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1. Integrative biology of injury in animals

   https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12894  

   Rennolds, Corey W. ; Bely, Alexandra E. ( September 2022 , Biological Reviews)

   Mechanical injury is a prevalent challenge in the lives of animals with myriad potential consequences for organisms, including reduced fitness and death. Research on animal injury has focused on many aspects, including the frequency and severity of wounding in wild populations, the short‐ and long‐term consequences of injury at different biological scales, and the variation in the response to injury within or among individuals, species, ontogenies, and environmental contexts. However, relevant research is scattered across diverse biological subdisciplines, and the study of the effects of injury has lacked synthesis and coherence. Furthermore, the depth of knowledge across injury biology is highly uneven in terms of scope and taxonomic coverage: much injury research is biomedical in focus, using mammalian model systems and investigating cellular and molecular processes, while research at organismal and higher scales, research that is explicitly comparative, and research on invertebrate and non‐mammalian vertebrate species is less common and often less well integrated into the core body of knowledge about injury. The current state of injury research presents an opportunity to unify conceptually work focusing on a range of relevant questions, to synthesize progress to date, and to identify fruitful avenues for future research. The central aim of this review is to synthesize research concerning the broad range of effects of mechanical injury in animals. We organize reviewed work by four broad and loosely defined levels of biological organization: molecular and cellular effects, physiological and organismal effects, behavioural effects, and ecological and evolutionary effects of injury. Throughout, we highlight the diversity of injury consequences within and among taxonomic groups while emphasizing the gaps in taxonomic coverage, causal understanding, and biological endpoints considered. We additionally discuss the importance of integrating knowledge within and across biological levels, including how initial, localized responses to injury can lead to long‐term consequences at the scale of the individual animal and beyond. We also suggest important avenues for future injury biology research, including distinguishing better between related yet distinct injury phenomena, expanding the subjects of injury research to include a greater variety of species, and testing how intrinsic and extrinsic conditions affect the scope and sensitivity of injury responses. It is our hope that this review will not only strengthen understanding of animal injury but will contribute to building a foundation for a more cohesive field of ‘injury biology’.

    

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2. A guide and tools for selecting and accessing microclimate data for mechanistic niche modeling

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4506  

   Meyer, Abigail V. ; Sakairi, Yutaro ; Kearney, Michael R. ; Buckley, Lauren B. ( April 2023 , Ecosphere)

   Most ecological analyses and forecasts use weather station data or coarse interpolated, gridded air temperature data. Yet, these products often poorly capture the microclimates experienced by organisms that respond to fine‐scale spatial and temporal environmental variation near the surface. Sources of historic and projected future data with finer spatial and temporal resolution are proliferating. We qualitatively and quantitatively review and evaluate the available data on three core issues central to microclimate modeling: the quality of the input environmental data, the ability of algorithms to capture microclimatic processes given environmental forcing data, and how best to access microclimatic data. We show how differences between observed environmental conditions and those estimated using environmental forcing data, microclimate algorithms, and precomputed microclimate datasets can be substantial depending on the variable, location, and season. The choice of environmental dataset to parameterize biophysical models has ramifications for biological estimates, such as the duration of potential activity and incidence of thermal stress. New data sources offering high temporal and spatial resolution correspond well to observational data and have the potential to revolutionize understanding of the ecological implications of microclimate variability. We provide resources to help users select and access appropriate environmental data for biological applications, including users' guides and interactive visualization, to better infer how organisms experience climate variability and change.

    

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3. Introduction to the Symposium: Stress Phenotype: Linking Molecular, Cellular, and Physiological Stress Responses to Fitness

   https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icz098  

   Heidinger, Britt J. ; Wada, Haruka ( June 2019 , Integrative and Comparative Biology)

   Although most organisms respond to environmental and social stressors by initiating a stress response that is expected to increase fitness, we currently lack information about how the stress response is integrated across levels of biological organization. Organismal biologists and physiological ecologists have tended to focus on questions related to how the glucocorticoid stress response varies across ecological contexts and is related to fitness, whereas, molecular and cellular biologists have typically investigated the fundamental underlying mechanisms. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of the stress response will require integrative studies that span levels of analyses. This information will be critical for predicting how selection will influence the expression of this complex phenotype at the organismal level, as well as how the integration of the underlying mechanisms will influence the evolutionary response to selection. As diverse organisms are expected to experience rising stress exposure in the face of anthropogenic disturbance and climate change, this information is becoming increasingly urgent. The overarching goals of this symposium were to bring together researchers that study the stress response across levels of organization in diverse organisms to identify important gaps in knowledge and novel research approaches that could be used to advance the field.

    

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4. 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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5. Extreme site fidelity as an optimal strategy in an unpredictable and homogeneous environment

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13390  

   Gerber, Brian D. ; Hooten, Mevin B. ; Peck, Christopher P. ; Rice, Mindy B. ; Gammonley, James H. ; Apa, Anthony D. ; Davis, Amy J. ; Lemaître, ed., Jean‐François ( July 2019 , Functional Ecology)

   Animal site fidelity structures space use, population demography and ultimately gene flow. Understanding the adaptive selection for site fidelity patterns provides a mechanistic understanding to both spatial and population processes. This can be achieved by linking space use with environmental variability (spatial and temporal) and demographic parameters. However, rarely is the environmental context that drives the selection for site fidelity behaviour fully considered.

   We use ecological theory to understand whether the spatial and temporal variability in breeding site quality can explain the site fidelity behaviour and demographic patterns of Gunnison sage‐grouse (Centrocercus minimus). We examined female site fidelity patterns across multiple spatial scales: proximity of consecutive year nest locations, space‐use overlap within and across the breeding and brooding seasons, and fidelity to a breeding patch. We also examined the spatial and temporal variability in nest, chick, juvenile and adult survival.

   We found Gunnison sage‐grouse to be site faithful to their breeding patch, area of use within the patch and generally where they nest, suggesting an “Always Stay” site fidelity strategy. This is an optimal evolutionary strategy when site quality is unpredictable. Further, we found limited spatial variability in survival within age groups, suggesting little demographic benefit to moving among patches. We suggest Gunnison sage‐grouse site fidelity is driven by the unpredictability of predation in a relatively homogeneous environment, the lack of benefits and likely costs to moving across landscape patches and leaving known lek and breeding/brooding areas.

   Space use and demography are commonly studied separately. More so, site fidelity patterns are rarely framed in the context of ecological theory, beyond questions related to the win‐stay:lose‐switch rule. To move beyond describing patterns and understand the adaptive selection driving species movements and their demographic consequences require integrating movement, demography and environmental variability in a synthetic framework.

   Site fidelity theory provides a coherent framework to simultaneously investigate the spatial and population ecology of animal populations. Using it to frame ecological questions will lead to a more mechanistic understanding of animal movement, spatial population structuring and meta‐population dynamics.

   A freePlain Language Summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

    

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