Biology Letters最新文献_第4页

Mitochondrial ribosome content as a proxy for respiration. 线粒体核糖体含量作为呼吸作用的代表。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-26 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0144

Francis Mairet

引用次数: 0

Wolves increase germination speed and success of blueberries. 狼能提高蓝莓的发芽速度和成功率。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-26 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0279

Alex D Gross, Thomas D Gable, Austin T Homkes, Kathy Winnett-Murray, Ryan Woodside, Joseph K Bump, K Greg Murray

{"title":"Wolves increase germination speed and success of blueberries.","authors":"Alex D Gross, Thomas D Gable, Austin T Homkes, Kathy Winnett-Murray, Ryan Woodside, Joseph K Bump, K Greg Murray","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0279","url":null,"abstract":"Seed dispersal plays a key role in facilitating important ecological processes that reduce plant competition, parasitism and predation while promoting gene flow and biodiversity. In many ecosystems across North America and Eurasia, wolves consume fruits when available. However, the impact of wolf consumption on seeds, particularly germination success and speed, remains unknown. We extracted blueberry seeds from wolf scats and fresh fruits in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, Minnesota, USA, where wolves forage extensively on blueberries in summer. We grew seeds under controlled conditions to assess if blueberry seeds deposited in wolf scat germinate more rapidly and successfully than seeds from berries alone (control). Seeds that passed through wolf digestive tracts had higher germination success and speed than controlled seeds. This pattern suggests blueberries receive positive benefits passing through wolf gastrointestinal systems. This finding, in combination with wolves' propensity to travel long distances in short periods, indicates wolves are likely effective long-distance dispersers of blueberry seeds. Thus, our findings reveal another way wolves are likely connected to larger ecological processes in boreal ecosystems, and possibly other ecosystems where wolves consume fruits.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148817149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Structural causal influence captures the forces of social inequality in models of infectious disease. 结构性因果影响在传染病模型中捕捉到了社会不平等的力量。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-19 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2025.0655

Sudam Surasinghe, Swathi Nachiar Manivannan, Samuel V Scarpino, Lorin Crawford, C Brandon Ogbunugafor

引用次数: 0

Food quality-driven variation in the link between innovation and survival in semi-natural populations of wild mice. 在半自然野生小鼠种群中，食物质量驱动的变异在创新和生存之间的联系。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-19 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0281

Fragkiskos Darmis, Anja Guenther

{"title":"Food quality-driven variation in the link between innovation and survival in semi-natural populations of wild mice.","authors":"Fragkiskos Darmis, Anja Guenther","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0281","url":null,"abstract":"Innovation underpins adaptation to environmental challenges, yet its link to fitness remains unclear. This may reflect context-dependent effects, with fitness benefits emerging primarily under poor environmental conditions or among individuals in poorer condition. However, empirical tests linking innovation to fitness across environments in continuously monitored individuals remain rare. Here, we manipulated environmental quality in young wild house mice by providing either a high- or a comparatively lower quality diet. We quantified innovation propensity and latency early in life, using standardized tasks, and subsequently released individuals into semi-natural environments that matched their developmental diet. We then tracked body mass (as a proxy for fitness) and survival over six months. We tested whether the effects of innovation propensity and latency on fitness were more pronounced among individuals living in lower-quality conditions, as predicted by the necessity drives innovation hypothesis. Mice on the high-quality diet were more innovative. Moreover, while innovation propensity did not predict body mass trajectories, survival depended on an interaction between innovation latency and environmental quality, indicating environment-dependent fitness trade-offs. Our findings demonstrate that the fitness consequences of innovation are contingent on environmental variation, which may help explain inconsistent patterns reported across studies.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148787993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Sex ratio shapes female response to sexual conflict in the wild. 在野外，性别比例决定了雌性对性冲突的反应。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-19 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0193

