Notes

Helpful information for stretching out as well as utilizing generalized risk-adjusted cost-effectiveness (Sophistication).
Episodic natural disturbances play a key role in ecosystem renewal, and ecological engineering could do so by transforming resource accessibility. While such coupling creates nontrophic and lasting interactions between resource consumers and ecosystem engineers, it is unclear how large the disturbance must be to sustain such coupling. Natural disturbances that occur from the ecological engineering by the Canadian beaver (Castor canadensis) modulate deadwood dynamics in many forest ecosystems. Relying on such episodes of fresh woody debris, primary wood-boring beetles, organisms that dig tunnels into those debris for reproduction, act as important deadwood decomposers in the ecosystem. Here, we investigate how the age and size of beaver disturbances act as predictors for primary wood-boring beetle abundance and species richness around beaver-altered habitat patches. To do so, we sampled beetles around 16 beaver-disturbed and unaltered watercourses within the Kouchibouguac National Park (Canada) and modeled beetle demographic responses to site conditions and their physical characteristics, distance from the watercourse, deadwood biomass, and the geographical location of the sites. Our results indicate that the size of the disturbance is positively associated with beetle abundance, which highlights unique deadwood dynamics inherent to large beaver ponds. The role of beavers in forest ecosystems by reaching multiple taxa at multiple spatiotemporal scales further exemplifies the need to study nontrophic interactions and their complex consequences in ecosystem management.An organism may increase its fitness by changing its reproductive strategies in response to environmental cues, but the possible consequences of those changes for the next generation have rarely been explored. By using an experiment on the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), we studied how changes in the onset of breeding photoperiod (early versus late) affect reproductive strategies of males and females, and life histories of their offspring. We also explored whether telomeres are involved in the within- and transgenerational effects. In response to the late onset of breeding photoperiod, females reduced their investment in the early clutches, but males increased their investment in sexual signals. Costs of increased reproductive investment in terms of telomere loss were evident only in the late females. The environmentally induced changes in reproductive strategies affected offspring growth and survival. Most notably, offspring growth rate was the fastest when both parents experienced a delayed (i.e., late) breeding photoperiod, and survival rate was the highest when both parents experienced an advanced (i.e., early) breeding photoperiod. There was no evidence of transgenerational effects on offspring telomere length despite positive parents-offspring relationships in this trait. Our results highlight that environmental changes may impact more than one generation by altering reproductive strategies of seasonal breeders with consequences for offspring viability.Measurement repeatability is often reported in morphometric studies as an index of the contribution of measurement error to trait measurements. However, the common method of remeasuring a mounted specimen fails to capture some components of measurement error and could therefore yield inflated repeatability estimates. this website Remounting specimens between successive measurements is likely to provide more realistic estimates of repeatability, particularly for structures that are difficult to measure.Using measurements of 22 somatic and genitalic traits of the neriid fly Telostylinus angusticollis, we compared repeatability estimates obtained via remeasurement of a specimen that is mounted once (single-mounted method) versus remeasurement of a specimen that is remounted between measurements (remounted method). We also asked whether the difference in repeatability estimates obtained via the two methods depends on trait size, trait type (somatic vs. genitalic), sclerotization, or sex.Repeatability estimates obtained via the remounted method were lower than estimates obtained via the single-mounted method for each of the 22 traits, and the difference between estimates obtained via the two methods was generally greater for small structures (such as genitalic traits) than for large structures (such as legs and wings). However, the difference between estimates obtained via the two methods did not depend on trait type (genitalic or somatic), tissue type (soft or sclerotized) or sex.Remounting specimens between successive measurements can provide more accurate estimates of measurement repeatability than remeasuring from a single mount, especially for small structures that are difficult to measure.How blood parasite infections influence the migration of hosts remains a lively debated issue as past studies found negative, positive, or no response to infections. This particularly applies to small birds, for which monitoring of detailed migration behavior over a whole annual cycle has been technically unachievable so far. Here, we investigate how bird migration is influenced by parasite infections. To this end, we tracked great reed warblers (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) with multisensor loggers, characterized general migration patterns as well as detailed flight bout durations, resting times and flight heights, and related these to the genus and intensity of their avian haemosporidian infections. We found migration distances to be shorter and the onset of autumn migration to be delayed with increasing intensity of blood parasite infection, in particular for birds with Plasmodium and mixed-genus infections. Additionally, the durations of migratory flight bout were prolonged for infected compared to uninfected birds. But since severely infected birds and particularly birds with mixed-genus infections had shorter resting times, initial delays seemed to be compensated for and the timing in other periods of the annual cycle was not compromised by infection. Overall, our multisensor logger approach revealed that avian blood parasites have mostly subtle effects on migratory performance and that effects can occur in specific periods of the year only.
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