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1. Common, showy, and perennial species dominate a restoration species pool

   https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13969  

   Kaul, Andrew D.; Barash, Michael; Albrecht, Matthew A. (June 2023, Restoration Ecology)

   Native seed vendors are a primary source of germplasm for restoration projects; however, most plant species are not commercially available. Preferences in the types of species that vendors grow and sell may limit the similarity between reference communities and reconstructed ones established from seed mixes. We tested whether a restoration species pool shows preference for certain groups of species, focusing on the Ozark Highland Ecoregion (midcontinent United States). We identified the pool of 1,082 candidate herbaceous plant species appropriate for restoration projects on upland habitats in this region, and then surveyed nine regional seed vendors to assess their commercial availability. Commercially available species were more likely to be forbs over graminoids, perennials over annuals, and common species with larger ranges and moderate conservatism scores. Within forbs, taller species and those with longer bloom durations were favored. Species with affinity to open habitats (e.g. grassland) were more likely to be available from multiple vendors than those from woodlands and forests. Encouragingly, 454 (42%) of the species in this regional pool were available. However, this means that most species in the region are not likely to be included in seed mixes, unless they are hand‐collected from remnant populations. This restoration pool favors common and showy species, which is consistent with previous studies showing these kinds of species tend to dominate seed mixes and restored plant communities. We identified 39 species that were not available from any of the vendors surveyed, which we recommend as candidates for expansion of the Ozark restoration species pool. 

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2. Epidemics in native species influence the outcome of a species invasion

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-023-05444-4  

   Blackwood, Paradyse E.; Jonasen, Kacie L.; Hoenig, Brandon D.; Heil, Brittany N.; Searle, Catherine L. (February 2024, Oecologia)
3. Neural basis of acoustic species recognition in a cryptic species complex

   https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.243405  

   Gupta, Saumya; Alluri, Rishi K.; Rose, Gary J.; Bee, Mark A. (December 2021, Journal of Experimental Biology)

   ABSTRACT Sexual traits that promote species recognition are important drivers of reproductive isolation, especially among closely related species. Identifying neural processes that shape species differences in recognition is crucial for understanding the causal mechanisms of reproductive isolation. Temporal patterns are salient features of sexual signals that are widely used in species recognition by several taxa, including anurans. Recent advances in our understanding of temporal processing by the anuran auditory system provide an opportunity to investigate the neural basis of species-specific recognition. The anuran inferior colliculus consists of neurons that are selective for temporal features of calls. Of potential relevance are auditory neurons known as interval-counting neurons (ICNs) that are often selective for the pulse rate of conspecific advertisement calls. Here, we tested the hypothesis that ICNs mediate acoustic species recognition by exploiting the known differences in temporal selectivity in two cryptic species of gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis and Hyla versicolor). We examined the extent to which the threshold number of pulses required to elicit behavioral responses from females and neural responses from ICNs was similar within each species but potentially different between the two species. In support of our hypothesis, we found that a species difference in behavioral pulse number thresholds closely matched the species difference in neural pulse number thresholds. However, this relationship held only for ICNs that exhibited band-pass tuning for conspecific pulse rates. Together, these findings suggest that differences in temporal processing of a subset of ICNs provide a mechanistic explanation for reproductive isolation between two cryptic treefrog species. 

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4. A dual-species Rydberg array

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02638-2  

   Anand, Shraddha; Bradley, Conor_E; White, Ryan; Ramesh, Vikram; Singh, Kevin; Bernien, Hannes (September 2024, Nature Physics)
5. A new species of Petalacmis firefly from Bolivia, with a key to species (Coleoptera, Lampyridae)

   https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1092.80464  

   Lima da Silveira, Luiz F.; Branham, Marc A. (April 2022, ZooKeys)

   Petalacmis Olivier, 1908 is a poorly known genus of firefly endemic to South America and is currently the only member of the subfamily Lampyrinae, tribe Lampyrini known to occur on the continent. Here, we describe a new species, Petalacmis triplehorni sp. nov. from Bolivia and compare it to the two other described species in the genus. A key to Petalacmis species based on male traits, as well as illustrations of morphological features, are given in detail for the first time. We present unique, previously neglected traits of Petalacmis species and compare them to other Lampyrinae. 

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