1. Restoration ecology has historically focused on reconstructing communities of highly visible taxa whilst less visible taxa, such as invertebrates and microbes, are ignored. This is problematic as invertebrates and microbes make up the vast bulk of biodiversity and drive many key ecosystem processes, yet they are rarely actively reintroduced following restoration, potentially limiting ecosystem function and biodiversity in these areas. 2. In this review, we discuss the current (limited) incorporation of invertebrates and microbes in restoration and rewilding projects. We argue that these groups should be actively rewilded during restoration to improve biodiversity and ecosystem function outcomes and highlight how they can be used to greater effect in the future. For example, invertebrates and microbes are easily manipulated, meaning whole communities can potentially be rewilded through habitat transplants in a practice that we refer to as “whole-of-community” rewilding. 3. We provide a framework for whole-of-community rewilding and describe empirical case studies as practical applications of this under-researched restoration tool that land managers can use to improve restoration outcomes. 4. We hope this new perspective on whole-of-community restoration will promote applied research into restoration that incorporates all biota, irrespective of size, whilst also enabling a better understanding of fundamental ecological theory, such as colonisation- competition trade-offs. This may be a necessary consideration as invertebrates that are important in providing ecosystem services are declining globally; targeting invertebrate communities during restoration may be crucial in stemming this decline.

Many organisms can reproduce both asexually and sexually. For cyclical parthenogens, periods of asexual reproduction are punctuated by bouts of sexual reproduction, and the shift from asexual to sexual reproduction has large impacts on fitness and population dynamics. We studied populations of Daphnia dentifera to determine the amount of investment in sexual reproduction as well as the factors associated with variation in investment in sex. To do so, we tracked host density, infections by nine different parasites, and sexual reproduction in 15 lake populations of D. dentifera for three years. Sexual reproduction was seasonal, with male and ephippial female production beginning as early as late September and generally increasing through November. However, there was substantial variation in the prevalence of sexual individuals across populations, with some populations remaining entirely asexual throughout the study period and others shifting almost entirely to sexual females and males. We found strong relationships between density, prevalence of infection, parasite species richness, and sexual reproduction in these populations. However, strong collinearity between density, parasitism, and sexual reproduction means that further work will be required to disentangle the causal mechanisms underlying these relationships.

1. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and precision-recall (PR) plots have been widely used to evaluate the performances of species distribution models. Plotting ROC/PR curves requires a traditional test set with both presence and absence data (namely PA approach), but species absence data are usually not available in reality. Plotting ROC/PR curves from presence-only data while treating background data as pseudo absence data (namely PO approach) may provide misleading results. 2. In this study we propose a new approach to calibrate the ROC/PR curves from presence and background data with user-provided information on a constant c, namely PB approach. An estimate of c can also be derived from the PB-based ROC/PR plots given that a model with good ability of discrimination is available. We used three virtual species and a real aerial photography to test the effectiveness of the proposed PB-based ROC/PR plots. Different models (or classifiers) were trained from presence and background data with various samples sizes. The ROC/PR curves plotted by PA approach were used to benchmark the curves plotted by PO and PB approaches. 3. Experimental results show that the curves and areas under curves by PB approach are more similar to that by PA approach as compared with PO approach. The PB-based ROC/PR plots also provide highly accurate estimations of c in our experiment. 4. We conclude that the proposed PB-based ROC/PR plots can provide valuable complements to existing model assessment methods, and they also provide an additional way to estimate the constant c (or species prevalence) from presence and background data.

We developed a nonbreeding period continental-scale energetics-based model of daily waterfowl movement to predict year-specific migration and overwinter occurrence. The model approximates energy-expensive movements and energy-gaining stopovers as functions of metabolism and weather, in terms of temperature and frozen precipitation (i.e., snow). The model is a Markov process operating at the population level and is parameterized through a review of literature. We examined model performance against 62 years of non-breeding period daily weather data. The average proportion of available habitat decreased as weather severity increased, with mortality decreasing as the proportion of available habitat increased. The most commonly used nodes during the course of the nonbreeding period were generally consistent across years, with the most inter-annual variation present in the overwintering area. Our model revealed that the distribution of birds on the landscape changed more dramatically when the variation in daily available habitat was greater. The main routes for avian migration in North America were predicted by our simulations: the Eastern, Central, and Western flyways. Our model predicted an average of 77.4% survivorship for the nonbreeding period across all years (range = 76.4 – 78.4%), with lowest survivorship during the fall, intermediate survivorship in the winter, and greatest survivorship in the spring. We provide the parameters necessary for exploration within and among other taxa to leverage the generalizability of this migration model to a broader expanse of bird species, and across a range of climate change and land use/land cover change scenarios.

