Historically Amblyomma hebraeum has been found in the north-eastern part of South Africa and along the coastal belt stretching to the Eastern Cape area. A change already noted in the past 20 years has been the increase in distribution area in the Eastern Cape, which now includes a larger inland area. It has been postulated that climate change has brought about a change in the distribution of A. hebraeum and subsequently, its p...

Migratory birds often traverse thousands of kilometers, yet some individuals may abandon migration and form sedentary populations—a process termed ‘migratory drop-off’. A key limitation in studying this phenomenon is the inability to distinguish between individuals from different populations, particularly when they share part of their range. We aimed to solve this problem for the Barnacle Goose ( Branta leucopsis ), a species...

Aim To evaluate (1) whether three migratory nightjar species (Family Caprimulgidae) adhere to Bergmann's rule, (2) whether environmental factors on the breeding or wintering grounds determine body size, and (3) which mechanistic hypotheses best explain Bergmannian patterns in body size. Location North and South America; Europe and Africa. Taxon Eastern whip‐poor‐will ( Antrostomus vociferus ), Common nighthawk ( Chordeiles min...

Human activities continue to facilitate biological invasions, profoundly impacting our environment and economy. Plants and insects constitute the majority of invasions to date, with facilitative links established between them, particularly in terrestrial habitats. These relationships remain understudied in aquatic environments, including potential associations between aquatic invasive plants and disease vectors such as mosquit...

Variation in forage quality is a key dimension of herbivore resource partitioning, but the main determinants of such variation across environmental gradients remain poorly understood. It is especially unclear how much variation in plant nutrient contents and stoichiometry is driven by plant species turnover versus by intraspecific variation across sites. We investigated variation in forage quality across nine sites along a key...

Background Low-dose (0.5 mg/day) colchicine improves cardiovascular outcomes in patients with stable coronary disease. Around 10–15% of these patients simultaneously use anticoagulant therapy, including vitamin-K antagonists (VKAs). In vitro studies and case reports have described a possible interaction between colchicine and VKAs leading to increased INR, but controlled studies are lacking. Objective The aim of this study was...

Purpose Obesity in mid-life is a well-established risk factor for developing renal cell carcinoma (RCC); however, patients with RCC who are obese at the time of diagnosis have more favorable survival outcomes. To get better insight into the obesity paradox and determine the extent to which weight around diagnosis is stable, we examined pre- and post-diagnosis weight changes in patients with localized RCC. Methods We included 3...

In the current warming climate, many organisms in seasonal environments advance their timing of reproduction to benefit from resource peaks earlier in spring. For migrants, the potential to advance reproduction may be constrained by their migration strategies, notably their ability to advance arrival at the breeding grounds. Recent studies show various changes in migration strategies, including wintering closer to the breeding...

Increased hereditary cancer risk is one of the hallmarks of PTEN Hamartoma Tumor Syndrome (PHTS) which is caused by a pathogenic germline variant in PTEN . Case reports and some cohort studies have described ovarian cancer (OC) in PHTS patients. Previously, we observed an enrichment of non-serous OC in PHTS compared to sporadic cases (3% vs 1%). However, ovarian cancer is currently not considered a PHTS-related cancer. The aim...

Aim Successional changes in functional diversity provide insights into community assembly by indicating how species are filtered into local communities based on their traits. Here, we assess successional changes in taxonomic and functional richness, evenness and redundancy along gradients of climate, soil pH and forest cover. Location Neotropics. Time period Last 0–100 years. Major taxa studied Trees. Methods We used 22 forest...

Lianas profoundly affect tropical forests dynamics, reducing productivity and carbon storage, which underscores the importance of monitoring change in their abundance in projecting the future of the global terrestrial carbon store. While increasing liana populations are documented within the Neotropics, the global consistency of these patterns is questioned, and remains to be determined. To evaluate pantropical trends in liana...

Growing evidence suggests that liana competition with trees is threatening the global carbon sink by slowing the recovery of forests following disturbance. A recent theory based on local and regional evidence further proposes that the competitive success of lianas over trees is driven by interactions between forest disturbance and climate. We present the first global assessment of liana–tree relative performance in response to...

Performing migratory journeys comes with energetic costs, which have to be compensated within the annual cycle. An assessment of how and when such compensation occurs is ideally done by comparing full annual cycles of migratory and non-migratory individuals of the same species, which is rarely achieved. We studied free-living migratory and resident barnacle geese belonging to the same flyway (metapopulation), and investigated...

Climate change predictions indicate that summer droughts will become more severe and frequent. Yet, the impact of soil communities on the response of plant communities to drought remains unclear. Here, we report the results of a novel field experiment, in which we manipulated soil communities by adding soil inocula originating from different successional stages of coastal dune ecosystems to a plant community established from s...

Ladybirds (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) provide services that are critical to food production, and they fulfill an ecological role as a food source for predators. The richness, abundance, and distribution of ladybirds, however, are compromised by many anthropogenic threats. Meanwhile, a lack of knowledge of the conservation status of most species and the factors driving their population dynamics hinders the development and imple...