Climate in the Arctic is changing and this may influence parasite-host interactions. Infective free-living larvae of gastrointestinal parasitic nematodes (GIN) are sensitive to environmental conditions. Climate change is thus expected to impact the transmission of these parasites. The encounter between infective larvae and grazing herbivores is likely to depend on vertical distribution of the larvae in soil and vegetation. How...

We examined the age and growth of the Pacific goliath grouper ( Epinephelus quinquefasciatus ) from 210 samples collected from the main fish markets in Panama and Colombia. Ages from otoliths ranged from young‐of‐the‐year to 13 years, predominantly between 1 and 4 years. The von Bertalanffy growth parameters were L∞ = 207 cm, k = 0.13 year −1 and t 0 = −1.87 years. Instantaneous mortality rates ( Z ) were estimated at 36% in C...

The role of atmospheric humidity in the evolution of endotherms' thermoregulatory performance remains largely unexplored, despite the fact that elevated humidity is known to impede evaporative cooling capacity. Using a phylogenetically informed comparative framework, we tested the hypothesis that pronounced hyperthermia tolerance among birds occupying humid lowlands evolved to reduce the impact of humidity‐impeded scope for ev...

Shark depredation is a complex social-ecological issue that affects a range of fisheries worldwide. Increasing concern about the impacts of shark depredation, and how it intersects with the broader context of fisheries management, has driven recent research in this area, especially in Australia and the United States. This review synthesises these recent advances and provides strategic guidance for researchers aiming to charact...

Population dynamics in group‐living species can be strongly affected both by features of sociality per se and by resultant population structure. To develop a mechanistic understanding of population dynamics in highly social species we need to investigate how processes within groups, processes linking groups, and external drivers act and interact to produce observed patterns. We model social group dynamics in cooperatively bree...

A growing literature now documents the presence of fine‐scale genetic structure in wild vertebrate populations. Breeding population size, levels of dispersal and polygyny — all hypothesized to affect population genetic structure — are known to be influenced by ecological conditions experienced by populations. However the possibility of temporal or spatial variation in fine‐scale genetic structure as a result of ecological chan...

Many recent studies report that individual heterozygosity at a handful of apparently neutral microsatellite markers is correlated with key components of fitness, with most studies invoking inbreeding depression as the likely underlying mechanism. The implicit assumption is that an individual's inbreeding coefficient can be estimated reliably using only 10 or so markers, but the validity of this assumption is unclear. Consequen...

Levels of parental relatedness can affect offspring survival and susceptibility to disease. We investigated parental relatedness of live and dead Halichoerus grypus pups between and within island populations and between possible causes of mortality. Nine microsatellites were used to calculate internal relatedness (IR) and standardized mean d 2 . We find that pups with higher than average levels of IR have significantly lower s...

This review examines the direct effects of climate change on insect herbivores. Temperature is identified as the dominant abiotic factor directly affecting herbivorous insects. There is little evidence of any direct effects of CO 2 or UVB. Direct impacts of precipitation have been largely neglected in current research on climate change. Temperature directly affects development, survival, range and abundance. Species with a lar...