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Aim We investigate the distribution of dispersal modes — endozoochory (via animal ingestion), synzoochory (via animal seed accumulation) and anemochory (via wind)—and seed mass of woody plants across Brazilian ecosystems, testing whether their relative abundance in local plant communities could be predicted by climate, edaphic factors and dispersal agents (e.g., the main vectors moving seeds). We expected climate to be the mai...
Dynamic cycling and redox transformations of dissolved organic sulfur in the surface oceanNARA Subscribed
The marine dissolved organic sulfur (DOS) pool contains both labile metabolites that are rapidly cycled in the surface ocean and compounds that may persist for thousands of years in the marine environment. Here, we describe the sulfur speciation of marine solid‐phase extracted DOS (DOS SPE ) from the North Atlantic surface ocean, revealing a diversity of oxidation states that include alkyl sulfides, disulfides, aromatics, sulf...
Environmental Variability Shapes Life‐History Trade‐Offs Within and Between Populations of a Long‐Lived SeabirdNARA Subscribed
Individuals face a trade‐off between allocating resources to reproduction or self‐maintenance, yet the drivers of the existence and strength of such trade‐off have been hard to determine. Environmental conditions are thought to play a crucial role, as long‐lived species are predicted to favour more precautionary life‐history strategies in variable environments. However, empirical evidence remains limited. Using long‐term monit...
Does Reduced Ball Inflation Pressure in Association Football Decrease Head Impact Kinematics?NARA Subscribed
Purpose Apparent degeneration in brain health due to heading the football is amongst the most pressing and contentious health-related questions in sport (Keogh F, Pirks N (2024) “Pain was sickening”—Ex-players on heading fears. In: BBC). The purpose of this study was to thoroughly explore the effectiveness of reduced inflation pressure as an intervention to reduce head kinematics from a ball to head impact. The influence of im...
Understanding relatedness is fundamental to the fields of reproductive and social behaviour, trait-based analysis, population connectivity, and threatened species management. While relatedness has been studied in a broad range of terrestrial and aquatic taxa, research is often limited for species that are difficult to sample or persist in low densities. Elasmobranchs (sharks and rays) are one the most imperilled vertebrate cla...
Socioecological drivers of injuries and aggression in female and male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)NARA Subscribed
Competition over access to resources, such as food and mates, is one of the major costs associated with group living. Two socioecological factors believed to drive the intensity of competition are group size and sex ratio. However, empirical evidence linking these factors to physical aggression and injuries is scarce. Here, we leveraged 10 years of data from free-ranging female and male rhesus macaques to test whether group si...
Isolation by distance and biogeographical boundaries define patterns of population genetic structure for harbour porpoise along the Pacific coast from California to British Columbia. Until recently, inadequate sample sizes in many regions constrained efforts to characterise population genetic structure throughout the coastal waters of Alaska. Here, tissue samples from beachcast strandings and fisheries bycatch were supplemente...
Methanogenic archaea are chemolithotrophic prokaryotes that can reduce carbon dioxide with hydrogen gas to form methane. These microorganisms make a significant contribution to the global carbon cycle, with methanogenic archaea from anoxic environments estimated to contribute > 500 million tons of global methane annually. Archaeal methanogenesis is dependent on the methanofurans; aminomethylfuran containing coenzymes that act...
As climatic variation re‐shapes global biodiversity, understanding eco‐evolutionary feedbacks during species range shifts is of increasing importance. Theory on range expansions distinguishes between two different forms: “pulled” and “pushed” waves. Pulled waves occur when the source of the expansion comes from low‐density peripheral populations, while pushed waves occur when recruitment to the expanding edge is supplied by hi...
Organic sulfur plays a crucial role in the biogeochemistry of aquatic sediments, especially in low sulfate ( μ M) environments like freshwater lakes and the Earth's early oceans. To better understand organic sulfur cycling in these systems, we followed organic sulfur in the sulfate‐poor ( μ M) iron‐rich (30–80 μ M) sediments of Lake Superior from source to sink. We identified microbial populations with shotgun metagenomic sequ...
Morphological similarities between skates of the genus Dipturus in the north‐eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean have resulted in longstanding confusion, misidentification and misreporting. Current evidence indicates that the common skate is best explained as two species, the flapper skate ( Dipturus intermedius ) and the common blue skate ( D. batis ). However, some management and conservation initiatives developed prior to th...
Giants of the Amazon: How does environmental variation drive the diversity patterns of large trees?NARA Subscribed
For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm diameter, showing highest species diversity in the wetter western and northern Amazon forests. By contrast, little attention has been paid to patterns and drivers of diversity in the largest canopy and emergent trees, which is surprising given these h...
Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, notably Omicron, continue to remain a formidable challenge to worldwide public health. The SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) is a hotspot for mutations, reflecting its critical role at the ACE2 interface during viral entry. Here, we comprehensively investigated the impact of RBD mutations, including 5 variants of concern (VOC) or interest—including Omicron (BA.2)—and 33 common point mutatio...
Shape from spectraNARA Subscribed
Introduced predators can have harmful top‐down effects on their newly colonized system through competition with and direct predation on native species. Following an initial introduction of muskellunge in Lac Frontière, Québec in the 1970s at the headwaters of the Wolastoq/Saint John River, the species rapidly migrated downstream, expanding its range by ~500 km over ~20 years. Despite this expansive colonization and concern ove...
Prolonging survival in good health is a fundamental societal goal. However, the leading determinants of disability-free survival in healthy older people have not been well established. Data from ASPREE, a bi-national placebo-controlled trial of aspirin with 4.7 years median follow-up, was analysed. At enrolment, participants were healthy and without prior cardiovascular events, dementia or persistent physical disability. Disab...
Functional traits offer a rich quantitative framework for developing and testing theories in evolutionary biology, ecology and ecosystem science. However, the potential of functional traits to drive theoretical advances and refine models of global change can only be fully realised when species‐level information is complete. Here we present the AVONET dataset containing comprehensive functional trait data for all birds, includi...