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Genomic Architecture of Inbreeding Depression Associated With Hatching Failure in an Endangered ParrotNARA Subscribed
Conservation management of endangered species increasingly relies on genomic approaches to understand how long‐term small population sizes affect the fitness of extant individuals. However, despite the growing investment in genomic resources by conservation programmes, the impact that sequencing methods have on the ability to detect inbreeding‐related phenomena has been largely overlooked. Here, we compare the use of whole‐gen...
Locomotion Reveals Contrasting Responses in Body Mass‐Scaling of Metabolic Rates Between Winged and Wingless ArthropodsNARA Subscribed
Metabolism fuels fundamental biological processes and commonly scales with body mass with an exponent, b , between 2/3 and 1. We, here, explore how differences in physical activity can reveal contrasting interspecific metabolic scaling between major groups of arthropods. The Metabolic‐level Boundaries Hypothesis predicts that increased behavioural activity increases b . We test this hypothesis by comparing b during flight, non...
Aim The urgency for remote, reliable and scalable biodiversity monitoring amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems has sparked worldwide interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), which can track life underwater and on land. However, we lack a unified methodology to report this sampling effort and a comprehensive overview of PAM coverage to gauge its potential as a global research and monitoring tool. To address this...
Shorebirds Are Shrinking and Shape‐Shifting: Declining Body Size and Lengthening Bills in the Past Half‐CenturyNARA Subscribed
Animals are predicted to shrink and shape‐shift as the climate warms, declining in size, while their appendages lengthen. Determining which types of species are undergoing these morphological changes, and why, is critical to understanding species responses to global change, including potential adaptation to climate warming. We examine body size and bill length changes in 25 shorebird species using extensive field data (> 200,0...
Long‐term shifts in phenology, thermal niche, population size, and their interactions in marine pelagic copepodsNARA Subscribed
Under climatic warming many species shift their seasonal timing of life cycle events (phenology) and seasonal abundance distribution, but whether they maintain the same thermal niche is still poorly understood. Here, we studied multidecadal trends in abundance and phenology of seven major copepod species across three stations (Stonehaven (SH), Helgoland Roads (HR), and Plymouth L4) on the North–West European shelf, spanning ~...
Metabolism underpins all life‐sustaining processes and varies profoundly with body size, temperature and locomotor activity. A current theory explains some of the size‐dependence of metabolic rate (its mass exponent, b ) through changes in metabolic level ( L ). We propose two predictive advances that: (a) combine the above theory with the evolved avoidance of oxygen limitation in water‐breathers experiencing warming, and (b)...
Essential omega‐3 fatty acids are depleted in sea ice and pelagic algae of the Central Arctic OceanNARA Subscribed
Microalgae are the main source of the omega‐3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), essential for the healthy development of most marine and terrestrial fauna including humans. Inverse correlations of algal EPA and DHA proportions (% of total fatty acids) with temperature have led to suggestions of a warming‐induced decline in the global production of these biomolecules and an enhanced importa...
Marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly large MPAs, are increasing in number and size around the globe in part to facilitate the conservation of marine megafauna under the assumption that large-scale MPAs better align with vagile life histories; however, this alignment is not well established. Using a global tracking dataset from 36 species across five taxa, chosen to reflect the span of home range size in highly mobile ma...
Biotic factors limit the invasion of the plague pathogen ( Yersinia pestis ) in novel geographical settingsNARA Subscribed
Aim The distribution of Yersinia pestis , the pathogen that causes plague in humans, is reliant upon transmission between host species; however, the degree to which host species distributions dictate the distribution of Y. pestis , compared with limitations imposed by the environmental niche of Y. pestis per se, is debated. We test whether the present‐day environmental niche of Y. pestis differs between its native range and an...
Increasing nutrient stress reduces the efficiency of energy transfer through planktonic size spectraNARA Subscribed
Size‐spectral approaches quantify the efficiency of energy transfer through food webs, but theory and field studies disagree over how changes in temperature, nutrients, and extreme weather impact on this efficiency. We address this at two scales: via 6 years of weekly sampling of the plankton size spectrum at the Plymouth L4 shelf sea site, and via a new, global‐scale, meta‐analysis of aquatic size spectra. The time series sho...
Bottom trawl fishing is a controversial activity. It yields about a quarter of the world's wild seafood, but also has impacts on the marine environment. Recent advances have quantified and improved understanding of large‐scale impacts of trawling on the seabed. However, such information needs to be coupled with distributions of benthic invertebrates (benthos) to assess whether these populations are being sustained under curren...
Increasing picocyanobacteria success in shelf waters contributes to long‐term food web degradationNARA Subscribed
Continental margins are disproportionally important for global primary production, fisheries and CO 2 uptake. However, across the Northeast Atlantic shelves, there has been an ongoing summertime decline of key biota—large diatoms, dinoflagellates and copepods—that traditionally fuel higher tropic levels such as fish, sea birds and marine mammals. Here, we combine multiple time series with in situ process studies to link these...
Lifeform indicators reveal large‐scale shifts in plankton across the North‐West European shelfNARA Subscribed
Increasing direct human pressures on the marine environment, coupled with climate‐driven changes, is a concern to marine ecosystems globally. This requires the development and monitoring of ecosystem indicators for effective management and adaptation planning. Plankton lifeforms (broad functional groups) are sensitive indicators of marine environmental change and can provide a simplified view of plankton biodiversity, building...