Lamproglandifera flaviglandis MCZ:Ent:35077## Specimen information- Species: Lamproglandifera flaviglandis Roth, 2003- Voucher: MCZ:Ent:35077 (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard)- Source: degraded museum specimen- Target locus: mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI), partial sequence## Data files- LAMPRO_simplr.nex alignment against Blattodea COI reference sequences- raw_read.fasta: original recovered read (~488 bp, with ambiguous bases)- longest_ORF.fasta: longest open reading frame (222 bp), translated using Invertebrate Mitochondrial Code (translation table 5)- annotations.txt: trimming notes, details on ambiguous sites and stop codon handling## NotesThis sequence contained multiple ambiguous bases and premature stop codons. We trimmed to the longest open reading frame (222 bp) and replaced unresolved codons with “N”. Translation with table 5 produces a partial protein with several ambiguous amino acids (“X”).  The data are provided here for transparency and reproducibility but do not meet GenBank submission quality requirements.

Lamproglandifera flaviglandis MCZ:Ent:35077## Specimen information- Species: Lamproglandifera flaviglandis Roth, 2003- Voucher: MCZ:Ent:35077 (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard)- Source: degraded museum specimen- Target locus: mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI), partial sequence## Data files- LAMPRO_simplr.nex alignment against Blattodea COI reference sequences- raw_read.fasta: original recovered read (~488 bp, with ambiguous bases)- longest_ORF.fasta: longest open reading frame (222 bp), translated using Invertebrate Mitochondrial Code (translation table 5)- annotations.txt: trimming notes, details on ambiguous sites and stop codon handling## NotesThis sequence contained multiple ambiguous bases and premature stop codons. We trimmed to the longest open reading frame (222 bp) and replaced unresolved codons with “N”. Translation with table 5 produces a partial protein with several ambiguous amino acids (“X”).  The data are provided here for transparency and reproducibility but do not meet GenBank submission quality requirements.

These databases were created by the Frugivory on Islands Globally (FIG) consortium, a group of more than 30 (local) island experts, through over a decade of work. We would very much appreciate being involved in future work using this data (contact: [email protected]). These databases, spanning 120 oceanic islands within 22 archipelagos worldwide, consist of insular frugivorous birds, mammals, and reptiles (native, extinct, and introduced; 3,050 occurrences of 613 unique species), fleshy-fruited plants (4,026 occurrences of 1,784 unique species), and their morphological and behavioural traits related to seed dispersal. For frugivores, traits include seed handling, habitat use, diet, gape size, body mass, animal class, percentage fruit in diet; for plants, seed length and width. R scripts are archived at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16986851), and accessible via GitHub (https://github.com/JHHeinen/120-Island-frugivore-communities/).

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB) first appeared in 2011 and quickly became the largest interconnected floating biome globally. Sargassum spp. requires both phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) for growth, yet the sources fueling the GASB are unclear. Here, we use coral–bound nitrogen isotopes from six coral cores to reconstruct N2 fixation, the primary source of bioavailable N to the surface ocean across the wider Caribbean over the past 120 years. Our data indicate that changes in N2 fixation were controlled by multidecadal and interannual changes in the supply of excess P from equatorial upwelling in the Atlantic. We show that the supply of P from equatorial upwelling and N from the N2 fixation response can explain the extent of the GASB since 2011.

Nests are the locations or containers for offspring, and mediate interactions between offspring and the environment. However, understanding how environmental factors shape the evolution of nest architecture is complicated. In particular, the relative contributions of biotic (e.g., protection from predation) and abiotic (e.g., microclimate maintenance) factors to the evolution of nest architecture have not been clearly quantified, and multiple nest traits, such as their location or shape, are rarely considered together. Here, we use a dataset of 3,685 bird species with complete data across five different nest traits (out of a wider dataset of 10,528 species included in the repository), to characterise a multivariate ‘morphospace’ of nest architecture. We achieve this using ordination methods, namely a principal coordinate analysis. Then, we use all derived axes of variation in nest morphospace and multivariate phylogenetic comparative methods used for geometric data to explore whether abiotic or biotic factors better explain the variation observed in ordination-derived nest architecture. We detect that abiotic environmental factors (climate) explain more variation than biotic factors. However, substantial variation in nest architecture remains unexplained after accounting for the variables used here, suggesting that commonly used nest traits may not capture covariation between nest architecture and the environment as expected. Nonetheless, our study demonstrates how nest evolution is affected by the environment on a global scale, which will form a foundation to explore a more diverse array of nest traits and environmental variables, to understand nest evolution in the world’s birds.

Land conversion is a dominant form of environmental change that can alter infection dynamics in wildlife by affecting host immune defense. Such effects may be compounded by seasonal variation in resources and reproduction and vary among members of a host community, yet the combined effects of habitat, season, and species identity on wildlife immunity remain poorly understood. We tested within- and across-species effects of land conversion and seasonality on immunity in Neotropical bats by quantifying hematological markers of physiological stress and inflammation. We sampled seven species across a large preserve and a smaller forest fragment in northern Belize during both the dry and wet seasons. Using phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models, we tested the overall effects of habitat and season and quantified per-species impacts. Total white blood cell counts and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios showed no overall habitat or seasonal effects but displayed strong species-specific responses. In contrast, the systemic inflammation response index increased across all species in the dry season and smaller fragments, suggesting general poor health in unfavorable conditions. Species-specific effects did not align with dietary guilds, indicating roles for finer-scale ecological traits. Our findings highlight the complex, species-dependent effects of environmental change on wildlife's immune defense.