The studies of climatic-niche shifts over evolutionary time accompanied by key morphological innovations have attracted the interest of many researchers recently. We analyzed the realized niche dynamics across clades within Scutiger boulengeri using ecological niche models (ENMs), ordination method (environment principal component analysis; PCA-env), and correspondingly key morphological innovations combined phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) and phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) regression methods throughout their distributions in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) margins of China in Asia. Our analyses reveal that there is obvious niche divergence caused by niche expansion across S. boulengeri clades, especially in E. A, E. B and partial of E. C clades. Moreover, niche expansion is more popular than niche unfilling into novel environmental conditions. Annual mean temperature and Annual precipitation are the most important contributors in E. A and E. B clades, while Precipitation of driest month is most likely to be the leading limited factor in these two regions according to jackknife test of variable importance. In addition, we identified several key ecological and morphological traits that tend to be associated with niche expansion in S. boulengeri clades correspondingly. Specifically, we found that Elevation, Isothermality, Mean diurnal range and Max temperature of warmest month are significantly negative predictors of snout–vent length (SVL) under phylogenetic models, while the S. boulengeri toads from warmer and more arid environments tend to be larger. There seems to a trade-off strategy by trait covary of locomotor performance combined with enlarged SVL, which provide us a potential pattern of how a colonizing toad might seed a novel habit to begin the process of speciation and finally adaptive radiation. It is worth noting that we should not overlook that the Tibet continuously growing and moving northward over millions of years has laid the foundation for early divergence of clades within S. boulengeri.

1. Animal movement studies are conducted to monitor ecosystem health, understand ecological dynamics and address management and conservation questions. In marine environments, traditional sampling and monitoring methods to measure animal movement are invasive, labour intensive, costly, and measuring movement of many individuals is challenging. Automated detection and tracking of small-scale movements of many animals through cameras are possible. However, automated techniques are largely untested in field conditions, and this is hampering applications to ecological questions. 2. Here, we aimed to test the ability of computer vision algorithms to track small-scale movement of many individuals in videos. We apply the method to track fish movement in the field and characterize movement behaviour. First, we automated the detection of a common fisheries species (yellowfin bream, Acanthopagrus australis) from underwater videos of individuals swimming along a known movement corridor. We then tracked fish movement with three types of tracking algorithms (MOSSE, Seq-NMS and SiamMask), and evaluated their accuracy at characterizing movement. 3. We successfully detected yellowfin bream in a multi-species assemblage (F1 score = 91%). At least 120 of the 169 individual bream present in videos were correctly identified and tracked. The accuracies among the three tracking architectures varied, with MOSSE and SiamMask achieving an accuracy of 78%, and Seq-NMS 84%. 4. By employing these emerging computer vision technologies, we demonstrated a non-invasive and reliable approach to studying fish behaviour by tracking their movement under field conditions. These cost-effective technologies potentially will allow future studies to scale-up analysis of movement across many underwater visual monitoring systems.

The mitochondrial genome is now widely used in the study of the phylogenetics and molecular evolution due to its maternal inheritance, fast evolutionary rate and highly conserved gene content. To explore the phylogenetic relationships of the tribe Aeromachini within the subfamily Hesperiinae at the mitochondrial genomics level, we sequenced and annotated the complete mitogenomes of 3 skippers: Amipittia virgata, Halpe nephele and Onryza maga. All of these mitogenomes are double-stranded and have circular molecules with a total length of 15,333 bp, 15,291 bp and 15,381 bp, respectively. The mitogenomes all contain 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNAs (tRNAs), 2 ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) and a non-coding AT-rich region, and are consistent with other lepidopterans in gene order and type. In addition, we reconstruted the phylogenetic trees of Hesperiinae using maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods based on mitogenomic data. Results show that the 3 Aeromachini species in this study robustly constitute a monophyletic group in the subfamily Hesperiinae, with the relationships Coeliadinae + (Euschemoninae + ((Pyrginae + (Eudaminae + Tagiadinae)) + (Heteropterinae + (Barcinae + Hesperiinae)))). Moreover, our study supports the view that Apostictopterus fuliginosus and Barca bicolor should be placed out of the subfamily Hesperiinae.

