cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397955
title: Data from: Effects of host colony size and hygiene behaviors on social spider kleptoparasite loads along an elevation gradient

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;1.Group living animals are likely to attract more parasites than solitary ones. Parasite loads, however, should also depend on environmental conditions and on host characteristics and behaviors. Previous work has found that social spider colonies harbor communities of kleptoparasitic spiders thats forego building their own web and, instead, steal prey from their social host. 2.We examined parasite loads and host hygiene behaviors in colonies of social and subsocial spiders in the genus Anelosimus along an elevation gradient in eastern Ecuador. 3.We found that parasite loads declined dramatically with increasing elevation. Host hygiene behaviors, such as debris removal, web repair, and interactions with the parasites, also declined with elevation. Within elevations, species with more frequent hygiene behaviors appeared more successful at keeping parasites at bay. Contrary to our predictions, parasite density declined with host nest and colony size. 4.The decline in parasite loads at higher elevations likely reflects a lower rate of energy exchange between colonies and their environments, where colder temperatures mean fewer and smaller prey for colonies to process. The decline in parasite density with host colony size may reflect a decline in the number of accessible prey in larger host colonies, as larger colonies should capture fewer but larger insects due to scaling properties of their three dimensional webs. 5.Social immunity, whereby a social host uses social behaviour to fight against parasites, has been studied in eusocial and non‐eusocial insects. This study opens up social spiders as a novel system in which to study how host characteristics interact with environmental factors to affect parasite loads. It also introduces the concept of group‐level immunity to social spiders and suggests a role for colony‐level metabolism in determining ecological patterns in parasitism.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397957
title: Data from: The effect of leaf shape on the thermoregulation and frost tolerance of an annual vine, Ipomoea hederacea (Convolvulaceae)

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Premise of study: Leaf shape is predicted to have important ecophysiological consequences; for example, theory predicts that lobed leaves should track air temperature more closely than their entire-margined counterparts. Hence, leaf-lobing may be advantageous during cold nights (∼0°C) when there is the risk of damage by radiation frost (a phenomenon whereby leaves fall below air temperature because of an imbalance between radiational heat loss and convective heat gain). Methods: Here, we test whether radiation frost can lead to differential damage between leaf shapes by examining a leaf-shape polymorphism in Ipomoea hederacea, where leaves are either lobed or heart-shaped depending on a single Mendelian locus. We logged leaf temperature during midautumn, and measured chlorophyll fluorescence and survival as proxies of performance. Furthermore, we tested if the leaf-shape locus confers freezing tolerance using freezing assays on leaf tissue from different leaf shapes. Key results: We found that lobed leaves consistently remain warmer than heart-shaped leaves during the night, but that no pattern emerged during the day, and that temperature differences between leaf shapes were typically small. Furthermore, we found that leaf types did not differ in frost tolerance, but that a 1°C decrease leads to a transition from moderate to complete damage. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that Ipomoea hederacea leaf shapes do experience different nighttime temperatures, and that only minor temperature differences can lead to disparate levels of freezing damage, suggesting that the differential thermoregulation could result in different levels of frost damage.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397958
title: Data from: Differential migratory timing of western populations of Wilson’s Warblers revealed by mitochondrial DNA and stable isotopes

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Molecular markers and stable isotopes have provided important insights into the migratory connectivity of small landbirds. Research integrating these two methods has primarily focused on linking breeding and wintering sites, rather than focusing on timing of migratory movement of different breeding populations. We used mitochondrial DNA and isotopic markers to infer the timing of various breeding populations of migrating Wilson's Warblers (Cardellina pusilla) moving through a migratory stopover site, demonstrating the value of multiple sources of information in estimating the origin of migrants. Using mixed-stock analysis, we found that early spring migrants sampled in southwestern Arizona were dominated by warblers migrating to the West Coast of the contiguous United States, whereas later migrants included a large pulse of birds migrating to Alaska and western Canadian provinces. Stable hydrogen isotope data from individual birds showed the same timing pattern as genetic data. Had we used stable isotopes alone, we would not have been able to infer whether birds later in the migration season were most likely migrating to Alaska or the Interior West, given the large overlap in isotope values between those regions. The lack of mitochondrial group 2, common in the Interior West, in late-season migrants strongly suggests that these birds were migrating to breeding areas in Alaska or other northern regions. Studies that reveal the timing of migration of different breeding populations through stopover sites lay the foundation for more in-depth examination of seasonal interactions between migration and the stationary phases of the annual cycle.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397959
title: Data from: Evolutionarily stable sex ratios and mutation load

