Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

El Nino/Southern Oscillation-driven rainfall pulse amplifies predation by owls on seabirds via apparent competition with mice
Most approaches for assessing species vulnerability to climate change have focused on direct impacts via abiotic changes rather than indirect impacts mediated by changes in species interactions. Changes in rainfall regimes may influence species interactions from the bottom-up by increasing primary productivity in arid environments, but subsequently lead to less predictable top-down effects. Our study demonstrates how the effects of an EL Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-driven rainfall pulse ricochets along a chain of interactions between marine and terrestrial food webs, leading to enhanced predation of a vulnerabl...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 24, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Thomsen, S. K., Mazurkiewicz, D. M., Stanley, T. R., Green, D. J. Tags: behaviour, ecology, environmental science Global change and conservation Source Type: research

Modelling determinants of extinction across two Mesozoic hyperthermal events
The Late Triassic and Early Toarcian extinction events are both associated with greenhouse warming events triggered by massive volcanism. These Mesozoic hyperthermals were responsible for the mass extinction of marine organisms and resulted in significant ecological upheaval. It has, however, been suggested that these events merely involved intensification of background extinction rates rather than significant shifts in the macroevolutionary regime and extinction selectivity. Here, we apply a multivariate modelling approach to a vast global database of marine organisms to test whether extinction selectivity varied through ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 24, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Dunhill, A. M., Foster, W. J., Azaele, S., Sciberras, J., Twitchett, R. J. Tags: palaeontology Palaeobiology Source Type: research

A global synthesis of the small-island effect in habitat islands
Habitat loss and fragmentation are considered to be the leading drivers of biodiversity loss. The small-island effect (SIE) can be used to predict species extinctions resulting from habitat loss and has important implications for species conservation. However, to date, no study has explicitly evaluated the prevalence of SIEs in habitat islands. Here, we compiled 90 global datasets to systematically investigate the prevalence and underlying factors determining the ubiquity of SIEs in habitat island systems. Among the 90 datasets, SIEs were unambiguously detected in 36 cases. We found significant effects of habitat island ty...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 17, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Wang, Y., Chen, C., Millien, V. Tags: theoretical biology, ecology, environmental science Source Type: research

Bearded capuchin monkeys use joint synergies to stabilize the hammer trajectory while cracking nuts in bipedal stance
The transition from occasional to obligate bipedalism is a milestone in human evolution. However, because the fossil record is fragmentary and reconstructing behaviour from fossils is difficult, changes in the motor control strategies that accompanied this transition remain unknown. Quadrupedal primates that adopt a bipedal stance while using percussive tools provide a unique reference point to clarify one aspect of this transition, which is maintaining bipedal stance while handling massive objects. We found that while cracking nuts using massive stone hammers, wild bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) produce ha...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 17, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Mangalam, M., Rein, R., Fragaszy, D. M. Tags: behaviour, biomechanics, evolution Morphology and biomechanics Source Type: research

Multi-modal signal evolution in birds: re-examining a standard proxy for sexual selection
Sexual selection is proposed to be an important driver of speciation and phenotypic diversification in animal systems. However, previous phylogenetic tests have produced conflicting results, perhaps because they have focused on a single signalling modality (visual ornaments), whereas sexual selection may act on alternative signalling modalities (e.g. acoustic ornaments). Here, we compile phenotypic data from 259 avian sister species pairs to assess the relationship between visible plumage dichromatism—a standard index of sexual selection in birds—and macroevolutionary divergence in the other major avian signall...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 17, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Cooney, C. R., MacGregor, H. E. A., Seddon, N., Tobias, J. A. Tags: ecology, evolution Source Type: research

Miocene biome turnover drove conservative body size evolution across Australian vertebrates
On deep time scales, changing climatic trends can have a predictable influence on macroevolution. From evidence of mass extinctions, we know that rapid climatic oscillations can indirectly open niche space and precipitate adaptive radiation, changing the course of ecological diversification. These dramatic shifts in the global climate, however, are rare events relative to extended periods of protracted climate change and biome turnover. It remains unclear whether during gradually changing periods, shifting habitats may instead promote non-adaptive speciation by facilitating allopatry and phenotypic conservatism. Using foss...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 17, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Brennan, I. G., Keogh, J. S. Tags: evolution Source Type: research

Urban rats have less variable, higher protein diets
This study highlights the potential of using the historical and archaeological record to provide a retrospective on the urban ecology of commensal and synanthropic animals that could be useful for improving animal management and conservation strategies in urban areas. (Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 17, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Guiry, E., Buckley, M. Tags: behaviour, ecology, environmental science Palaeobiology Source Type: research