Chimpanzees Pan troglodytes are the closest extant relative of modern humans, and are often used as a model organism to help understand prehistoric human behavior and ecology. Originally presumed herbivorous, chimpanzees have been observed hunting 24 species of birds, ungulates, rodents, monkeys, and other primates, using an array of techniques from tools to group cooperation. Using the literature on chimpanzee hunting behavior and diet from 13 studies, we aimed to determine the prey preferences of chimpanzees. We extracted data on prey-specific variables such as targeted species, their body weight, and their abundance within the prey community, and hunter-specific variables such as hunting method, and chimpanzee group size and sex ratio. We used these in a generalized linear model to determine what factors drive chimpanzee prey preference. We calculated a Jacobs’ Index value for each prey species killed at two sites in Uganda and two sites in Tanzania. Chimpanzees prefer prey with a body weight of 7.6 ± 0.4 kg or less, which corresponds to animals such as juvenile bushbuck Tragelaphus scriptus and guereza colobus monkeys Colobus guereza. Sex ratio in chimpanzee groups appears to drive chimpanzee prey preference, where chimpanzees increasingly prefer prey when in male-dominated groups. Prey preference information from chimpanzee research can assist conservation management programs by identifying key prey species to manage, as well as contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of human hunting behavior.

The effects of human disturbance on the stability of alpine meadow communities, their diversity–stability relationship, and the underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. Here, we performed a 12-year-long (2007–2018) two-factor (2 × 3) controlled experiment on Kobresia humilis on the Tibetan Plateau. The manipulations included three clipping levels (no clipping, NC; moderate clipping, MC; heavy clipping, HC) and two fertilization levels (no fertilization, NF; fertilization, F). Our results revealed that the two clipping manipulations significantly increased the temporal stability of alpine meadow communities, whose significant increase was more pronounced under the MC than HC treatment. Moreover, asynchrony effects, portfolio effects, and facilitation interactions were all present in the communities under the six types of experimental treatment combinations. Additionally, a selection effect was detected in the compound communities, demonstrating characteristics that are common to different mechanisms. There were no significant differences in the effects of these mechanisms on community temporal stability between the NC–NF and MC–NF interactive communities. The portfolio effects predominated when clipping intensity was moderate under both fertilization and non-fertilization conditions. By contrast, in the compound communities, the selection effect predominated. In summary, we conclude that in meadow communities that undergo clipping and fertilization disturbances, facilitation interactions and weak interactions make a greater contribution toward maintaining their temporal stability.

The wild tomato species Solanum chilense is divided in geographically and genetically distinct populations that show signs of defense gene selection and differential phenotypes when challenged with several phytopathogens, including the oomycete causal agent of late blight Phytophthora infestans. To better understand the phenotypic diversity of this disease resistance in S. chilense and to assess the effect of plant genotype vs. pathogen isolate, respectively, we evaluated infection frequency in a systematic approach and with large sample sizes. We studied 85 genetically distinct individuals representing nine geographically separated populations of S. chilense. This showed that differences in quantitative resistance properties can be observed between but also within populations at the level of individual plants. Data also did not reveal clear indications for complete immunity in any of the genotypes. We further evaluated the resistance of a subset of the plants against P. infestans isolates with diverse virulence properties. This confirmed that the relative differences in resistance phenotypes between individuals were mainly determined by the plant genotype under consideration with modest effects of pathogen isolate used in the study. Thus, our report suggest that quantitative resistance against P. infestans in natural populations of a wild tomato species S. chilense is likely not the result of specific adaptations of hosts to the pathogen but of basal defence responses that depend on the host genotype and are pathogen isolate-unspecific.

