Biodiversity status assessments are typically conducted on a regional basis. Consequently, there are numerous species that are rare in one region but ubiquitously present in another country or administrative region. Correctly assessing the conservation status and value of such “endangered species” is essential to achieve better biodiversity conservation through the appropriate and efficient use of socioeconomic resources. A co...

Farmlands are becoming more important as waterfowl foraging habitats, while natural wetlands are being lost globally. However, it is unclear how waterfowl coexist in agricultural landscapes by resource partitioning. We evaluated the diets of seven sympatric dabbling ducks foraging in rice paddy and lotus fields around Lake Kasumigaura, the second largest lake in Japan, during two wintering seasons (from November to February) b...

Aim A reduction in dispersal ability has been thought to be a general trend for island land birds. However, recent studies have indicated that long‐distance dispersal among island habitats may be maintained in island pigeon populations. Here, we investigated whether pigeons could maintain their long‐distance dispersal ability to move among islands within the archipelago, even in highly insular conditions, by comparing two subs...

Aim The Sino‐Japanese Floristic Region has extremely high species diversity with respect to temperate plants; however, the reasons for this diversity are poorly understood because most studies have only considered geographic isolation caused by climatic oscillations. In some plant groups, high floral trait diversity and uneven species diversity between insular systems and the continental area suggest other factors may have imp...

Edaphic specialization is one of the main drivers of plant diversification and has multifaceted effects on population dynamics. Carex angustisquama is a sedge plant growing only on heavily acidified soil in solfatara fields, where only extremophytes can survive. Because of the lack of closely related species in similar habitats and its disjunct distribution, the species offers ideal settings to investigate the effects of adapt...

Genomewide markers enable us to study genetic differentiation within a species and the factors underlying it at a much higher resolution than before, which advances our understanding of adaptation in organisms. We investigated genomic divergence in Metrosideros polymorpha , a woody species that occupies a wide range of ecological habitats across the Hawaiian Islands and shows remarkable phenotypic variation. Using 1659 single...

Summary White‐rot fungi play an important role in the global carbon cycle because they are the species that almost exclusively biodegrade wood lignin in nature. Lignin peroxidases (LiPs), manganese peroxidases (MnPs) and versatile peroxidases (VPs) are considered key players in the ligninolytic system. Apart from LiPs, MnPs and VPs, however, only few other factors involved in the ligninolytic system have been investigated usin...