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Whistling thorn acacia (Acacia drepanolobium) forms monodominant stands in black cotton soils in East Africa arid highlands. The tree defends itself against large mammal herbivores with spinescence and symbiotic ants. While these defences have been extensively studied, little is known about the extent to which A. drepanolobium defence may benefit other plants growing in close association. We examined variation in herbaceous vegetation height, biomass, and composition between areas underneath A. drepanolobium canopies and the adjacent matrix in both fenced herbivore exclosures and unfenced areas. In unfenced areas, there was more tall herbaceous vegetation and biomass underneath tree canopies than away tree canopies, while these differences were not significant in fenced exclosures. Both height and biomass of understory vegetation were negatively correlated with A. drepanolobium canopy height. In the fenced herbivore exclosures, there was higher species diversity underneath trees than the surrounding matrix, but these differences were not apparent in the unfenced areas. The differences in herbaceous vegetation composition (Bray-Curtis dissimilarity index) between underneath tree and off tree locations were more pronounced in the unfenced areas than within the fenced herbivore exclosures. Our finding suggests that highly defended trees may moderate herbivore effects on herbaceous vegetation. To the extent that herbaceous vegetation underneath trees experiences protection from herbivory, such refugia microhabitats may serve as recolonization nucleus in attempts to restore chronically overgrazed systems.

The uploaded dataset contains all the data to run the analyses and figures of the publication "Contrasting impacts of climbing plants on host tree reproduction in a drought-stressed forest". Climbing plants, or climbers, are known to negatively affect the survival and reproduction of tropical and temperate humid forest trees through competition and structural parasitism. These impacts are attributed to their growth strategy, which relies on other plants for mechanical support and allows them to divert resources away from structural investment toward vegetative and reproductive functions. Such negative interactions may ultimately influence the composition and dynamics of plant and animal communities around them. Effects of climbers on hosts may differ in drought-stressed systems because investments in foliage and reproductive structures could favor facilitative interactions, such as abiotic stress amelioration through shading or pollinator attraction through synchronous flowering. Knowledge of climber-host interactions in Mediterranean and drought-stressed forests in general is limited. To test the hypothesis that climbers can facilitate host reproduction via synchronous flowering in a drought-stressed Mediterranean forest, we assessed the effects of climber cover on the probability of flowering, fruiting, and final fruit set of Crataegus aronia, a common insect-pollinated tree. Overall, climber cover was negatively related to flowering probability but positively related to fruiting probability and final fruit set. These effects differed between climbers with distinct flowering phenology relative to the host. Non-co-flowering climber effects on flowering probability were negative. However, co-flowering climber effects on fruiting probability and final fruit set were positive. These positive effects on C. aronia are in stark contrast with pervasive negative effects of lianas in tropical moist forests. The differing effects of climbers with distinct phenology suggest involvement of pollinator attraction. Although limited to the studied tree species in a Mediterranean forest, the documented positive effects of climbers in this drought-stressed forest and their relation with synchronous flowering highlight the need for trait-based analyses of climber –host interactions across systems, particularly to expand our understanding of their ecological roles under varied climate conditions.

Cooperation in social insect colonies depends on a complex vocabulary of chemical signals, which requires a correspondingly complex array of chemosensory receptors. In the genomes of ants, the odorant receptor (OR) gene family is dramatically expanded compared to other insects. This is most notable in the “9-exon” OR subfamily, which wasimplicated in responding to cuticular hydrocarbons, a major class of signalling compounds. The compilation of a large, high-quality ant genome dataset by the Global Ant Genomics Alliance allows investigating ant OR evolution in unprecedented detail. Byanalysing 55,068 ORs of 163 representative ant species, we tested for association between the development of sociobiological traits and adaptive evolution of ORs. We provide a detailed analysis of gene family expansions and adaptive sequence evolution at the OR subfamily level, allowing focused analysis of distinct ant lineages. We identified strong enrichment of positive selection on 9-exon ORs in the ancestor of the formicoidclade, the largest clade comprising 90% of the extant ants. Formicoid species are characterized by greater colony size and reproductive division of labour. Thus, our resultssupport a key role of adaptive diversification of chemical communication systems for the evolution of more complex elaboration of social organization in ants. We also observed enrichment of positive selection on 9-exon ORs associated with the more recent evolution of continuous worker polymorphism in multiple lineages. Surprisingly, the recent evolution of other sociobiological traits was associated with depletion of positive selection on ORs. These results suggest that the evolution of worker polymorphism involves more extensive adaptation of chemical communication compared to other aspects of ant sociobiology. Our analysis of an unprecedented ant OR dataset offers new insights into the specificcontext in which ORs played a major role in the evolution of elaborations in social traitsacross the diverse phylogeny of ants.

Cooperation in social insect colonies depends on a complex vocabulary of chemical signals, which requires a correspondingly complex array of chemosensory receptors. In the genomes of ants, the odorant receptor (OR) gene family is dramatically expanded compared to other insects. This is most notable in the “9-exon” OR subfamily, which wasimplicated in responding to cuticular hydrocarbons, a major class of signalling compounds. The compilation of a large, high-quality ant genome dataset by the Global Ant Genomics Alliance allows investigating ant OR evolution in unprecedented detail. Byanalysing 55,068 ORs of 163 representative ant species, we tested for association between the development of sociobiological traits and adaptive evolution of ORs. We provide a detailed analysis of gene family expansions and adaptive sequence evolution at the OR subfamily level, allowing focused analysis of distinct ant lineages. We identified strong enrichment of positive selection on 9-exon ORs in the ancestor of the formicoidclade, the largest clade comprising 90% of the extant ants. Formicoid species are characterized by greater colony size and reproductive division of labour. Thus, our resultssupport a key role of adaptive diversification of chemical communication systems for the evolution of more complex elaboration of social organization in ants. We also observed enrichment of positive selection on 9-exon ORs associated with the more recent evolution of continuous worker polymorphism in multiple lineages. Surprisingly, the recent evolution of other sociobiological traits was associated with depletion of positive selection on ORs. These results suggest that the evolution of worker polymorphism involves more extensive adaptation of chemical communication compared to other aspects of ant sociobiology. Our analysis of an unprecedented ant OR dataset offers new insights into the specificcontext in which ORs played a major role in the evolution of elaborations in social traitsacross the diverse phylogeny of ants.

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The attached files contain the data used in the study - "Super-Papers" Make More Impact: A Bibliometric and Altmetric Databases Analysis of MASLD Publications. Link to the preprint in medRxiv: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.23.25332071v1

This dataset contains nutrients and flow cytometry from station N-1200 collected in August 2017 from a cruise aboard R/V Mediterranean Explorer.