Climate changeaffectsbiodiversity globally, by forcing species to shift their distribution to track the changes in temperature. An international collaboration between scientists from France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland shows, in an article published in the journal Ecology Letters,that habitat fragmentation caused by human activity affects distribution shifts in butterfly species and, hence, their capacity to cope with climate change.
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Urban and forest colonies of the ant Temnothorax nylanderi respond differently to pollution?
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In the city, the seasonal patterns of activity of insect pollinators could be disturbed by the urban microclimate as well as by the presence of ornamental flora. To study this phenomenon, Vincent Zaninotto and his collaborators monitored the activity of insect pollinators in Paris and in the natural environment, from late winter to autumn. In […]
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“Here, we used 37 years of mark-recapture data in two nearby habitats inside a meadow viper Vipera ursinii population to quantify life expectancies, generation times and the shape of actuarial and reproductive senescence.”
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We were saddened to learn on this the 1st day of September that our colleague and friend Christian Peeters, CNRS senior scientist at iEES-Paris, had passed away.
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Social groups consist of individuals that differ from one another, and many studies show that this diversity improves group efficiency. In social insects, size diversity can, for example, improve the efficiency of foraging, nest building, brood rearing and production of young queens. Thus, colonies that re more diverse are generally also more efficient. Romain Honorio […]
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Researchers studied the genome of wasp species which attack different aphid species, in order to understand which adaptations allow them to get around their hosts’ defenses.
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City life could lead to differential evolution between urban and forest populations. Aurelie Khimoun and her collaborators showed, in their article published in Biology Letters, that urban populations of the tiny acorn ant are surprisingly not genetically differentiated from forest populations, suggesting expansion and lack of isolation. However, some genes display traces of selection that point towards an adaptation to the urban environment.
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