The pre-metastatic niche - the accumulation of aberrant immune cells and extracellular matrix proteins in target organs - primes the initially healthy organ microenvironment and renders it amenable for subsequent metastatic cell colonization. By attracting metastatic cancer cells, mimics of the pre-metastatic niche offer both diagnostic and therapeutic potential. However, deconstructing the com...

A formal theory of the ecological niche is indispensable not only for semantic precision in philosophy to understand and compare it with other meanings of niche, but also when computer scientists and ecologists desire to create interoperable software where one can retrieve the niche of a species and compare their parameters. The proposed model is a more fine-grained description of the ecologica...

Our ability to predict consequences of climate change is severely impaired by the lack of knowledge on the ability of species to adapt to changing environmental conditions. We used distribution data for 140 mammal species in Europe, together with data on climate, land cover and topography, to derive a statistical description of their realized climate niche. We then compared climate niche overla...

Whole-genome duplication (polyploidy) occurs frequently and repeatedly within species, often forming new lineages that contribute to biodiversity, particularly in plants. Establishment and persistence of new polyploids may be thwarted by competition with surrounding diploids; however, climatic niche shifts, where polyploids occupy different niches than diploid progenitors, may help polyploids o...

Comparing niche divergence among closely related taxa can yield important insights into the ecological distinctiveness of genetically similar forms, and identify the processes that are responsible for diversification in such organisms. Here, we apply newly developed techniques for analysing niche divergence to assess how ecologically distinct a group of closely related rattlesnakes (Sistrurus s...

Political participation has increasingly taken unconventional forms in advanced democracies. At the same time, traditional party systems of Europe have been upended by recent emergence successful niche parties. While some studies examined partisanship and protest tandem, literature lacks a theoretical framework that ties voters to political protest. This article argues are more likely than main...

a Diversity: the number of species found in a local community. a Niche: the region of the realized niche of a species corresponding to species diversity at the local community (or a-diversity) scale at which interactions among species occur. Niche differences at this scale should facilitate coexistence. Character displacement: the evolutionary accentuation of trait differences between sympatric...

This study looks at the communication between users concerning health risks, with the aim of exploring their use of fora and assessing whether participants establish a niche with like-minded users during these exchanges. By integrating a corpus linguistic approach with content analysis and multiple studies on computer mediated health discourse, this study analyses the intense attention paid to ...

Speciation often has a strong geographical and environmental component, but the ecological factors that potentially underlie allopatric and parapatric speciation remain understudied. Two ecological mechanisms by which speciation may occur on geographic scales are allopatric speciation through niche conservatism and parapatric or allopatric speciation through niche divergence. A previous study o...