Heinz-R Köhler, Yvan Capowiez, Line Capowiez, Rita Triebskorn
{"title":"The ability to withstand short-term heat shocks and long-term elevated ambient temperatures suggests different sensitivity to future climatic changes for two sympatric Mediterranean land snail species, Theba pisana and Xeropicta derbentina (Helicoidea).","authors":"Heinz-R Köhler, Yvan Capowiez, Line Capowiez, Rita Triebskorn","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02527-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02527-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the 1940s, Xeropicta derbentina was introduced to the Provence region in south-eastern France. Since then, it has coexisted sympatrically with the native species Theba pisana. X. derbentina's successful establishment in Provence is commonly attributed to the hot and dry climate there. In the context of continually rising temperatures and increasing aridity resulting from global change, we conducted open-top chamber (OTC) experiments with both species to simulate extreme heat conditions to be expected in the context of climate change. After exposure in the OTCs, the temperatures on the shell surface did not differ between the two species. Nevertheless, differences in the survival of the species following heat shocks, which were induced by transferring the snails to the hot soil, were striking. An initial heat shock at the start of the OTC exposure was survived significantly better by T. pisana than by X. derbentina. However, the prevailing conditions in the OTC apparently weakened T. pisana to such an extent that only few individuals survived another heat shock a week later. In contrast, X. derbentina exhibited heat hardening induced by the OTC conditions, meaning that a heat shock after a week of adaptation to the OTCs resulted in much lower mortality than in individuals of the same species that had not adapted to OTC conditions before the heat shock. After a week of exposure to OTCs, the survival rate following heat shock was also significantly higher in X. derbentina than in T. pisana. These results suggest that X. derbentina will have a selective advantage over T. pisana as their environment continues to warm up unless more heat-tolerant phenotypes of the latter species evolve or immigrate.</p>","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147857993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brittany L Clemans, Marylou K Staman, Irene K Kelly, Devin S Johnson, Summer L Martin, Camryn D Allen
{"title":"Honu Count: how shell-etchings, participatory science, and a novel online survey are improving assessments of the Hawaiian Green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas) population.","authors":"Brittany L Clemans, Marylou K Staman, Irene K Kelly, Devin S Johnson, Summer L Martin, Camryn D Allen","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02523-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02523-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Hawaiian green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas; honu) subpopulation is listed as a Distinct Population Segment in the Central North Pacific Ocean under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, which mandates monitoring to understand population viability of threatened species. The honu population abundance has largely been determined by a census of nesting females at the main nesting site, Lalo (French Frigate Shoals), an atoll located approximately 1,000 km northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands (MHI) within the Papah[Formula: see text]naumoku[Formula: see text]kea Marine National Monument. Researchers and later the National Marine Fisheries Service within NOAA (NOAA Fisheries) have monitored honu at Lalo since 1973. One monitoring method used includes etching an alpha-numeric identifier temporarily (6-12 months) onto the shell with a rotary tool and sealing it with non-toxic white paint. In 2017, NOAA Fisheries launched the Honu Count Participatory Science Project, facilitating public reporting on sightings of honu with shell etchings around the MHI. Honu Count evolved in the way it collected sightings data from the public, from employing a hotline (2017-2018), to an email address (2018-2022), and most recently, an online survey via ArcGIS Survey123 (2023-present). Within the first year of the new online survey, data collection from the public increased from an average of 435 sightings per year to a total of 1,227. The project's new format has increased the breadth of invaluable honu population data, including a greater understanding of sea turtle behavior, survivorship, habitat use and migration routes, all while improving NOAA Fisheries' engagement with the public.</p>","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147824657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marine Ethève, Pierre Thiriet, Gaëlle Legras, Philippe Lenfant, François Bourrin, Lucia Di Iorio
{"title":"Diel and tidal rhythms drive fish acoustic communities in a European kelp forest.","authors":"Marine Ethève, Pierre Thiriet, Gaëlle Legras, Philippe Lenfant, François Bourrin, Lucia Di Iorio","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02521-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02521-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Changes in marine animal communities shape ecological processes and ecosystem functioning. Monitoring temporal community dynamics is increasingly important under global change, yet remains challenging because community fluctuations can arise from multiple natural processes and are difficult to assess. Passive acoustic monitoring of signals produced by marine fauna offers a non-invasive means of tracking community dynamics, providing continuous, high-resolution data that capture temporal patterns often missed by traditional methods. Despite their potential as proxies for macrofaunal assemblages and associated dynamics, the responses of acoustic communities to environmental variability in marine ecosystems remain largely unexplored. This study aimed to characterize fish acoustic communities in a tidal European kelp forest and identify the environmental drivers shaping their temporal variability. Continuous acoustic recordings were combined with environmental measurements and underwater visual surveys to address these objectives. Generalized linear models revealed that diel and tidal cycles were the dominant drivers of acoustic activity, diversity, and community composition during the summer study period. Other environmental variables had weaker effects, reflecting the fauna's adaptation to marked short-term fluctuations in this dynamic ecosystem. Acoustic activity and richness increased at low water height, contrasting with higher visually observed fish abundance at high water height. This discrepancy suggests that sound production reflects behavioural interactions rather than fish abundance alone. The greater number of sound types (26) relative to observed species (19) indicates either behavioural sound diversity within species or the presence of undocumented soniferous taxa. Calmer sea conditions also promoted higher vocal activity and acoustic richness. This study provides an unprecedented description of kelp forest acoustic communities in Europe, demonstrating the value of ecoacoustics to complement visual surveys for capturing natural variability and establishing essential baseline information for detecting long-term ecological shifts in these climate-sensitive habitats.</p>","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147824669","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Naomi De Leo, Margot Michaud, Luigi Maiorano, Carlo Meloro, Narimane Chatar, Davide Tamagnini
