The latest issue of Ecology and Evolution is now live! Over 20 excellent articles free to read, download and share. The cover image is taken from Permeability of the landscape matrix between amphibian breeding sites by Josh Van Buskirk. This is the final issue in what has been another fantastic volume for Ecology and Evolution.
Below are the editors’ highlights from this issue:
Diversity of birds in eastern North America shifts north with global warming by Kenneth W. McDonald, Christopher J. W. McClure, Brian W. Rolek and Geoffrey E. Hill
Summary: Here, we report that bird diversity in North America increased and shifted northward between 1966 and 2010. This change in the relationship of diversity to the latitudinal gradient is, likely, primarily influenced by range expansions of species that winter in the eastern United States as opposed to species which migrate to this area from wintering grounds in the tropics. This increase in diversity and its northward expansion is best explained by an increase in regional prebreeding season temperature over the past 44 years.
Evidence of stable genetic structure across a remote island archipelago through self-recruitment in a widely dispersed coral reef fish by Mark A. Priest, Andrew R. Halford and Jennifer L. McIlwain
Summary: For the majority of marine organisms a pelagic larval stage provides the primary mechanism for dispersal amongst often spatially fragmented habitat patches. The degree to which larvae disperse and populations are subsequently connected may have a profound influence on the population dynamics of a species. We used microsatellite markers to assess the population genetic structure of the scribbled rabbitfish Siganus spinus in the western Pacific. This species is a culturally important food fish in the Mariana Archipelago and subject to high fishing pressure. Our results confirm the relative isolation of the southern Mariana Islands population and highlight how local processes can act to isolate populations that, by virtue of their broad-scale distribution, have been subject to traditionally high gene flows.
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