In acoustically communicating animals, reproductive isolation between sympatric species is usually maintained through species-specific calls. This requires that the receiver be tuned to the conspecific signal. Mapping the response space of the receiver onto the signal space of the conspecific investigates this tuning. A combinatorial approach to investigating the response space is more informat...

Studies of forest dynamics plots (FDPs) have revealed a variety of negative density-dependent (NDD) demographic interactions, especially among conspecific trees. These interactions can affect growth rate, recruitment and mortality, and they play a central role in the maintenance of species diversity in these complex ecosystems. Here we use an equal area annulus (EAA) point-pattern method to com...

Sexual isolation between species often depends on preferences for conspecific mates. Recent models suggest that whether conspecific preference is determined genetically or learned will affect the process of speciation: Learned conspecific preferences might make speciation more likely. However, we understand little about how often and for which taxa, conspecific preferences are learned. Some spe...

abstract competition is a phenomenon that influences the size, structure and stability of insect communities, particularly on solitary endoparasitoids species. although, competition normally incurs costs, it might be adaptive for the surviving individual. to determine which factors affect the patch use strategy of foragers under competition, the effect of previous experience with hosts already-...

When interactions with heterospecifics prevent females from identifying conspecific mates, natural selection can promote the evolution of mating behaviours that minimize such interactions. Consequently, mating behaviours may diverge among conspecific populations in sympatry and in allopatry with heterospecifics. This divergence in conspecific mating behaviours-reproductive character displacemen...

Although suitable tree cavities are a particularly critical resource for forest bats (Kunz & Lumsden 2003), how bats search for and find new roosts is still poorly known. The first study to explore this topic revealed that for the fast flying but not very manoeuvrable noctule (Nyctalus noctula), finding cavity entrances by echolocation is a difficult task (Ruczyński et al. 2007). Additional vis...

Theories of tropical tree diversity emphasize dispersal limitation as a potential mechanism for separating species in space and reducing competitive exclusion. We compared the dispersal morphologies, fruit sizes, and spatial distributions of 561 tree species within a fully mapped, 50-hectare plot of primary tropical forest in peninsular Malaysia. We demonstrate here that the extent and scale of...

Most forest birds include arthropods in their diet, sometimes specializing on arthropods that consume plant foliage. Experimental tests of whether bird predation on arthropods can reduce plant damage, however, are few and restricted to relatively low-diversity systems. Here, we describe an experimental test in a diverse tropical forest of whether birds indirectly defend foliage from arthropod h...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Polymorphic markers were required for a native tree of the Mascarene Islands, Foetidia mauritiana (Lecythidaceae), to investigate the effects of fragmentation of lowland tropical habitats on tree mating systems and on gene flow. METHODS AND RESULTS Using microsatellite enrichment and next-generation sequencing, we identified 13 microsatellite loci (dinucleotide repeats). ...

The effects of lightning on trees range from catastrophic death to the absence of observable damage. Such differences may be predictable among tree species, and more generally among plant life history strategies and growth forms. We used field-collected electrical resistivity data in temperate and tropical forests to model how the distribution of power from a lightning discharge varies with tre...