The evolution of fungal substrate specificity in a widespread group of crustose lichens
Lichens exhibit varying degrees of specialization with regard to the surfaces they colonize, ranging from substrate generalists to strict substrate specialists. Though long recognized, the causes and consequences of substrate specialization are poorly known. Using a phylogeny of a 150–200 Mya clade of lichen fungi, we asked whether substrate niche is phylogenetically conserved, which substrates are ancestral, whether specialists arise from generalists or vice versa and how specialization affects speciation/extinction processes. We found strong phylogenetic signal for niche conservatism. Specialists evolved into gener...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 17, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Resl, P., Fernandez-Mendoza, F., Mayrhofer, H., Spribille, T. Tags: evolution Source Type: research

Correction to 'Tree species richness increases ecosystem carbon storage in subtropical forests
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Liu, X., Trogisch, S., He, J.-S., Niklaus, P. A., Bruelheide, H., Tang, Z., Erfmeier, A., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Pietsch, K. A., Yang, B., Kühn, P., Scholten, T., Huang, Y., Wang, C., Staab, M., Leppert, K. N., Wirth, C., Schmid, B., Ma, K. Tags: ecology Corrections Source Type: research

Correction to 'Dodging silver bullets: good CRISPR gene-drive design is critical for eradicating exotic vertebrates
(Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Prowse, T. A. A., Cassey, P., Ross, J. V., Pfitzner, C., Wittmann, T., Thomas, P. Tags: computational biology Corrections Source Type: research

Wild chimpanzees select tool material based on efficiency and knowledge
Some animals have basic culture, but to date there is not much evidence that cultural traits evolve as part of a cumulative process as seen in humans. This may be due to limits in animal physical cognition, such as an inability to compare the efficiency of a novel behavioural innovation with an already existing tradition. We investigated this possibility with a study on a natural tool innovation in wild chimpanzees: moss-sponging, which recently emerged in some individuals to extract mineral-rich liquids at a natural clay-pit. The behaviour probably arose as a variant of leaf-sponging, a tool technique seen in all studied ...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Lamon, N., Neumann, C., Gier, J., Zuberbühler, K., Gruber, T. Tags: behaviour, cognition Source Type: research

Reciprocal facilitation between large herbivores and ants in a semi-arid grassland
While positive interactions have been well documented in plant and sessile benthic marine communities, their role in structuring mobile animal communities and underlying mechanisms has been less explored. Using field removal experiments, we demonstrated that a large vertebrate herbivore (cattle; Bos tarurs) and a much smaller invertebrate (ants; Lasius spp.), the two dominant animal taxa in a semi-arid grassland in Northeast China, facilitate each other. Cattle grazing led to higher ant mound abundance compared with ungrazed sites, while the presence of ant mounds increased the foraging of cattle during the peak of the gro...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Li, X., Zhong, Z., Sanders, D., Smit, C., Wang, D., Nummi, P., Zhu, Y., Wang, L., Zhu, H., Hassan, N. Tags: ecology Source Type: research

Social bonds facilitate cooperative resource sharing in wild chimpanzees
Why share when access to benefits is uncertain is crucial to our understanding of the evolution of humans' extensive cooperation. Here, we investigated some of the different human sharing hypotheses and potential neuroendocrine mechanisms, in one of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. The strongest predictor of sharing across food types was the presence of enduring and mutually preferred grooming partners, more than harassment, direct signalling, or trade. Moreover, urinary oxytocin levels were higher after the sharing of both individually and jointly acquired resources compared with controls. We conclude that the e...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Samuni, L., Preis, A., Mielke, A., Deschner, T., Wittig, R. M., Crockford, C. Tags: behaviour, physiology, evolution Source Type: research

Ancient plants with ancient fungi: liverworts associate with early-diverging arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
Arbuscular mycorrhizas are widespread in land plants including liverworts, some of the closest living relatives of the first plants to colonize land 500 million years ago (MYA). Previous investigations reported near-exclusive colonization of liverworts by the most recently evolved arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, the Glomeraceae, indicating a recent acquisition from flowering plants at odds with the widely held notion that arbuscular mycorrhizal-like associations in liverworts represent the ancestral symbiotic condition in land plants. We performed an analysis of symbiotic fungi in 674 globally collected liverworts using mole...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Rimington, W. R., Pressel, S., Duckett, J. G., Field, K. J., Read, D. J., Bidartondo, M. I. Tags: molecular biology, plant science, evolution Source Type: research

Staggered Hox expression is more widespread among molluscs than previously appreciated
Hox genes are expressed along the anterior–posterior body axis in a colinear fashion in the majority of bilaterians. Contrary to polyplacophorans, a group of aculiferan molluscs with conserved ancestral molluscan features, gastropods and cephalopods deviate from this pattern by expressing Hox genes in distinct morphological structures and not in a staggered fashion. Among conchiferans, scaphopods exhibit many similarities with gastropods, cephalopods and bivalves, however, the molecular developmental underpinnings of these similar traits remain unknown. We investigated Hox gene expression in developmental stages of t...
Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences - October 10, 2018 Category: Biology Authors: Wollesen, T., Rodriguez Monje, S. V., Luiz de Oliveira, A., Wanninger, A. Tags: developmental biology, evolution Source Type: research