The influence of fishes on temperate rocky reef ecosystems is globally recognised, particularly where large predators may structure ecosystems through predation. In South-East Australia, the common Wrasse Achoerodus viridis (Blue Groper) and Sparid Chrysophrys auratus (Snapper) are sympatric rocky reef predators. While their diets are thought to be well understood, this is generally based on gut contents undertaken over limite...

Urchin diets are a topic of global interest due to their impacts on subtidal reefs. Urchins can consume large amounts of macroalgae, leading to the loss of macroalgal forests and creation of “barrens”. However, there is scant dietary information in the southern hemisphere for the temperate sea urchin, Centrostephanus rodgersii , and what they consume within barrens, which lack macroalgae. Here, we sampled C. rodgersii to quant...

Worldwide, fish predation by labrid and sparid species is thought to regulate urchin populations. In South East (SE) Australia, Centrostephanus rodgersii (long-spined urchin) has become a focal species due to its recent incursion south, where it has created new urchin barrens. It has since been suggested that reduced large fish predators across the native C. rodgersii range of New South Wales (NSW) may have caused extensive ba...

Globally, key predators such as lobsters are thought to control urchins. In south-eastern Australia, the role of Sagmariasus verreauxi (eastern rock lobster) as a key predator of the native urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii (long-spined urchin) has been questioned while the sympatric Heliocidaris erythrogramma (short-spined urchin) may be eaten more frequently. To test this, we tethered and filmed 100 urchins (50 C . rodgersii...

Among‐individual variation in vital rates, such as mortality and birth rates, exists in nearly all populations. Recent studies suggest that this individual heterogeneity produces substantial life‐history and fitness differences among individuals, which in turn scale up to influence population dynamics. However, our ability to understand the consequences of individual heterogeneity is limited by inconsistencies across conceptua...

Epigenetic inheritance is the transmission of nongenetic material such as gene expression levels, RNA and other biomolecules from parents to offspring. There is a growing realization that such forms of inheritance can play an important role in evolution. Bacteria represent a prime example of epigenetic inheritance because a large array of cellular components is transmitted to offspring, in addition to genetic material. Interes...

In recent years, several studies have examined the relationship between genetic diversity and establishment success in colonizing species. Many of these studies have shown that genetic diversity enhances establishment success. There are several hypotheses that might explain this pattern, and here I focus on the possibility that greater genetic diversity results in greater evolvability during colonization. Evaluating the import...

The interaction between the immune system and pathogens is often characterised as a predator–prey interaction. This characterisation ignores the fact that both require host resources to reproduce. Here, we propose novel theory that considers how these resource requirements can modify the interaction between the immune system and pathogens. We derive a series of models to describe the energetic interaction between the immune sy...

Recent theory has examined the way in which vaccination strategies are expected to influence the evolution of parasite virulence. Most of this work has assumed that vaccination is imposed on a homogeneous host population. However, host populations are typically composed of different types of individuals, with each type responding differently to infection. Moreover, actual interventions often focus treatment on those hosts that...

Much of the existing theory for the evolutionary biology of infectious diseases uses an invasion analysis approach. In this Ideas and Perspectives article, we suggest that techniques from theoretical population genetics can also be profitably used to study the evolutionary epidemiology of infectious diseases. We highlight four ways in which population‐genetic models provide benefits beyond those provided by most invasion analy...

Many populations are composed of a mixture of individuals that reproduce at different times, and these times are often heritable. Under these conditions, gene flow should be limited between early and late reproducers, even within populations having a unimodal temporal distribution of reproductive activity. This temporal restriction on gene flow might be called ‘isolation by time’ (IBT) to acknowledge its analogy with isolation...

One of the most accepted views in the theoretical literature on virulence evolution is that a parasite's virulence will evolve to higher levels when its host's background mortality rate increases. Surprisingly, however, although many sources of background mortality involve predation, there has not yet been any theoretical research that explicitly considers how the dynamics of this important ecological interaction affects virul...

Many pathogens produce resilient free‐living propagules that allow their dissemination in the absence of direct contact between susceptible and infected hosts. One might expect pathogens capable of producing such long‐lived propagules to evolve high levels of virulence because their reproductive success is de‐coupled from the survival of their host. Despite some comparative data supporting this prediction, theory has questione...