We explored the evolutionary radiation in the House Wren complex (Troglodytes aedon and allies), the most widely distributed passerine species in the New World. The complex, classified into as many as 25 subspecies and five species, has been the source of ongoing taxonomic debate. To evaluate this extensive phenotypic variation in the House Wren complex from a genomic perspective, we collected 81,182 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from restriction site associated loci (RADseq) and mtDNA from samples representing the taxonomic and geographic diversity of the complex. Both datasets reveal deep phylogeographic structuring across the complex, but topological relationships revealed several major discrepancies. The trees highlight the evolutionary distinctiveness of eastern and western T. aedon, which were sister in the SNP tree and paraphyletic on the mtDNA tree. The RADseq data reveal a distinct T.brunneicollis group, although STRUCTURE plots show putative admixture between western T. aedon and northern Mexican samples of T. brunneicollis. In the mtDNA tree this introgression resulted in paraphyly of T. brunneicollis/western T. aedon. mtDNA data further show a paraphyletic arrangement of T. musculus on the tree, whereas the SNP tree portrays them as monophyletic. Island taxa are distinct in both data sets, including T. beani (Isla Cozumel), which appears derived from T. musculus in eastern Mexico, and T. sissonii (Isla Socorro) and T. tanneri (Isla Clarión) although the two data sets disagree on their overall phylogenetic placement. Although we had only mtDNA data for T. martinicensis from the Lesser Antilles, we found at least four distinct and paraphyletic taxa from Trinidad, Granada, St. Vincent islands, and Dominica. The House Wren complex showed strong differentiation in both mtDNA and RADseq datasets, with conflicting patterns likely having arisen due to some combination of sex-biased dispersal or selection on mtDNA. The most glaring discrepancies between these two datasets, such as the paraphyly of eastern and western North American House Wrens in the mtDNA tree, present excellent opportunities for follow-up studies on evolutionary mechanisms that underpin phylogeographic patterns.

The distributions of species radiations reflect environmental changes driven by both Earth history (geological processes) and the evolution of biological traits (critical to survival and adaptation), which profoundly drive biodiversity yet are rarely studied together. Modern toads (Bufonidae, Amphibia), an iconic radiation with global distribution and high phenotypic diversity, are an ideal group for exploring these dynamics. Using phylogenomic data from 124 species across six continents, we reconstruct their evolutionary history. Biogeographic analyses suggest modern toads originated in South America ~ 61 million years ago, later dispersing to Africa and Asia, thereby challenging hypotheses of dispersal via North America. Species diversification rates increased after leaving South America, linked to Cenozoic geological events and key innovations like toxic parotoid glands for predator defense. The emergence of parotoid glands coincided with the South American dispersal, promoting diversification and enabling toads to dominate both Old and New Worlds. In contrast, the evolution of other traits, despite being crucial to adaptation, did not promote species diversification (e.g., large body size) or were ambiguously associated with expansion into the Old World (e.g., developmental modes). These findings highlight the adaptability of modern toads and reveal the interplay between Earth's history and phenotypic innovation in shaping biodiversity.

In this study we construct lists of candidate genes for articulate language. Analysis of coding regions of over 100 candidate genes for the effects of natural selection (directional episodic selection and relaxed/intensified selection) in the various lineages of primates (thirty-four nonhuman primate species, plus Homo sapiens Neanderthals and Denisovans) revealed a burst of increased selection effects on neural genes at the node leading to the Homo sapiens-Neanderthal-Denisova triad, followed by bursts of selection effects on neural genes related to language in both the Denisovan and Neanderthal lineages. Those latter increases in involvement of neural genes in Neanderthals and Denisovans can be contrasted with the missing or slight response to selection on those same genes in the H. sapiens lineage. The genes involved in these bursts can mostly be classified as involved in synapse structure and maintenance. We develop a hypothesis for how synaptic efficiency could be related to language acquisition in these lineages.

Genomes provide tools for reconstructing organismal evolution and larger Earth-system processes. Here, we reconstruct the genomic evolution of cave-adapted amblyopsid fishes. Although microcomputed tomography reveals the strikingly similar skeletons of cave-adapted lineages, analyses of the genomes of all species suggest that amblyopsids independently colonized caves and degenerated their eyes at least four times after descending from populations that already possessed adaptations to low-light environments. By examining pseudogenization through loss-of-function mutations in amblyopsids, we infer that the genomic bases of their vision degenerated over millions of years. We leverage these data to pinpoint the ages of subterranean karstic ecosystems in eastern North America, which are difficult to date using traditional geochronologic techniques. Our results demonstrate how genomes can be used to reconstruct the timescale of Earth system evolution.