Anthropogenic disturbance and the spread of non-native species disrupt natural communities, but also create novel interactions between species. By-product mutualisms, in which benefits accrue as side effects of partner behaviour or morphology, are often non-specific and hence may persist in novel ecosystems. We tested this hypothesis for a two-way by-product mutualism between epiphytic ferns and their ant inhabitants in the Bornean rain forest, in which ants gain housing in root-masses while ferns gain protection from herbivores. Specifically, we assessed how the specificity (overlap between fern and ground-dwelling ants) and the benefits of this interaction are altered by selective logging and conversion to an oil palm plantation habitat. We found that despite the high turnover of ant species, ant protection against herbivores persisted in modified habitats. However, in ferns growing in the oil palm plantation, ant occupancy, abundance and species richness declined, potentially due to the harsher microclimate. The specificity of the fern-ant interactions was also lower in the oil palm plantation habitat than in the forest habitats. We found no correlations between colony size and fern size in modified habitats, and hence no evidence for partner fidelity feedbacks, in which ants are incentivised to protect fern hosts. Per species, non-native ant species in the oil palm plantation habitat (18 % of occurrences) were as important as native ones in terms of fern protection and contributed to an increase in ant abundance and species richness with fern size. We conclude that this by-product mutualism persists in logged forest and oil palm plantation habitats, with no detectable shift in partner benefits. Such persistence of generalist interactions in novel ecosystems may be important for driving ecosystem functioning.
- MeSH
- Arecaceae MeSH
- Herbivory * MeSH
- Rainforest * MeSH
- Species Specificity MeSH
- Ecosystem MeSH
- Ants * classification MeSH
- Ferns * MeSH
- Plant Roots MeSH
- Microclimate MeSH
- Plant Diseases MeSH
- Disease Resistance MeSH
- Symbiosis * MeSH
- Conservation of Natural Resources * MeSH
- Agriculture * MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
- Geographicals
- Borneo MeSH
Plantation forests with timber production as the major function are highly fragmented and disturbed regarding the tree species composition and stand area. Their closed canopies also have different microclimatic conditions compared with better studied conservation areas. We studied three beetle families (click, longhorn, and rove beetles) with different ecological demands in lowland plantation forests dominated by Sessile oak and Norway spruce in the Czech Republic. Our main interest was how their species richness, abundance, diversity, body length, rarity, red-list status, species composition and individual species were driven by the main tree species, stand area and canopy openness. We analyzed 3466 individuals from 198 beetle species and the results revealed complex and contrasting responses of the studied beetle families - click beetles mostly preferred sun-exposure and spruce as the dominant tree species, longhorn beetles mainly preferred large stands, whereas rove beetles were mostly influenced by oak as the dominant tree species and increasing area. We also observed that some species had different preferences in plantation forests than is known from the literature. The main conclusions of our results are that the dominance of non-natural spruce plantations and a large stand area (both originating from artificially replanted large clear-cuts) did not affect the majority of the studied taxa as we expected. On the other hand, our results might have been influenced by other factor, such as the current small total area of the former vegetation, which in the past might have led to extinction debt; or a large area of other conifers in the surroundings that might have promoted conifer-associated fauna.
- MeSH
- Coleoptera physiology MeSH
- Forestry MeSH
- Forests * MeSH
- Microclimate * MeSH
- Population Dynamics MeSH
- Biota * MeSH
- Conservation of Natural Resources * MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Geographicals
- Czech Republic MeSH
Hantaviruses are RNA viruses of the Bunyaviridae family, represented in the Czech Republic by three genospecies: Dobrava-Belgrade, Puumala and Tula. They persist in natural foci of infection. In 2004 to 2009, a local outbreak with 18 reported cases of nephropathia epidemica caused by Puumala hantavirus occurred in the Šumava mountains and foothills and was spacially associated with another outbreak in Lower Bavaria, Germany. In the Jelení locality in the Šumava mountains at 880 m above sea level, we identified a natural focus of infection suspected to be the source of hantavirus infection in forest workers. The focus was characterized geobotanically as a montane mixed forest with the predominance of beeches within the association Dentario enneaphylli-Fagetum, alliance Fagion, sub-alliance Eu-Fagenion, in a cold climate region with a podzolic soil. The biocenoses where hantaviruses are circulating typically show higher microclimate humidity. Their characteristization can be helpful in predicting where hantaviruses are likely to circulate.
- Keywords
- Puumala, biocenosis, Myodes glareolus,
- MeSH
- Arvicolinae MeSH
- Ecosystem MeSH
- Disease Outbreaks MeSH
- Financing, Organized MeSH
- Orthohantavirus MeSH
- Hemorrhagic Fever with Renal Syndrome epidemiology veterinary MeSH
- Humans MeSH
- Rodent Diseases epidemiology virology MeSH
- Prevalence MeSH
- Population Surveillance MeSH
- Puumala virus isolation & purification MeSH
- Disease Reservoirs veterinary virology MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Humans MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Geographicals
- Czech Republic MeSH
Spiny mice, Acomys cahirinus, colonized Israel 30,000 y ago from dry tropical Africa and inhabited rocky habitats across Israel. Earlier, we had shown by mtDNA that A. cahirinus incipiently sympatrically speciates at Evolution Canyon I (EC I) in Mount Carmel, Israel because of microclimatic interslope divergence. The EC I microsite consists of a dry and hot savannoid "African" slope (AS) and an abutting humid and cool-forested "European" slope (ES). Here, we substantiate incipient SS in A. cahirinus at EC I based on the entire transcriptome, showing that multiple slope-specific adaptive complexes across the transcriptome result in two divergent clusters. Tajima's D distribution of the abutting Acomys interslope populations shows that the ES population is under stronger positive selection, whereas the AS population is under balancing selection, harboring higher genetic polymorphisms. Considerable sites of the two populations were differentiated with a coefficient of FST = 0.25-0.75. Remarkably, 24 and 37 putatively adaptively selected genes were detected in the AS and ES populations, respectively. The AS genes involved DNA repair, growth arrest, neural cell differentiation, and heat-shock proteins adapting to the local AS stresses of high solar radiation, drought, and high temperature. In contrast, the ES genes involved high ATP associated with energetics stress. The sharp ecological interslope divergence led to strong slope-specific selection overruling the interslope gene flow. Earlier tests suggested slope-specific mate choice. Habitat interslope-adaptive selection across the transcriptome and mate choice substantiate sympatric speciation (SS), suggesting its prevalence at EC I and commonality in nature.
- MeSH
- Biological Evolution MeSH
- Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide MeSH
- Microclimate MeSH
- Brain metabolism MeSH
- Murinae genetics MeSH
- Gene Flow MeSH
- Transcriptome MeSH
- Genetic Speciation * MeSH
- Animals MeSH
- Check Tag
- Animals MeSH
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
- Geographicals
- Israel MeSH
