How do genetic variation and evolutionary change in critical species affect the composition and functioning of populations, communities and ecosystems? Illuminating the links in the causal chain from genes up to ecosystems is a particularly exciting prospect now that the feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary changes are known to be bidirectional. Yet to fully explore phenomena that span...

To realize more sustainable and resilient urban social-ecological systems, there is great need for active engagement from diverse public agencies, non-profit organizations, businesses, natural resource managers, scientists, and other actors. Cities present unique challenges and opportunities for sustainability and resilience, as issues and organizations are frequently intertwined in networks of...

One of the properties that make ecological systems so unique is the range of complex behavioral patterns that can be exhibited by even the simplest communities with only a few species. Much of this complexity is commonly attributed to stochastic factors that have very high-degrees of freedom. Orthodox study of the evolution of these simple networks has generally been limited in its ability to e...

Pablo Almaraz* and Juan A. Amat Departamento de Biologı́a Animal y Ecolog ı́a, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada, Spain Estació n Bioló gica de Doñ ana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı́ficas, Apartado 1056, E-41080 Sevilla, Spain *Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Links between climatic conditions in the eastern equatorial Pacific and extr...

A major force contributing to the emergence of novelty in nature is the presence of cooperative interactions, where two or more components of a system act in synergy, sometimes leading to higher-order, emergent phenomena. Within molecular evolution, the so called hypercycle defines the simplest model of an autocatalytic cycle, providing major theoretical insights on the evolution of cooperation...

Life-history traits and ecological conditions have an important influence on primate social systems. Most of what we know about the life-history patterns and social structure of gorillas comes from studies of eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei sp.), which live under dramatically different ecological conditions compared to western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla sp.). In this paper we present new data...

This paper reviews ideas on the relationship between the ecology of clades and their distribution. Ecological biogeography represents a tradition that dates back to ancient times. It assumes that the distribution of organisms is explained by factors of present environment, especially climate. In contrast, modern systematics, following its origins in the Renaissance, concluded with Darwin that ‘...

The distribution of fitness effects for mutations is often believed to be key to predicting microbial evolution. However, fitness effects alone may be insufficient to predict evolutionary dynamics if mutations produce nontrivial ecological effects which depend on the composition of the population. Here we show that variation in multiple growth traits, such as lag times and growth rates, creates...

We document high rates of triploidy in aspen (Populus tremuloides) across the western USA (up to 69% of genets), and ask whether the incidence of triploidy across the species range corresponds with latitude, glacial history (as has been documented in other species), climate, or regional variance in clone size. Using a combination of microsatellite genotyping, flow cytometry, and cytology, we de...

Ecological systems are always subjected to various environmental fluctuations. They evolve under these fluctuations and the resulting systems are robust against them. The diversity in ecological systems is also acquired through the evolution. How do the fluctuations affect the evolutionary processes? Do the fluctuations have direct impact on the species diversity in ecological systems? In the p...