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1. Animal Migration: An Overview of One of Nature's Great Spectacles

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-012021-031035  

   Fudickar, Adam M. ; Jahn, Alex E. ; Ketterson, Ellen D. ( November 2021 , Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics)

   null (Ed.)

   The twenty-first century has witnessed an explosion in research on animal migration, in large part due to a technological revolution in tracking and remote-sensing technologies, along with advances in genomics and integrative biology. We now have access to unprecedented amounts of data on when, where, and how animals migrate across various continents and oceans. Among the important advancements, recent studies have uncovered a surprising level of variation in migratory trajectories at the species and population levels with implications for both speciation and the conservation of migratory populations. At the organismal level, studies linking molecular and physiological mechanisms to traits that support migration have revealed a remarkable amount of seasonal flexibility in many migratory animals. Advancements in the theory for why animals migrate have resulted in promising new directions for empirical studies. We provide an overview of the current state of knowledge and promising future avenues of study. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, Volume 52 is November 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates. 

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2. Multi-Scale Drivers of Immunological Variation and Consequences for Infectious Disease Dynamics

   https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz138  

   Becker, Daniel J. ; Downs, Cynthia J. ; Martin, Lynn B. ( July 2019 , Integrative and Comparative Biology)

   The immune system is the primary barrier to parasite infection, replication, and transmission following exposure, and variation in immunity can accordingly manifest in heterogeneity in traits that govern population-level infectious disease dynamics. While much work in ecoimmunology has focused on individual-level determinants of host immune defense (e.g., reproductive status and body condition), an ongoing challenge remains to understand the broader evolutionary and ecological contexts of this variation (e.g., phylogenetic relatedness and landscape heterogeneity) and to connect these differences into epidemiological frameworks. Ultimately, such efforts could illuminate general principles about the drivers of host defense and improve predictions and control of infectious disease. Here, we highlight recent work that synthesizes the complex drivers of immunological variation across biological scales of organization and scales these within-host differences to population-level infection outcomes. Such studies note the limitations involved in making species-level comparisons of immune phenotypes, stress the importance of spatial scale for immunology research, showcase several statistical tools for translating within-host data into epidemiological parameters, and provide theoretical frameworks for linking within- and between-host scales of infection processes. Building from these studies, we highlight several promising avenues for continued work, including the application of machine learning tools and phylogenetically controlled meta-analyses to immunology data and quantifying the joint spatial and temporal dependencies in immune defense using range expansions as model systems. We also emphasize the use of organismal traits (e.g., host tolerance, competence, and resistance) as a way to interlink various scales of analysis. Such continued collaboration and disciplinary cross-talk among ecoimmunology, disease ecology, and mathematical modeling will facilitate an improved understanding of the multi-scale drivers and consequences of variation in host defense.

    

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3. Temperature‐dependence of metabolism and fuel selection from cells to whole organisms

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.2564  

   Holden, Kaitlyn G. ; Hedrick, Ashley R. ; Gangloff, Eric J. ; Hall, Steven J. ; Bronikowski, Anne M. ( December 2021 , Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological and Integrative Physiology)

   Temperature affects nearly every aspect of how organisms interact with and are constrained by their environment. Measures of organismal energetics, such as metabolic rate, are highly temperature‐dependent and governed through temperature effects on rates of biochemical reactions. Characterizing the relationships among levels of biological organization can lend insight into how temperature affects whole‐organism function. We tested the temperature dependence of cellular oxygen consumption and its relationship to whole‐animal metabolic rate in garter snakes (Thamnophis elegans). Additionally, we tested whether thermal responses were linked to shifts in the fuel source oxidized to support metabolism with the use of carbon stable isotopes. Our results demonstrate temperature dependence of metabolic rates across levels of biological organization. Cellular (basal, adenosine triphosphate‐linked) and whole‐animal rates of respiration increased with temperature but were not correlated within or among individuals, suggesting that variation in whole‐animal metabolic rates is not due simply to variation at the cellular level, but rather other interacting factors across scales of biological organization. Counter to trends observed during fasting, elevated temperature did not alter fuel selection (i.e., natural‐abundance stable carbon isotope composition in breath, δ¹³C_breath). This consistency suggests the maintenance and oxidation of a single fuel source supporting metabolism across a broad range of metabolic demands.

    

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4. A multi-species repository of social networks

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0056-z  

   Sah, Pratha ; Méndez, José David ; Bansal, Shweta ( April 2019 , Scientific Data)

   Social network analysis is an invaluable tool to understand the patterns, evolution, and consequences of sociality. Comparative studies over a range of social systems across multiple taxonomic groups are particularly valuable. Such studies however require quantitative social association or interaction data across multiple species which is not easily available. We introduce the Animal Social Network Repository (ASNR) as the first multi-taxonomic repository that collates 790 social networks from more than 45 species, including those of mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, and insects. The repository was created by consolidating social network datasets from the literature on wild and captive animals into a consistent and easy-to-use network data format. The repository is archived athttps://bansallab.github.io/asnr/. ASNR has tremendous research potential, including testing hypotheses in the fields of animal ecology, social behavior, epidemiology and evolutionary biology.

    

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5. Forest microclimates and climate change: Importance, drivers and future research agenda

   https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15569  

   De Frenne, Pieter ; Lenoir, Jonathan ; Luoto, Miska ; Scheffers, Brett R. ; Zellweger, Florian ; Aalto, Juha ; Ashcroft, Michael B. ; Christiansen, Ditte M. ; Decocq, Guillaume ; De Pauw, Karen ; et al ( March 2021 , Global Change Biology)

   Forest microclimates contrast strongly with the climate outside forests. To fully understand and better predict how forests' biodiversity and functions relate to climate and climate change, microclimates need to be integrated into ecological research. Despite the potentially broad impact of microclimates on the response of forest ecosystems to global change, our understanding of how microclimates within and below tree canopies modulate biotic responses to global change at the species, community and ecosystem level is still limited. Here, we review how spatial and temporal variation in forest microclimates result from an interplay of forest features, local water balance, topography and landscape composition. We first stress and exemplify the importance of considering forest microclimates to understand variation in biodiversity and ecosystem functions across forest landscapes. Next, we explain how macroclimate warming (of the free atmosphere) can affect microclimates, and vice versa, via interactions with land‐use changes across different biomes. Finally, we perform a priority ranking of future research avenues at the interface of microclimate ecology and global change biology, with a specific focus on three key themes: (1) disentangling the abiotic and biotic drivers and feedbacks of forest microclimates; (2) global and regional mapping and predictions of forest microclimates; and (3) the impacts of microclimate on forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the face of climate change. The availability of microclimatic data will significantly increase in the coming decades, characterizing climate variability at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales relevant to biological processes in forests. This will revolutionize our understanding of the dynamics, drivers and implications of forest microclimates on biodiversity and ecological functions, and the impacts of global changes. In order to support the sustainable use of forests and to secure their biodiversity and ecosystem services for future generations, microclimates cannot be ignored.

    

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