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Frequency-dependent selection should drive dioecious populations toward a 1:1 sex ratio, but biased sex ratios are widespread, especially among plants with sex chromosomes. Here, we develop population genetic models to investigate the relationships between evolutionarily stable sex ratios, haploid selection, and deleterious mutation load. We confirm that when haploid selection acts only on the relative fitness of X and Y-bearing pollen and the sex ratio is controlled by the maternal genotype, seed sex ratios evolve toward 1:1. When we also consider haploid selection acting on deleterious mutations, however, we find that biased sex ratios can be stably maintained, reflecting a balance between the advantages of purging deleterious mutations via haploid selection, and the disadvantages of haploid selection on the sex ratio. Our results provide a plausible evolutionary explanation for biased sex ratios in dioecious plants, given the extensive gene expression that occurs across plant genomes at the haploid stage.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397960
title: Data from: Mechanisms of thermal adaptation and evolutionary potential of conspecific populations to changing environments

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Heterogeneous and ever-changing thermal environments drive the evolution of populations and species, especially when extreme conditions increase selection pressure for traits influencing fitness. However, projections of biological diversity under scenarios of climate change rarely consider evolutionary adaptive potential of natural species. In this study, we tested for mechanistic evidence of evolutionary thermal adaptation among ecologically divergent redband trout populations (Oncorhynchus mykiss gairdneri) in cardiorespiratory function, cellular response and genomic variation. In a common garden environment, fish from an extreme desert climate had significantly higher critical thermal maximum (p&lt;0.05) and broader optimum thermal window for aerobic scope (&gt;3°C) than fish from cooler montane climate. In addition, the desert population had the highest maximum heart rate during warming (20% greater than montane populations), indicating improved capacity to deliver oxygen to internal tissues. In response to acute heat stress, distinct sets of cardiac genes were induced among ecotypes, which helps to explain the differences in cardiorespiratory function. Candidate genomic markers and genes underlying these physiological adaptations were also pinpointed, such as genes involved in stress response and metabolic activity (hsp40, ldh-b and camkk2). These markers were developed into a multi-variate model that not only accurately predicted critical thermal maxima, but also evolutionary limit of thermal adaptation in these specific redband trout populations relative to the expected limit for the species. This study demonstrates mechanisms and limitations of an aquatic species to evolve under changing environments that can be incorporated into advanced models to predict ecological consequences of climate change for natural organisms.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397961
title: Data from: Effects of predatory ants within and across ecosystems in bromeliad food webs

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Predation is one of the most fundamental ecological processes affecting biotic communities. Terrestrial predators that live at ecosystem boundaries may alter the diversity of terrestrial organisms, but they may also have cross-ecosystem cascading effects when they feed on organisms with complex life cycles (i.e. organisms that shift from aquatic juvenile stages to terrestrial adult stages) or inhibit female oviposition in the aquatic environment. The predatory ant Odontomachus hastatus establishes its colonies among roots of Vriesea procera, an epiphytic bromeliad species with water-filled tanks that shelters many terrestrial and aquatic organisms. Ants may impact terrestrial communities and deter adult insects from ovipositing in the water of bromeliads via consumptive and non-consumptive effects. Ants do not forage within the aquatic environment; thus, they may be more efficient predators on terrestrial organisms. Therefore, we predict that ants will have stronger effects on terrestrial than aquatic food webs. However, such effects may also be site contingent and depend on the local composition of food webs. To test our hypothesis, we surveyed bromeliads with and without O. hastatus colonies from three different coastal field sites in the Atlantic Forest of southeast Brazil, and quantified the effect of this predatory ant on the composition, density and richness of aquatic and terrestrial metazoans found in these bromeliads. We found that ants changed the composition and reduced the overall density of aquatic and terrestrial metazoans in bromeliad ecosystems. However, effects of ants on species diversity were contingent on site. In general terms, the effects of the ant on aquatic and terrestrial metazoan communities were similar in strength and magnitude. Ants reduced the density of virtually all aquatic functional groups, especially detritivore insects as well as metazoans that reach bromeliads through phoresy on the skin of terrestrial animals (i.e. Ostracoda and Helobdella sp.). Our results suggest that the cross-ecosystem effect of this terrestrial predator on the aquatic metazoans was at least as strong as its within-ecosystem effect on the terrestrial ecosystem, and demonstrates that the same predator can simultaneously initiate cascades in multiple ecosystems.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397962
title: Data from: Additive genetic variance and effects of inbreeding, sex and age on heterophil to lymphocyte ratio in song sparrows

