Urbanization is a persistent and widespread driver of global environmental change, potentially shaping evolutionary processes due to genetic drift and reduced gene flow in cities induced by habitat fragmentation and small population sizes. We tested this prediction for the eastern grey squirrel ( Sciurus carolinensis ), a common and conspicuous forest‐dwelling rodent, by obtaining 44K SNPs using reduced representation sequenci...

Aim To determine the relationships between the functional trait composition of forest communities and environmental gradients across scales and biomes and the role of species relative abundances in these relationships. Location Global. Time period Recent. Major taxa studied Trees. Methods We integrated species abundance records from worldwide forest inventories and associated functional traits (wood density, specific leaf area...

Coincident with shifting monsoon weather patterns over India, the phytoplankter Noctiluca miliaris has recently been observed to be dominating phytoplankton blooms in the northeastern Arabian Sea during the winter monsoons. Identifying the exact environmental and/or ecological conditions that favor this species has been hampered by the lack of concurrent environmental and biological observations on time and space scales releva...

We report surface observations of a mesoscale coccolithophore bloom at the shelf break of the Patagonian Shelf during December 2008, representing the densest coccolithophore population in the Southern Ocean. The bloom was most intense within the Falklands Current, northeast of the Falkland Islands. Emiliania huxleyi dominated bloom waters, with a mixed E. huxleyi and Prorocentrum sp. dinoflagellate bloom to the west and mixed...

Four strains of the cyanobacteria, Synechococcus , were infected with viruses isolated and purified from coastal waters of the Gulf of Maine. Changes in host and virus concentration were observed in time course experiments, along with associated variability in inherent optical properties. There were strong optical shifts before and after lysis in inherent optical properties on time scales commensurate with the viral infection...

Bacteria and phytoplankton are key determinants of the ocean's inherent optical properties. Despite their high abundance, marine viruses have generally been thought to play a minor role in ocean optics because of their small scattering cross‐sections. Nevertheless, the role of specific viral infection on the optical properties of bacteria and phytoplankton has remained unknown (i.e., as viruses disrupt micron‐sized host cells...