Shantanu Joshi, Adam Siepielski

{"title":"Sex ratio shapes female response to sexual conflict in the wild.","authors":"Shantanu Joshi, Adam Siepielski","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0193","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0193","url":null,"abstract":"Chronically male-biased sex ratios are predicted to intensify sexual conflict and reduce female fitness. Yet empirical tests of female responses in natural settings are rare. We tested how female reproductive performance depends on social environment in the field using two closely related sympatric damselflies that differ strikingly in adult sex ratios: one experiences consistently male-biased sex ratios (Enallagma exsulans), whereas the other does not (E. traviatum). In field experiments, females from the chronically male-biased species were less sensitive to elevated male density, maintaining fertility despite increased harassment. By contrast, fertility declined under high male density in the species that naturally encounters more balanced sex ratios. Fecundity and survival remained largely unchanged, suggesting that fertility is the primary fitness component sensitive to variation in male density. Mixed-species trials showed that frequent heterospecific mating attempts imposed only modest additional costs to females. These results provide field-experimental evidence that closely related species can differ markedly in how female fertility responds to social environment under natural conditions. The correspondence between these differences and natural sex ratios is also consistent with a putative role for adaptation to persistent male bias.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148787950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Costs and benefits of group size for sperm whales of the open ocean. 公海抹香鲸群体规模的成本和收益。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-19 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0129

Hal Whitehead, Ana Eguiguren, Luke Rendell, Sam F Walmsley

{"title":"Costs and benefits of group size for sperm whales of the open ocean.","authors":"Hal Whitehead, Ana Eguiguren, Luke Rendell, Sam F Walmsley","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0129","url":null,"abstract":"Individual feeding success can change with the size of a social group through competition, cooperation, recruitment and other processes. Female sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) live in long-term social units that themselves can form larger, temporary groups, but the individual-level impacts of group formation are unknown. We measured feeding success on 88 days following groups off the Galápagos Islands and Chile using defecation rates. Feeding success increased about fourfold as group sizes rose from one social unit (about 10 animals) to 4-5 units. Our data did not suggest recruitment into successful groups, and the whales' prey are generally relatively small and slow, arguing against cooperative capture. Instead, it seems most plausible that individuals receive valuable information about patchy prey distributions from foraging group members over scales of 100 to 1000 m. Feeding success fell for the largest groups, suggesting a foraging optimum of about 40-50 animals off the Galápagos Islands and 30-40 animals off Chile. These are close to the mean typical group sizes in these areas, which indicates that efficient foraging on patchy prey may largely drive group size. Considerable differences between oceans in the group sizes of female sperm whales are probably linked to variation in the patchiness of resource availability.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148788004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Reviewers in 2025. 2025年的评论者。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-12 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0198

Louise Heathwaite

引用次数: 0

Crossing experiments suggest a simple genetic basis of complex male self-sacrifice phenotypes in widow spiders. 杂交实验表明寡妇蜘蛛复杂的雄性自我牺牲表型有一个简单的遗传基础。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-12 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0211

Kardelen Özgün Uludağ, Vladislav Ivanov, Henrik Krehenwinkel, Jutta M Schneider

{"title":"Crossing experiments suggest a simple genetic basis of complex male self-sacrifice phenotypes in widow spiders.","authors":"Kardelen Özgün Uludağ, Vladislav Ivanov, Henrik Krehenwinkel, Jutta M Schneider","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0211","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0211","url":null,"abstract":"Sexual cannibalism is among the most extreme outcomes of sexual conflict, and the Australian widow spider Latrodectus hasselti is well known for this behaviour. Curiously, males of L. hasselti actively facilitate cannibalism through self-sacrificial mating traits. During copulation, the male somersaults his abdomen onto the female's fangs and develops an abdominal constriction that prevents his premature death, allowing him to monopolize paternity. The closely related sister species L. katipo, however, lacks self-sacrificial mating traits. Given the close relatedness of the two species, the differences in mating traits must have evolved rapidly and are expected to have a rather simple genetic basis. We hypothesize that these two complex traits are tightly linked on the X chromosome and show a single-locus Mendelian inheritance. To test this hypothesis, we backcrossed the two species and scored F2 males for the presence of copulatory somersault and abdominal constriction during mating. Our results suggest that the two traits are not genetically linked, and that the self-sacrificial somersault follows a single-locus X-linked Mendelian inheritance pattern, while the abdominal constriction has a more complex genetic basis. Our work shows that even extremely complex mating traits can evolve rapidly and have a simple genetic basis.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13479370/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148711298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Recovering host DNA from their invertebrate parasites: a minimally invasive genetic sampling tool for the critically endangered flapper skate. 从它们的无脊椎寄生虫中恢复宿主DNA：一种极度濒危的蹼鳐的微创基因采样工具。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-05 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0112

