This study introduces a new species, Boechera sierraensis , recently discovered in the Sierra Nevada of California. Previous research has shown that this taxon possesses exceptional tolerance to environmental stressors, including heat, drought, and high light intensity, which make it a valuable research subject in the face of accelerating climate change. However, species delimitation within the genus Boechera is notoriously di...

Aim Phylogenetic community structures have traditionally been interpreted through the lens of niche processes, such as environmental filtering and interspecific competition. However, these structures have been continuously shaped over evolutionary time by biogeographical dynamics, a process that is often overlooked. Here, we disentangled the influence of speciation and dispersal on spatial phylogenetic structures using neutral...

Correlation of climate and infectious disease has been noted for millennia and recorded in the writings of Hippocrates. Given recent technological advances in both pathogen detection and monitoring of infectious diseases in a time of climate change, a detailed study of their link is now possible. In the aquatic environment, climate change has had an impact on ocean, estuary, and freshwater ecosystems that coincides with increa...

The last 12 months have provided further evidence of the potential for cascading ecological and socio-political crises that were warned of 12 months ago. Then a consensus statement from the Regional Action on Climate Change Symposium warned: “the Earth’s climatic, ecological, and human systems are converging towards a crisis that threatens to engulf global civilization within the lifetimes of children now living.” Since then,...

Summary Vibrio spp . thrive in warm water and moderate salinity, and they are associated with aquatic invertebrates, notably crustaceans and zooplankton. At least 12 Vibrio spp. are known to cause infection in humans, and Vibrio cholerae is well documented as the etiological agent of pandemic cholera. Pathogenic non‐cholera Vibrio spp ., e.g., Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus , cause gastroenteritis, septicemia, a...

Aim Two fundamental questions about human language demand answers: why are so many languages spoken today and why is their geographical distribution so uneven? Although hypotheses have been proposed for centuries, the processes that determine patterns of linguistic and cultural diversity remain poorly understood. Previous studies, which relied on correlative, curve‐fitting approaches, have produced contradictory results. Here...

Summary Effects of hydrostatic pressure on pure cultures of prokaryotes have been studied extensively but impacts at the community level in the ocean are less well defined. Here we consider hydrostatic pressure effects on natural communities containing both unadapted (piezosensitive) prokaryotes originating from surface water and adapted (including piezophilic) prokaryotes from the deep sea. Results from experiments mimicking...

Assessing species survival status is an essential component of conservation programs. We devised a new statistical method for estimating the probability of species persistence from the temporal sequence of collection dates of museum specimens. To complement this approach, we developed quantitative stopping rules for terminating the search for missing or allegedly extinct species. These stopping rules are based on survey data f...

Understanding the causes of spatial variation in species richness is a major research focus of biogeography and macroecology. Gridded environmental data and species richness maps have been used in increasingly sophisticated curve‐fitting analyses, but these methods have not brought us much closer to a mechanistic understanding of the patterns. During the past two decades, macroecologists have successfully addressed technical p...

Summary The El Niño event of 1997/1998 provided an opportunity to carry out a field experiment in which the relationship of sea surface temperature and the association of Vibrio cholerae with marine plankton could be assessed in Mexican coastal and estuarine areas. Plankton samples were collected from May 1997 through June 1999. Sites included the Mexican ports of Veracruz, Coatzacoalcos and Frontera in the Gulf of Mexico and...