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;1. Physiological traits can influence individual fitness and evolutionary changes in stress-related physiological traits have been hypothesized to mediate the evolution of life-history traits and trade-offs. The hypothesis that such physiological variation could drive ongoing life-history evolution requires non-zero additive genetic variance in individual stress-related physiological traits. However, the magnitude of genetic and environmental components of phenotypic variation in stress-related physiological traits has not been estimated in fully developed vertebrates under natural environmental conditions. 2. We used 490 observations of heterophil to lymphocyte (H:L) ratio, one stress-related physiological trait, collected from 350 fully developed song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) across nine different sampling periods to estimate direct and interacting effects of individual and parental coefficients of inbreeding (f), sampling period, age and sex, and to estimate additive genetic variance and heritability. 3. Across all nine sampling periods combined, H:L ratio increased with individual f. However, there was a significant individual f by period interaction whereby H:L ratio increased with individual f in two of the nine sampling periods, hence indicating inbreeding depression. H:L ratio was higher (suggesting an increase in baseline stress level) in older individuals, did not differ between males and females and did not vary with parental f. 4. A quantitative genetic ‘animal model’ estimated low additive genetic variance in individual H:L ratio. The estimated heritability was h2=0.04 and did not differ significantly from zero. 5. Overall, these results imply that the magnitude of inbreeding depression, as measured through H:L ratio, varies with environmental conditions. In contrast, the low estimated heritability implies relatively low potential for H:L ratio to show an evolutionary response to selection, or hence to mediate the evolution of life-history trade-offs.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397963
title: Data from: Oil palm plantations fail to support mammal diversity

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Agricultural expansion is the largest threat to global biodiversity. In particular, the rapid spread of tree plantations is a primary driver of deforestation in hyperdiverse tropical regions. Plantations tend to support considerably lower biodiversity than native forest, but it remains unclear whether plantation traits affect their ability to sustain native wildlife populations, particularly for threatened taxa. If animal diversity varies across plantations with different characteristics, these traits could be manipulated to make plantations more “wildlife friendly.” The degree to which plantations create edge effects that degrade habitat quality in adjacent forest also remains unclear, limiting our ability to predict wildlife persistence in mixed-use landscapes. We used systematic camera trapping to investigate mammal occurrence and diversity in oil palm plantations and adjacent forest in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Mammals within plantations were largely constrained to locations near native forest; the occurrence of most species and overall species richness declined abruptly with decreasing forest proximity from an estimated 14 species at the forest ecotone to ~1 species 2 km into the plantation. Neither tree height nor canopy cover within plantations strongly affected mammal diversity or occurrence, suggesting that manipulating tree spacing or planting cycles might not make plantations more wildlife friendly. Plantations did not appear to generate strong edge effects; mammal richness within forest remained high and consistent up to the plantation ecotone. Our results suggest that land-sparing strategies, as opposed to efforts to make plantations more wildlife-friendly, are required for regional wildlife conservation in biodiverse tropical ecosystems.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397966
title: Data from: Convergent local adaptation to climate in distantly related conifers

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;When confronted with an adaptive challenge, such as extreme temperature, closely related species frequently evolve similar phenotypes using the same genes. Although such repeated evolution is thought to be less likely in highly polygenic traits and distantly related species, this has not been tested at the genome scale. We performed a population genomic study of convergent local adaptation among two distantly related species, lodgepole pine and interior spruce. We identified a suite of 47 genes, enriched for duplicated genes, with variants associated with spatial variation in temperature or cold hardiness in both species, providing evidence of convergent local adaptation despite 140 million years of separate evolution. These results show that adaptation to climate can be genetically constrained, with certain key genes playing nonredundant roles.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397967
title: Data from: Climate change is projected to outpace rates of niche change in grasses