Beneficial mutations can become costly following an environmental change. Compensatory mutations can relieve these costs, while not affecting the selected function, so that the benefits are retained if the environment shifts back to be similar to the one in which the beneficial mutation was originally selected. Compensatory mutations have been extensively studied in the context of antibiotic resistance, responses to specific genetic perturbations and in the determination of interacting gene network components. Few studies have focused on the role of compensatory mutations during more general adaptation, especially as the result of selection in fluctuating environments where adaptations to different environment components may often involve tradeoffs. We examine if costs of a mutation in lacI, which deregulated expression of the lac operon in evolving populations of Escherichia coli bacteria, was compensated. This mutation occurred in multiple replicate populations selected in environments that fluctuated between growth on lactose, where the mutation was beneficial, and on glucose, where it was deleterious. We found that compensation for the cost of the lacI mutation was rare, but, when it did occur, it did not negatively affect the selected benefit. Compensation was not more likely to occur in a particular evolution environment. Compensation has the potential to remove pleiotropic costs of adaptation, but its rarity indicates that the circumstances to bring about the phenomenon may be peculiar to each individual or impeded by other selected mutations.

In semi-arid environments, aperiodic rainfall pulses determine cycles of plant production and resource availability for higher trophic levels, creating strong bottom-up regulation. The influence of climatic factors on population vital rates often shapes the dynamics of small mammal populations in such resource-restricted environments. Using a 21-year biannual capture–recapture dataset (1993 to 2014), we examined the impacts of climatic factors on the population dynamics of the brush mouse (Peromyscus boylii) in semi-arid oak woodland of coastal-central California. We applied Pradel’s temporal symmetry model to estimate capture probability (p), apparent survival (φ), recruitment (f), and realized population growth rate (λ) of the brush mouse, and examined the effects of temperature, rainfall, and El Niño on these demographic parameters. The population was stable during the study period with a monthly realized population growth rate of 0.993 ± SE 0.032, but growth varied over time from 0.680 ± 0.054 to 1.450 ± 0.083. Monthly survival estimates averaged 0.817 ± 0.005 and monthly recruitment estimates averaged 0.175 ± 0.038. Survival probability and realized population growth were positively correlated with rainfall and negatively correlated with temperature. In contrast, recruitment was negatively correlated with rainfall and positively correlated with temperature. Brush mice maintained their population through multiple coping strategies, investing in high recruitment during warmer and drier periods and allocating more energy towards survival during cooler and wetter conditions. Although climatic change in coastal-central California will favor recruitment over survival, varying strategies may serve as a mechanism by which brush mice maintain resilience in the face of climate change. Our results indicate that rainfall and temperature are both important drivers of brush mouse population dynamics and will play a significant role in predicting the future viability of brush mice under a changing climate.

The mass die-off of Caribbean corals has transformed many of this region’s reefs to macroalgal-dominated habitats since systematic monitoring began in the 1970s. Although attributed to a combination of local and global human stressors, the lack of long-term data on Caribbean reef coral communities has prevented a clear understanding of the causes and consequences of coral declines. We integrated paleoecological, historical, and modern survey data to track the prevalence of major coral species and life history groups throughout the Caribbean from the pre-human period to present. The regional loss of Acropora corals beginning by the 1960s from local human disturbances resulted in increases in the prevalence of formerly subdominant stress-tolerant and weedy scleractinian corals and the competitive hydrozoan Millepora beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. These transformations have resulted in the homogenization of coral communities within individual countries. However, increases in stress-tolerant and weedy corals have slowed or reversed since the 1980s and 1990s in tandem with intensified coral bleaching. These patterns reveal the long history of increasingly stressful environmental conditions on Caribbean reefs that began with widespread local human disturbances and have recently culminated in the combined effects of local and global change.

The mirid bugs Stenotus rubrovittatus and Trigonotylus caelestialium, which cause pecky rice, have become a threat to rice cultivation in Asia. Damage caused by these pests has rapidly become frequent since around 2000 in Japan. Their expansion pattern is not simple, making it difficult to manage them by prediction. Some insects with wide distributions have locally adapted variations in life-history traits. We performed laboratory rearing experiments to assess the geographical scale of intraspecific variations in life-history traits of S. rubrovittatus and T. caelestialium. These were aimed at increasing the accuracy of occurrence estimates and the number of generations per year. These results were compared with previous research, and differences in development rates were observed between populations of different latitudes, but not of the same latitude. Finally, plotting the timing of adult emergence and the potential number of generations per year on maps with a 5-km grid revealed that they differed greatly locally at the same latitude. These maps can be used for developing more efficient methods of managing mirid bugs in integrated pest management.

The muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) is an iconic species in Canada, valued for both its fur and its integral role in wetland ecosystems, and widely regarded for its perseverance. However, the resilience of this semi-aquatic mammal seems to be in question now as increasing evidence points to widespread population declines. Recent analyses of harvest data across North America suggest a reduction in their numbers, but this has not been widely corroborated by population surveys. In this study we replicated historic muskrat house count surveys at two large Great Lakes coastal wetlands and present confirmation that declines in muskrat harvest correspond to actual declines in muskrat abundance. At the Point Pelee National Park marsh and the Matchedash Bay-Gray Marsh wetland we found that mean muskrat house counts declined by 93% and 91% respectively between historic surveys 40-50 years ago and contemporary surveys over the past five years. The factors responsible for these dramatic declines remain unclear but there may be a relationship with changes in the habitat quality of these wetlands that have occurred over the same time frame. Not only is the loss of muskrats an issue for the resulting loss of the wetland ecosystem services they provide, but it may be an indication of broader marsh ecosystem degradation. As such, a scarcity of muskrats should be considered a red flag for the state of biodiversity in our wetlands. Continued surveys and ongoing research are needed to shed more light on the current status of muskrat populations and their marsh habitats across their native range. Keywords: Fur harvest; Muskrat; Ondatra; Population decline; Typha; Wetlands

Abstract: 1. In our paper four events of blood sucking on human by Placobdella costata were described. 2. Human blood was sucked by both adults and juvenile specimens of P. costata. 3. The feeding strategies of juveniles under parental care are presented. 4. New data of juvenile specimens body form are presented. 5. Information on the potential role of mammals in species dispersion and habitat preferences of leeches are under consideration.

Hybridization is a common and important stage in species formation in plants and animals. The evolutionary consequences of hybridization depend not only on reproductive compatibility between sympatric species, but also on factors like vulnerability to each other’s predators and parasites. We examine infection patterns of the blood parasite Haemoproteus lophortyx, a causative agent of avian malaria, at a site in the contact zone between California quail (Callipepla californica) and Gambel’s quail (C. gambelii). We tested whether species identity, sex, and year predicted infection status and intensity. While we found no effect of sex on the status or intensity of infection, we found differences in infection status and intensity across species and between years. The prevalence of infection in California and hybrid quail was lower than in Gambel’s quail. Once infected, however, California and hybrid quail had higher infection intensities than Gambel’s quail. California and hybrid quail exhibited no significant differences in prevalence or intensity of infection. These findings suggest that infection by H. lophortyx has the potential to influence species barrier dynamics in this system, however, more work is necessary to determine the exact evolutionary consequences of this blood parasite.

The relative contributions of adaptation and drift to morphological diversification of the crania of echolocating mammals was investigated using two horseshoe bat species, Rhinolophus simulator and R. cf. simulator as test cases. We used 3D geometric morphometrics to compare the shapes of skulls of the two lineages collected at various localities in southern Africa. Shape variation was predominantly attributed to selective forces; the between population variance (B) was not proportional to the within population variance (W). Modularity was evident in the crania of R. simulator but absent in the crania of R. cf. simulator and the mandibles of both species. The skulls of the two lineages thus appeared to be under different selection pressures, despite the overlap in their distributions. Selection acted mainly on the nasal dome region of R. cf. simulator whereas selection acted more on the cranium and mandibles than on the nasal domes of R. simulator. Probably the relatively higher echolocation frequencies used by R. cf. simulator, the shape of the nasal dome, which acts as a frequency dependent acoustic horn, is more crucial than in R. simulator, allowing maximization of the intensity of the emitted calls and resulting in comparable detection distances. In contrast, selection pressure is probably more pronounced on the mandibles and cranium of R. simulator to compensate for the loss in bite force because of its elongated rostrum. The predominance of selection probably reflects the stringent association between environment and the optimal functioning of phenotypic characters associated with echolocation and feeding in bats.