The latest issue of Ecology and Evolution is now live! Over 20 excellent articles free to read, download and share. The cover image has been taken from the article ‘Daphnia predation on the amphibian chytrid fungus and its impacts on disease risk in tadpoles’ by Catherine L. Searle, Joseph R. Mendelson III, Linda E. Green and Meghan A. Duffy. Below are some highlights from this issue:
Functional similarity and molecular divergence of a novel reproductive transcriptome in two male-pregnant Syngnathus pipefish species by Clayton M. Small, April D. Harlin-Cognato, and Adam G. Jones
Summary: Evolutionary studies have revealed that reproductive proteins in animals and plants often evolve more rapidly than the genome-wide average. The causes of this pattern, which may include relaxed purifying selection, sexual selection, sexual conflict, pathogen resistance, reinforcement, or gene duplication, remain elusive. Investigative expansions to additional taxa and reproductive tissues have the potential to shed new light on this unresolved problem. Here, we embark on such an expansion, in a comparison of the brood-pouch transcriptome between two male-pregnant species of the pipefish genus Syngnathus.
Drosophila rely on learning while foraging under semi-natural conditions by Vukašin Zrelec, et al.
Summary: Learning is predicted to affect manifold ecological and evolutionary processes, but the extent to which animals rely on learning in nature remains poorly known, especially for short-lived non-social invertebrates. This is in particular the case for Drosophila, a favourite laboratory system to study molecular mechanisms of learning. Here we tested whether Drosophila melanogaster use learned information to choose food while free-flying in a large greenhouse emulating the natural environment.
Strong species-environment feedback shapes plant community assembly along environmental gradients by Jiang Jiang and Donald L. DeAngelis
Summary: An aim of community ecology is to understand the patterns of competing species assembly along environmental gradients. All species interact with their environments. However, theories of community assembly have seldom taken into account the effects of species that are able to engineer the environment. In this modeling study, we integrate the species’ engineering trait together with processes of immigration and local dispersal into a theory of community assembly.
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