{"title":"Open access and digital morphology data in evolutionary biology: expanding frontiers of knowledge.","authors":"Naomi De Leo, Margot Michaud, Luigi Maiorano, Carlo Meloro, Narimane Chatar, Davide Tamagnini","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02522-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02522-y","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The recent integration of 3D imaging and digital methodologies has revolutionized evolutionary biology, offering unprecedented opportunities for analysing and sharing morphological data. However, the transition toward open access remains incomplete due to persistent technical, legal, and institutional barriers. Issues such as lack of standardization, massive file sizes, and unclear intellectual property rights continue to hinder data verification and reproducibility. These challenges have acquired new urgency with the rapid rise of machine learning and AI-based tools for automated segmentation, landmarking, and shape analysis, which require large, standardized, and openly accessible training datasets - making inaccessible 3D data not merely an inconvenience, but a source of systematic bias in the algorithms shaping the field's future. This review synthesizes technical, legal, and behavioural perspectives on open data in digital morphology, building on prior work to address the specific challenges of the current AI era. By advocating for the adoption of FAIR principles, the use of persistent digital identifiers, and the implementation of digital watermarking, we offer recommendations for establishing minimum standards in data publication. Ultimately, a shift toward responsible data stewardship is essential to ensuring that digital morphological resources remain accessible, reproducible, and scientifically valuable for both human and computational users.</p>","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147792058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The ecological importance of natural dark nights for circadian organization, metabolism and reproduction in birds.","authors":"Amaan Buniyaadi, Vatsala Tripathi, Ritu Rai, Vinod Kumar","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02526-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02526-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability to assess and utilise the length of the daily light period has been identified as a key component of the physiological ecology regulating metabolism and reproduction across various vertebrate taxa. While light-dependent responses have been extensively studied, the ecological and physiological significance of natural darkness remains relatively less explicitly emphasized. In fact, studies investigating the role of light in controlling biological processes underscore that the period of darkness is an integral component of the light-dark cycle and an important ecological dimension in shaping the biology of organisms. Therefore, drawing largely from artificial light at night (ALAN) studies, this review synthesizes current evidence on how disruption of light-dark cycles, particularly the darkness at night, perturbs the circadian organization, with cascading effects on metabolism and reproduction, and how metabolism acts as a physiological gatekeeper of reproduction in diurnal vertebrates. Here, much of the evidence that we discuss is from both laboratory and field studies on diurnal birds. Importantly, we underscore the critical ecological value of the natural darkness within the 24-h day, emphasizing that the preservation of the night environment is crucial for maintaining the bioenergetic balance and population viability of species in an overly lit, urbanized environment.</p>","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13123027/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147792185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mitochondrial genome evolution across marine-freshwater divergence in the flatfish genus Brachirus.","authors":"Hyeongwoo Choi, Chungkug Park, Yun Keun An","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02525-9","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s12862-026-02525-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13134316/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147792061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Markus A Roesch, Nancy Bunbury, D James Harris, Sara Rocha, Christopher N Kaiser-Bunbury, David J Gower, Greg Berke, Christina Marques, Gérard Rocamora, Anna Zora, Karolin Engelkes
{"title":"Inter- and intraspecific morphometric divergences in a Seychelles endemic gecko genus.","authors":"Markus A Roesch, Nancy Bunbury, D James Harris, Sara Rocha, Christopher N Kaiser-Bunbury, David J Gower, Greg Berke, Christina Marques, Gérard Rocamora, Anna Zora, Karolin Engelkes","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02517-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02517-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13097663/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147792132","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tianchan Yun, Yue Xiao, Yanmei Gong, Yanxian Lai, Shiya Huang, Lanyue Zhang, Kai Zhao, Qingqing Liu, Cong Deng
{"title":"Potential distribution of Amomum Roxb. species in China under climate change: a GIS-based ecological niche modeling approach.","authors":"Tianchan Yun, Yue Xiao, Yanmei Gong, Yanxian Lai, Shiya Huang, Lanyue Zhang, Kai Zhao, Qingqing Liu, Cong Deng","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02518-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-026-02518-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13107748/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147792093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Leila B Guzmán, Ariel A Beltramino, Alejandra Rumi, Roberto E Vogler
{"title":"Comparative mitogenomics of freshwater snails of the genus Biomphalaria (Gastropoda: Planorbidae) and new insights into mitochondrial genome evolution in Hygrophila.","authors":"Leila B Guzmán, Ariel A Beltramino, Alejandra Rumi, Roberto E Vogler","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02520-0","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s12862-026-02520-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13107851/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147719155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Whole genome sequencing reveals interbay population structure of Saccharina latissima (sugar kelp) in western Iceland.","authors":"Áki Jarl Láruson, Katherine Warren, Keely E Brown","doi":"10.1186/s12862-026-02514-y","DOIUrl":"10.1186/s12862-026-02514-y","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93910,"journal":{"name":"BMC ecology and evolution","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13107648/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147719106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}