Search results for "Biological dispersal"

Movement of forest-dependent dung beetles through riparian buffers in Bornean oil palm plantations

2022

1. Fragmentation of tropical forests is increasing globally, with negative impacts for biodiversity. In Southeast Asia, expansion of oil palm agriculture has caused widespread deforestation, forest degradation and fragmentation. 2. Persistence of forest-dependent species within these fragmented landscapes is likely to depend on the capacity of individuals to move between forest patches. In oil palm landscapes, riparian buffers along streams and rivers are potential movement corridors, but their use by moving animals is poorly studied. 3. We examined how six dung beetle species traversed riparian buffers connected to a continuous forest reserve area within an oil palm plantation in Sabah, Ma…

Settlement dynamics and recruitment responses of Mediterranean gorgonians larvae to different crustose coralline algae species

2020

International audience; Sessile marine species such as Anthozoans act as ecosystem engineers due to their three-dimensional structure. Gorgonians, in particular, can form dense underwater forests that give shelter to other species increasing local biodiversity. In the last decades, several Mediterranean gorgonian populations have been affected by natural and anthropogenic impacts which drastically reduced their size. However, some species showed unexpected resilience, mainly due to the supply of new individuals. To understand the mechanisms underlying recovery processes, studies on the first life history stages (i.e. larval dispersal, settlement and recruitment) are needed. In tropical cora…

2017

The global biogeography of microorganisms remains poorly resolved, which limits the current understanding of microbial resilience toward environmental changes. Using high-throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, we characterized the microbial diversity of terrestrial and lacustrine biofilms from the Arctic, Antarctic and temperate regions. Our analyses suggest that bacterial community compositions at the poles are more similar to each other than they are to geographically closer temperate habitats, with 32% of all operational taxonomic units (OTUs) co-occurring in both polar regions. While specific microbial taxa were confined to distinct regions, representing potentially endemic popul…

Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

2015

WOS: 000378272400038

Towards a Unified Functional Trait Framework for Parasites

2019

Trait-based research holds high potential to unveil ecological and evolutionary processes. Functional traits are fitness-related characteristics of individuals, which are measured at individual level and defined without using information external to the individual. Despite the usefulness of the functional approach to understand the performance of individuals in ecosystems, and parasitism being the most common life-history strategy on Earth, studies based on functional traits of parasites are still scarce. Since the choice of functional traits is a critical step for any study, we propose a core list of seven functional traits of metazoan parasites, related to three universal challenges faced…

2017

Adaptation to local conditions is a fundamental process in evolution; however, mechanisms maintaining local adaptation despite high gene flow are still poorly understood. Marine ecosystems provide a wide array of diverse habitats that frequently promote ecological adaptation even in species characterized by strong levels of gene flow. As one example, populations of the marine fish Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) are highly connected due to immense dispersal capabilities but nevertheless show local adaptation in several key traits. By combining population genomic analyses based on 12K single nucleotide polymorphisms with larval dispersal patterns inferred using a biophysical ocean model, we show…

Membrane-Associated Enteroviruses Undergo Intercellular Transmission as Pools of Sibling Viral Genomes

2019

Summary Some viruses are released from cells as pools of membrane-associated virions. By increasing the multiplicity of infection (MOI), this type of collective dispersal could favor viral cooperation, but also the emergence of cheater-like viruses such as defective interfering particles. To better understand this process, we examined the genetic diversity of membrane-associated coxsackievirus infectious units. We find that infected cells release membranous structures (including vesicles) that contain 8–21 infectious particles on average. However, in most cases (62%–93%), these structures do not promote the co-transmission of different viral genetic variants present in a cell. Furthermore, …

2014

Abstract. Archaea are widespread and abundant in many terrestrial and aquatic environments, and are thus outside extreme environments, accounting for up to ~10% of the prokaryotes. Compared to bacteria and other microorganisms, however, very little is known about the abundance, diversity, and dispersal of archaea in the atmosphere. By means of DNA analysis and Sanger sequencing targeting the 16S rRNA (435 sequences) and amoA genes in samples of air particulate matter collected over 1 year at a continental sampling site in Germany, we obtained first insights into the seasonal dynamics of airborne archaea. The detected archaea were identified as Thaumarchaeota or Euryarchaeota, with soil Thau…

Unravelling biodiversity, evolution and threats to conservation in the Sahara-Sahel

2013

Deserts and arid regions are generally perceived as bare and rather homogeneous areas of low diversity. The Sahara is the largest warm desert in the world and together with the arid Sahel displays high topographical and climatic heterogeneity, and has experienced recent and strong climatic oscillations that have greatly shifted biodiversity distribution and community composition. The large size, remoteness and long-term political instability of the Sahara-Sahel, have limited knowledge on its biodiversity. However, over the last decade, there have been an increasing number of published scientific studies based on modern geomatic and molecular tools, and broad sampling of taxa of these region…

Historical biogeography of Melastomataceae: the roles of Tertiary migration and long-distance dispersal

2001

Melastomataceae and Memecylaceae are pantropically distributed sister groups for which an ndhF gene phylogeny for 91 species in 59 genera is here linked with Eurasian and North American fossils in a molecular clock approach to biogeographical reconstruction. Nine species from the eight next-closest families are used to root phylogenetic trees obtained under maximum likelihood criteria. Melastomataceae comprise ∼3000 species in the neotropics, ∼1000 in tropical Asia, 240 in Africa, and 225 in Madagascar in 150-166 genera, and the taxa sampled come from throughout this geographic range. Based on fossils, ranges of closest relatives, tree topology, and calibrated molecular divergences, Mel…