Aging is a complex biological process characterized by progressive functional decline and increased risk of chronic diseases. In recent years, DNA methylation-based epigenetic clocks have emerged as some of the most robust biomarkers for estimating biological age. Initial research clocks, such as those developed by Horvath and Hannum, provided highly accurate chronological age predictions. Subsequent models, including PhenoAge...

Aim Global environmental change encompasses shifts in climate and land use, which are evident in tropical mountains. Both processes impose selective pressures on species, resulting in changes to their distribution and diversity. Using a historic dataset from 1990 to 1993 that was systematically replicated in 2015, we tested whether the elevational distribution of dung beetle species has changed over 25 years in response to cli...

Main Animals not only forage for abundant and nearby resources, but their diets can also be influenced by abiotic and geographic factors. This often results in non‐random interactions among species. We investigate how seed density, distance from nest, abiotic (e.g., climate stability, temperature, precipitation) and geographic factors (e.g., latitude, elevation and continental hemisphere) influence the removal of food items (i...

The Mexican Transition Zone is a biogeographically complex area where old and new lineages of Neotropical and Nearctic affinities overlap. Its biota was assembled by successive dispersal events of cenocrons, which are sets of taxa that dispersed during a given time interval from both North and South America and then diversified in the area. The Mexican Plateau cenocron, with Neotropical affinities, is found in temperate and dr...

Aim Most biodiversity studies have considered species to be isolated entities, neglecting the fact that their biotic interactions and spatial variation are fundamental to their persistence across elevational gradients. Here, using a standardized sampling methodology, we evaluated how and why the composition of flower–visitor interactions (i.e. beta diversity) varies over an extensive elevational gradient. Specifically, we aime...

Trophic specialisation is known to vary across space, but the environmental factors explaining such variation remain elusive. Here we used a global dataset of flower‐visitor networks to evaluate how trophic specialisation varies between latitudinal zones (tropical and temperate) and across elevation gradients, while considering the environmental variation inherent in these spatial gradients. Specifically, we assessed the role...

The dolphins Inia geoffrensis—boto and Sotalia fluviatilis—tucuxi are threatened cetaceans inhabiting river ecosystems in South America; population numbers are still lacking for many areas. This paper provides density and abundance estimations of boto and tucuxi in 15 rivers sampled during the past nine years as part of a multinational research alliance. Visual boat-survey data collection protocols and analyses have been devel...

Aim Different patterns of the species richness‐elevation relationship have been detected on mountains, however how these arise is unclear. Some patterns may be related to two different colonization processes: Lineages colonizing from adjacent lowlands (a ‘vertical’ model) or from different latitudes (a ‘horizontal’ model), or both. We aimed to test whether the predictions of the vertical and horizontal colonization models depe...