Amphipods of the family Uristidae Hurley, 1963 are geographically widespread scavengers found globally from shallow waters to hadal (> 6000 m) depths. This study utilises integrative taxonomy to describe two new Uristid species, sampled exclusively from hadal depths within two geographically discrete features. Galathella ovaimmensa sp. nov. was collected from the South Sandwich Trench (Southern Ocean) and is placed into the ge...

Hadal environments (> 6000 m ocean depths) are often viewed as isolated locations with high species endemism due to limited dispersal. However, molecular studies continue to reveal greater complexity that questions historical perceptions. Recent population genetic studies focused on scavenging amphipods have identified broadly distributed lineages spanning multiple hadal features, challenging hadal endemism. Here, we investiga...

The onset, cessation, and length of the rainy season are crucial for global water resources, agricultural practices, and food security. However, the response of precipitation seasonality to global warming remains uncertain. In this study, we analyze how global warming levels (GWLs) of 1.5°C and 2°C could affect the timing of rainfall onset (RODs), rainfall cessation (RCDs), and the overall duration of the rainy season (LRS) ov...

In recent years, there has been an increasing need for climate information across diverse sectors of society. This demand has arisen from the necessity to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate variability and change. Likewise, this period has seen a significant increase in our understanding of the physical processes and mechanisms that drive precipitation and its variability across different regions of Africa. By levera...

Global climate change and related environmental stress threaten the survival of long-lived tree species. To ensure survival in increasingly unfavorable environments, trees need to either acclimate through phenotypic plasticity, adapt via genetic differentiation, or migrate to more favorable climates altogether. Nonstructural carbohydrate (NSC) storage is a critical trait that supports proper metabolic function in plants and ha...

Teleost fishes account for 96% of all fish species and exhibit a spectacular variety of body forms. Teleost lineages range from deep bodied to elongate (e.g., eels, needlefish), laterally compressed (e.g., ribbonfish) to globular (e.g., pufferfish), and include uniquely shaped lineages such as seahorses, flatfishes, and ocean sunfishes. Adaptive body shape convergence within fishes has long been hypothesized but the nature of...

Deep‐sea fishes have long captured our imagination with striking adaptations to life in the mysterious abyss, raising the possibility that this cold, dark ocean region may be a key hub for physiological and functional diversification. We explore this idea through an analysis of body shape evolution across ocean depth zones in over 3000 species of marine teleost fishes. We find that the deep ocean contains twice the body shape...

Eurythenes S.I. Smith in Scudder, 1882 (Crustacea: Amphipoda) are prevalent scavengers of the benthopelagic community from bathyal to hadal depths. While a well-studied genus, molecular systematic studies have uncovered cryptic speciation and multiple undescribed lineages. Here, we apply an integrative taxonomic approach and describe the tenth species, Eurythenes atacamensis sp. nov., based on specimens from the 2018 Atacamex...

Constraints on evolutionary adaptation and range shifts mean that phenotypic plasticity, which includes physiological, developmental or behavioural responses to environmental conditions, could be an important mode of adaptation to a changing climate for many species with small insular populations. While there is evidence to suggest adaptive plasticity to climate in some island populations, little is known about this capacity i...

The population genetics of the economically important collector urchin, Tripneustes gratilla , were examined in 353 individuals collected from 16 sampling sites throughout Indonesia at 12 microsatellite loci. Bayesian clustering methods over all sampling locations revealed evidence of two genetically distinct clusters, one located predominantly on the shallow Sunda Shelf and the second in the deep waters associated with the bi...

Antipredator defensive traits are thought to trade‐off evolutionarily with traits that facilitate predator avoidance. However, complexity and scale have precluded tests of this prediction in many groups, including fishes. Using a macroevolutionary approach, we test this prediction in butterflyfishes, an iconic group of coral reef inhabitants with diverse social behaviours, foraging strategies and antipredator adaptations. We f...

Key external forcing factors have been proposed to explain the collapse of ice sheets, including atmospheric and ocean temperatures, subglacial topography, relative sea level and tidal amplitudes. For past ice sheets it has not hitherto been possible to separate relative sea level and tidal amplitudes from the other controls to analyse their influence on deglaciation style and rate. Here we isolate the relative sea level and t...