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Climate change may soon threaten much of global biodiversity, especially if species cannot adapt to changing climatic conditions quickly enough. A critical question is how quickly climatic niches change, and if this speed is sufficient to prevent extinction as climates warm. Here, we address this question in the grass family (Poaceae). Grasses are fundamental to one of Earth's most widespread biomes (grasslands), and provide roughly half of all calories consumed by humans (including wheat, rice, corn and sorghum). We estimate rates of climatic niche change in 236 species and compare these with rates of projected climate change by 2070. Our results show that projected climate change is consistently faster than rates of niche change in grasses, typically by more than 5000-fold for temperature-related variables. Although these results do not show directly what will happen under global warming, they have troubling implications for a major biome and for human food resources.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397968
title: Data from: Sumakuru, a deeply-diverging new genus of lyssomanine jumping spiders from Ecuador (Araneae: Salticidae)

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The lyssomanine jumping spider genus Sumakuru gen. n. is here described for Sumakuru bigal sp. n., from the Bigal River Biological Reserve in Ecuador. Known from a single male, the embolus of the palp takes the form of a smoothly arching curve, and appears fully mobile, being connected to the tegulum by a thin sclerite and a twisted hematodocha. Data from four gene regions (28S, 16SND1, CO1, wingless) indicate that Sumakuru is the sister group to all other sampled lyssomanines, diverging deeply on the stem lineage of the clade of other known lyssomanines. Unlike previous molecular results, the sampled species of Lyssomanes Hentz, 1845 are supported as monophyletic, with Chinoscopus Simon, 1900 as the sister to Lyssomanes.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397969
title: Data from: The relative power of genome scans to detect local adaptation depends on sampling design and statistical method

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Although genome scans have become a popular approach towards understanding the genetic basis of local adaptation, the field still does not have a firm grasp on how sampling design and demographic history affect the performance of genome scans on complex landscapes. To explore these issues, we compared 20 different sampling designs in equilibrium (i.e. island model and isolation by distance) and nonequilibrium (i.e. range expansion from one or two refugia) demographic histories in spatially heterogeneous environments. We simulated spatially complex landscapes, which allowed us to exploit local maxima and minima in the environment in ‘pair’ and ‘transect’ sampling strategies. We compared FST outlier and genetic–environment association (GEA) methods for each of two approaches that control for population structure: with a covariance matrix or with latent factors. We show that while the relative power of two methods in the same category (FST or GEA) depended largely on the number of individuals sampled, overall GEA tests had higher power in the island model and FST had higher power under isolation by distance. In the refugia models, however, these methods varied in their power to detect local adaptation at weakly selected loci. At weakly selected loci, paired sampling designs had equal or higher power than transect or random designs to detect local adaptation. Our results can inform sampling designs for studies of local adaptation and have important implications for the interpretation of genome scans based on landscape data.
DOI: 10.14288/1.0397970
title: Data from: Genomic and phenotypic architecture of a spruce hybrid zone (Picea sitchensis x P. glauca)

description: &lt;b&gt;Abstract&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Interspecific hybridization may enhance the capacity of populations to adapt to changing environments, and has practical implications for reforestation. We use genomewide estimates of admixture and phenotypic traits for trees in a common garden to examine the extent and direction of gene flow across a Picea hybrid zone, testing assumptions of the bounded hybrid superiority and tension zone models of hybrid zone maintenance. Seeds were collected from the ecological transition zone spanning from maritime to continental climates across the Picea sitchensis-P. glauca contact zone, and 721 trees were planted in a common garden experiment within the hybrid zone. Individuals were genotyped using a panel of 384 candidate-gene single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) putatively associated with adaptive traits in Picea, and phenotyped at age ten for height and autumn cold hardiness. Low interspecific heterozygosity in hybrids indicated intrinsic reproductive barriers were too weak to prevent widespread recombination, although introgression appeared asymmetric with P. sitchensis dominating the zone. While marker-based hybrid index was strongly correlated with climate and geography, phenotypic traits exhibited weak or no significant clines. Our results indicated that exogenous selection appeared to play a strong role in the distribution and structure of this hybrid zone, indicative of an environmentally determined bounded hybrid superiority model of hybrid zone maintenance, although endogenous mechanisms could not be ruled out. This study provides insight into the mechanisms underlying adaptation across ecologically transitional hybrid zones that will ultimately provide an additional tool in managing these economically important tree species.