changes in germination timing could lead to changes in seasonal priority effects, and ultimately community composition.

Rapid Parallel Adaptation in Distinct Invasions of Ambrosia Artemisiifolia Is Driven by Large-Effect Structural Variants.

When introduced to multiple distinct ranges, invasive species provide a compelling natural experiment for understanding the repeatability of adaptation. Ambrosia artemisiifolia is an invasive, noxious weed, and chief cause of hay fever. Leveraging over 400 whole-genome sequences spanning the native-range in North America and 2 invasions in Europe and Australia, we inferred demographically distinct invasion histories on each continent.

Environmental Variation Influences Genome Evolution in Hispaniolan Trunk Anoles (Anolis distichus).

Environmental variation often drives evolutionary processes like population differentiation, local adaptation and speciation. We used genome-scale data to investigate the contribution of environmental variation to evolution of the North Caribbean bark anole (Anolis distichus), a widespread common lizard that exhibits impressive phenotypic variation across varying habitats on the island of Hispaniola. We obtained new double-digest restriction-associated DNA sequence data (ddRADseq) from nearly 200 individuals and used 53 GIS data layers representing a range of environmental variables.

Fig abscission as a defense mechanism of Ficus trees against parasitism by non-pollinating fig wasps.

How does the fig tree Ficus benguetensis protect its investment in the production of figs and pollinating fig wasps against parasitism from non-pollinating fig wasps? This study documents a previously overlooked defense mechanism: fig abscission-the natural shedding of the fig fruit as a defense mechanism. Our bagging experiments showed that both the absence of pollination and high parasitism levels lead to the abortion of F. benguetensis figs, with positive correlations between parasitism levels, increased abscission rates, and decreased pollinator production.

Parallel genetic adaptation amid a background of changing effective population sizes in divergent yellow perch () populations.

Aquatic ecosystems are highly dynamic environments vulnerable to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. High-economic-value fisheries are one of many ecosystem services affected by these disturbances, and it is critical to accurately characterize the genetic diversity and effective population sizes of valuable fish stocks through time. We used genome-wide data to reconstruct the demographic histories of economically important yellow perch () populations.

Are Department Heads Ready for Change? Leveraging a Leadership Action Team to Advance Teaching Evaluation Practices.

Teaching evaluation at many institutions is insufficient to support, recognize, and reward effective teaching. We developed a long-term intervention to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) department heads in advancing teaching evaluation practices. We describe the intervention and systematically investigate its impact on departmental practices within a research-intensive university.

Assembly Graph as the Rosetta Stone of Ecological Assembly.

Ecological assembly-the process of ecological community formation through species introductions-has recently seen exciting theoretical advancements across dynamical, informational, and probabilistic approaches. However, these theories often remain inaccessible to non-theoreticians, and they lack a unifying lens. Here, I introduce the assembly graph as an integrative tool to connect these emerging theories.

Floodplain forests drive fruit-eating fish diversity at the Amazon Basin-scale.

Unlike most rivers globally, nearly all lowland Amazonian rivers have unregulated flow, supporting seasonally flooded floodplain forests. Floodplain forests harbor a unique tree species assemblage adapted to flooding and specialized fauna, including fruit-eating fish that migrate seasonally into floodplains, favoring expansive floodplain areas. Frugivorous fish are forest-dependent fauna critical to forest regeneration via seed dispersal and support commercial and artisanal fisheries.

Diversification and recurrent adaptation of the synaptonemal complex in Drosophila.

The synaptonemal complex (SC) is a protein-rich structure essential for meiotic recombination and faithful chromosome segregation. Acting like a zipper to paired homologous chromosomes during early prophase I, the complex is a symmetrical structure where central elements are connected on two sides by the transverse filaments to the chromatin-anchoring lateral elements. Despite being found in most major eukaryotic taxa implying a deeply conserved evolutionary origin, several components of the complex exhibit unusually high rates of sequence turnover.

Short INDELs and SNPs as markers of evolutionary processes in hybrid zones.

Polymorphic short insertions and deletions (INDELs ≤ 50 bp) are abundant, although less common than single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Evidence from model organisms shows INDELs to be more strongly influenced by purifying selection than SNPs. Partly for this reason, INDELs are rarely used as markers for demographic processes or to detect divergent selection.

Comparative Analyses and Phylogenetic Dependence in Traits and Trends of the Dipterocarpaceae.

The role of trait evolution in shaping the functional and ecological diversity of tropical forests remains poorly understood. Analyses of trait variation as a function of evolutionary history and environmental variables should reveal the drivers of species distributions, as well as generate insights valuable to conservation. Here, we focus on the Dipterocarpaceae, the key plant family underpinning the hyperdiversity of South-East Asian tropical forest canopies and of major conservation concern due to over-exploitation for timber, cultivation, and climate change.

