Invasive alien species can have serious adverse impacts on both the environment and the economy. Being able to predict the impacts of an alien species could assist in preventing or reducing these impacts. This study aimed to establish whether there are any life history traits consistently correlated with the impacts of alien birds across two continents, Europe and Australia, as a first step tow...

Phenotypic plasticity can increase tolerance to heterogeneous environments but the elevations and slopes of reaction norms are often population specific. Disruption of locally adapted reaction norms through outcrossing can lower individual viability. Here, we sampled five genetically distinct populations of brown trout (Salmo trutta) from within a river network, crossed them in a full-factorial...

Due to a growing demand of food production worldwide, new strategies are suggested to allow for sustainable production of food with minimal effects on natural resources. A promising alternative to the application of chemical pesticides is the implementation of crops resistant to insect pests. Plants produce compounds that are harmful to a wide range of attackers, including insect pests; thus, e...

Temperature is a crucial factor in the development of oviparous organisms. Under natural conditions, the eggs of many species are subjected to changing thermal environments, but most laboratory studies have incubated eggs at constant temperatures. To evaluate the phenotypic effects of different thermal means and variances and to separate temperature effects from maternal effects, eggs from 10 c...

Many ejaculate traits show remarkable variation in relation to male social status. Males in disfavoured (subordinate) mating positions often invest heavily on sperm motility but may have less available resources on traits (e.g., secondary sexual ornaments) that improve the probability of gaining matings. Although higher investments in sperm motility can increase the relative fertilization succe...

Larval mortality in marine fishes is strongly linked to individual life history traits such as size and growth, but the processes that influence variability in these traits are poorly understood. We explore the relative importance of maternal and paternal influences and water temperature on the larval growth and performance characteristics of the tropical clownfish Amphiprion melanopus (Pomacen...

We conducted a transplant study in which embryonic southern toads (Bufo terrestris) were held in a site polluted with coal ash (site AB; containing As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Se, and other elements) and a reference site (site R) through hatching and early larval development. To examine the remainder of the larval period, surviving larvae in AB were then transplanted to R and back-transplanted to AB, where...

Inbreeding is known to have adverse effects on fitness-related traits in a range of insect species. A series of theoretical and experimental studies have suggested that polyandrous insects could avoid the cost of inbreeding via pre-copulatory mate choice and/or post-copulatory mechanisms. We looked for evidence of pre-copulatory inbreeding avoidance using female mate preference trials, in which...

Physiological plasticity of early developmental stages is a key way by which organisms can survive and adapt to environmental change. We investigated developmental plasticity of aspects of the cardio-respiratory physiology of encapsulated embryos of a marine gastropod, Littorina obtusata, surviving exposure to moderate hypoxia (PO2 =8 kPa) and compared the development of these survivors with th...

Cryptic evolution occurs when evolutionary change is masked by concurrent environmental change. In most cases, evolutionary changes in the phenotype are masked by changing abiotic factors. However, evolutionary change in one trait might also be masked by evolutionary change in another trait, a phenomenon referred to as evolutionary environmental deterioration. Nevertheless, detecting this secon...