Danielle Leigh Orrell, Lisa A Kenny, Katie R Ruding Barnes, Damien Haberlin, Luke Harman, Alfonso Cohuo, Sean Maxwell, David Edwards, Eileen Dillane, Thomas Kenneth Doyle

{"title":"Recovering host DNA from their invertebrate parasites: a minimally invasive genetic sampling tool for the critically endangered flapper skate.","authors":"Danielle Leigh Orrell, Lisa A Kenny, Katie R Ruding Barnes, Damien Haberlin, Luke Harman, Alfonso Cohuo, Sean Maxwell, David Edwards, Eileen Dillane, Thomas Kenneth Doyle","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0112","url":null,"abstract":"Obtaining host DNA from the blood meals of their invertebrate parasites (invertebrate-derived DNA, iDNA) has proven to be a powerful tool in terrestrial ecology for detecting vertebrates to answer questions relating to host community diversity. However, the use of iDNA in the marine environment is limited. Here, we assessed the efficacy of sampling parasites from the critically endangered flapper skate (Dipturus intermedius) to determine whether iDNA could (i) identify the host species and (ii) obtain host haplotype sequences. In total, 34 copepods (Trebius caudatus specimens, n = 30; Caligus elongatus specimens, n = 4) were processed from 20 flapper skates. Fin-clips were also taken from each flapper for comparison. iDNA identified the host species with 91% success. The host haplotype sequenced from multiple T. caudatus specimens sampled from the same host matched in all cases. A bias-reduced logistic regression found a positive but non-significant association between copepod gut length (z-score) and host-copepod haplotype match success (β = 0.67, p = 0.34). These findings demonstrate the utility of iDNA for confirming the identity and the haplotype of a cryptic conservation-listed batoid and its potential to transform community-led genetic sampling.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148672975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The rise of carnivoran mammals in Europe through the lens of body mass. 从体重的角度看欧洲食肉哺乳动物的崛起。

IF 2.7 2区生物学

Biology Letters Pub Date : 2026-08-05 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2026.0319

Valentin Fischer, Floréal Solé, Kevin Le Verger, Bastien Mennecart, Melvin Vankelst, Narimane Chatar, Robert P Speijer, Stéphane Peigné, Thierry Smith

{"title":"The rise of carnivoran mammals in Europe through the lens of body mass.","authors":"Valentin Fischer, Floréal Solé, Kevin Le Verger, Bastien Mennecart, Melvin Vankelst, Narimane Chatar, Robert P Speijer, Stéphane Peigné, Thierry Smith","doi":"10.1098/rsbl.2026.0319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2026.0319","url":null,"abstract":"Carnivoran mammals (cats, dogs, bears, seals, etc.) and their kin radiated during the Palaeogene, among other carnivorous clades (hyaenodonts, mesonychians, and oxyaenodonts). This radiation has often been framed as a competition ultimately won by carnivorans, but the data supporting this hypothesis largely originate from North America. We derive body mass (BM) from dental measurements in European hyaenodonts, mesonychians, oxyaenodonts, and carnivoramorphans ranging from the latest Palaeocene to the end of the Oligocene (MP 6-30; 57.2-23.3 Ma) and compare those with North American data. We show that European assemblages tell a different story, with a marked increase of the disparity of carnivoramorphan BMs at and after the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum (MECO; 40 Ma), with no clear effect on hyaenodonts. The 'Grande Coupure' (Eocene-Oligocene transition, approx. 34-33.5 Ma) marks the onset of a progressive decrease in the mean BM of hyaenodonts, while carnivoramorphans continue their rise initiated around the MECO. The observed BM patterns therefore do not follow the expected double-wedge pattern of competitive replacement and are possibly best explained by climate change-induced biodiversity dynamics.","PeriodicalId":9005,"journal":{"name":"Biology Letters","volume":"22 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2026-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148673016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0