It is well established that intraspecific aggregation has the potential to promote coexistence in communities of species competing for patchy ephemeral resources. We developed a simulation model to explore the influence of aggregation on coexistence in such communities when an important assumption of previous studies that interspecific interactions have only negative effects on the species invo...

Parental care is costly enough that species exist which exploit the parental care of other individuals to rear their own brood, as social parasites do among social insects. Intraspecific, facultative social parasites use the nest and worker force of another colony of the same species to rear their own young as a reproductive strategy alternative to independent nest foundation. Intraspecific par...

along environmental gradients, dispersal constraints imposed by topography, and intrinsic species differences in dispersal abilities (Soininen et al. 2007). The limited evidence available to date suggests that environmental gradients are more important drivers of the distance decay in parasite community composition than spatial distance per se (Krasnov et al. 2005, Vinarski et al. 2007, Thieltg...

Valid fish species identification is essential for biodiversity conservation and fisheries management. Here, we provide a sequence reference library based on mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I for a valid identification of 79 freshwater fish species from the Lower Paraná River. Neighbour-joining analysis based on K2P genetic distances formed non-overlapping clusters for almost all spe...

Mast seeding, the synchronous production of large crops of seeds, has been frequently documented in oak species. In this study we used several North American oak data-sets to quantify within-stand (!10 km) synchrony in mast dynamics. Results indicated that intraspecific synchrony in seed production always exceeded interspecific synchrony and was essentially constant over distances ranging from ...

Piper species are used for spices, in traditional and processed forms of medicines, in cosmetic compounds, in cultural activities and insecticides. Here barcode analysis was performed for identification of plant parts, young plants and modified forms of plants. Thirty-six Piper species were collected and the three barcode regions, matK, rbcL and psbA-trnH spacer, were amplified, sequenced and a...

Shark fisheries worldwide are mostly unmanaged, but the burgeoning shark fin industry in the last few decades has made monitoring catch and trade of these animals critical. As a tool for molecular species identification, DNA barcoding offers significant potential. However, the genetic distance-based approach towards species identification employed by the Barcode of Life Data Systems may oftenti...

Why organisms diversify into discrete species instead of showing a continuum of genotypic and phenotypic forms is an important yet rarely studied question in speciation biology. Does species discreteness come from adaptation to fill discrete niches or from interspecific gaps generated by reproductive isolation? We investigate the importance of reproductive isolation by comparing genetic discret...

Little is known about the relationship between animal movements and the emergent structure of populations, especially for species occupying large continuous distributions. Some such mammals disperse disproportionately into habitat similar to their natal habitat, a behavioural bias that might be expected to lead to habitat-conforming genetic structure. We hypothesized that coyotes (Canis latrans...

Sound is an effective channel for the transfer of information underwater. While it known that fish and whales can use sound communication, as a cue to localise predators prey, much less about production in invertebrates. Here we describe sounds produced by two most common marine crustacean zooplankton Northern hemisphere: krill (Meganyctiphanes norvegica) copepods (Calanus spp.). The recorded w...