"Age of risk" shapes simpler multimodal communication in the juvenile plains zebra (Equus quagga).

Juveniles occupy a different social niche than adults, engaging in a smaller diversity of social contexts and perceiving greater social risks. Either or both of these factors may influence the form communication takes in immaturity and its developmental trajectory. We investigated the relative influence of these social forces on the development of multimodal communication in plains zebras (Equus quagga).

Polyurethane microplastics and associated tris(chloropropyl)phosphate additives both affect development in larval fathead minnow Pimephales promelas.

Microplastics (< 5 mm) are a diverse class of contaminants ranging in morphology, polymer type, and chemical cocktail. Microplastic toxicity can be driven by one or a combination of these characteristics. Most studies, however, evaluate the physical effect of the most commercially available polymers.

Climate change could amplify weak synchrony in large marine ecosystems.

Climate change is increasing the frequency of large-scale, extreme environmental events and flattening environmental gradients. Whether such changes will cause spatially synchronous, large-scale population declines depends on mechanisms that limit metapopulation synchrony, thereby promoting rescue effects and stability. Using long-term data and empirical dynamic models, we quantified spatial heterogeneity in density dependence, spatial heterogeneity in environmental responses, and environmental gradients to assess their role in inhibiting synchrony across 36 marine fish and invertebrate species.

Complex tissue regeneration in reveals a phylogenetic signal for enhanced regenerative ability in deomyine rodents.

Identifying why complex tissue regeneration is present or absent in specific vertebrate lineages has remained elusive. One also wonders whether the isolated examples where regeneration is observed represent cases of convergent evolution or are instead the product of phylogenetic inertia from a common ancestral program. Testing alternative hypotheses to identify genetic regulation, cell states, and tissue physiology that explain how regenerative healing emerges in some species requires sampling multiple species among which there is variation in regenerative ability across a phylogenetic framework.

Potential Adaptive Introgression From Dogs in Iberian Grey Wolves (Canis lupus).

Invading species along with increased anthropogenization may lead to hybridization events between wild species and closely related domesticates. As a consequence, wild species may carry introgressed alleles from domestic species, which is generally assumed to yield adverse effects in wild populations. The opposite evolutionary consequence, adaptive introgression, where introgressed genes are positively selected in the wild species, is possible but has rarely been documented.

Plains Zebras Prioritize Foraging Without Sacrificing Social Bonds During a Severe Drought.

Anthropogenically induced climate change has significantly increased the frequency of acute weather events, such as drought. As human activities amplify environmental stresses, animals may be forced to prioritize survival over behaviors less crucial to immediate fitness, such as socializing. Yet, social bonds may also enable individuals to weather the deleterious effects of environmental conditions.

Uncovering Diversity within the Glomeromycota: Novel Clades, Family Distributions, and Land Use Sensitivity.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF, phylum Glomeromycota) are essential to plant community diversity and ecosystem functioning. However, increasing human land use represents a major threat to native AMF globally. Characterizing the loss of AMF diversity remains challenging because many taxa are undescribed, resulting in poor documentation of their biogeography and family-level disturbance sensitivity.

Phylogenomic insights into the taxonomy, ecology, and mating systems of the lorchel family Discinaceae (Pezizales, Ascomycota).

Lorchels, also known as false morels (Gyromitra sensu lato), are iconic due to their brain-shaped mushrooms and production of gyromitrin, a deadly mycotoxin. Molecular phylogenetic studies have hitherto failed to resolve deep-branching relationships in the lorchel family, Discinaceae, hampering our ability to settle longstanding taxonomic debates and to reconstruct the evolution of toxin production. We generated 75 draft genomes from cultures and ascomata (some collected as early as 1960), conducted phylogenomic analyses using 1542 single-copy orthologs to infer the early evolutionary history of lorchels, and identified genomic signatures of trophic mode and mating-type loci to better understand lorchel ecology and reproductive biology.

Conservation benefits of a large marine protected area network that spans multiple ecosystems.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely implemented tools for long-term ocean conservation and resource management. Assessments of MPA performance have largely focused on specific ecosystems individually and have rarely evaluated performance across multiple ecosystems either in an individual MPA or across an MPA network. We evaluated the conservation performance of 59 MPAs in California's large MPA network, which encompasses 4 primary ecosystems (surf zone, kelp forest, shallow reef, deep reef) and 4 bioregions, and identified MPA attributes that best explain performance.

An African perspective to biodiversity conservation in the twenty-first century.

Africa boasts high biodiversity while also being home to some of the largest and fastest-growing human populations. Although the current environmental footprint of Africa is low compared to other continents, the population of Africa is estimated at around 1.5 billion inhabitants, representing nearly 18% of the world's total population.