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The pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) hypothesis specifies that closely related species or populations experiencing different ecological conditions should differ in a suite of metabolic, hormonal and immunity traits that have coevolved with the life-history particularities related to these conditions. Surprisingly, two important dimensions of the POLS concept have been neglected: (i) despite increasing evidence for numerous connections between behavioural, physiological and life-history traits, behaviours have rarely been considered in the POLS yet; (ii) the POLS could easily be applied to the study of covariation among traits between individuals within a population. In this paper, we propose that consistent behavioural differences among individuals, or personality, covary with life history and physiological differences at the within-population, interpopulation and interspecific levels. We discuss how the POLS provides a heuristic framework in which personality studies can be integrated to address how variation in personality traits is maintained within populations.

Background Our understanding of gut microbiota has been limited primarily to findings from human and laboratory animals, but what shapes the gut microbiota in nature remains largely unknown. To fill this gap, we conducted a comprehensive study of gut microbiota of a well-studied North American red squirrel ( Tamiasciurus hudsonicus ) population. Red squirrels are territorial, solitary, and live in a highly seasonal environment and therefore represent a very attractive system to study factors that drive the temporal and spatial dynamics of gut microbiota. Result For the first time, this study revealed significant spatial patterns of gut microbiota within a host population, suggesting limited dispersal could play a role in shaping and maintaining the structure of gut microbial communities. We also found a remarkable seasonal rhythm in red squirrel’s gut microbial composition manifested by a tradeoff between relative abundance of two genera Oscillospira and Corpococcus and clearly associated with seasonal variation in diet availability. Our results show that in nature, environmental factors exert a much stronger influence on gut microbiota than host-associated factors including age and sex. Despite strong environmental effects, we found clear evidence of individuality and maternal effects, but host genetics did not seem to be a significant driver of the gut microbial communities in red squirrels. Conclusion Taken together, the results of this study emphasize the importance of external ecological factors rather than host attributes in driving temporal and spatial patterns of gut microbiota in natural environment.

Participatory modeling and fuzzy cognitive mapping of social-ecological systems offers a more comprehensive understanding of complex systems inclusive of multiple perspectives and diverse types of knowledge. Many Indigenous communities attribute recent declines in boreal moose populations to forestry disturbance and are insisting that their observations, knowledge, and values contribute more meaningfully to forestry and moose co-management. Here we describe a knowledge co-production approach documenting Cree social-ecological understanding of moose habitat quality in the Eeyou Istchee territory of northern Québec, Canada, almost 20 years after the implementation of a forestry co-management regime. Thirty-seven fuzzy cognitive mapping sessions with 56 land-users from 4 Cree communities identified 18 categories that influence good moose habitat, including physical (“Climate & Weather”), ecological (“Habitat Features, Moose Forage”), and social contributors (“Hunting & Predation, Cree Culture”). Knowledge maps highlight the diverse interrelationships that land users know to influence moose habitat quality and point to key social variables (hunting activity, noise disturbance) that should be included in wildlife-habitat models, as well as specific aspects of forestry practice and management that Cree know to negatively impact moose populations despite the implementation of a co-management regime. Our findings highlight how fuzzy cognitive mapping can bring together individual expertise into a collective knowledge account, inclusive of multiple understandings and experiences that allows for the identification and ranking of variables and relationships. Fuzzy cognitive mapping summarizes the plurality of Cree social-ecological knowledge in a form that is accessible, applicable, and actionable within local, regional, and provincial co-management regimes.

Seasonality is a critically important aspect of environmental variability, and strongly shapes all aspects of life for organisms living in highly seasonal environments. Seasonality has played a key role in generating biodiversity, and has driven the evolution of extreme physiological adaptations and behaviors such as migration and hibernation. Fluctuating selection pressures on survival and fecundity between summer and winter provide a complex selective landscape, which can be met by a combination of three outcomes of adaptive evolution: genetic polymorphism, phenotypic plasticity, and bet-hedging. Here, we have identified four important research questions with the goal of advancing our understanding of evolutionary impacts of seasonality. First, we ask how characteristics of environments and species will determine which adaptive response occurs. Relevant characteristics include costs and limits of plasticity, predictability, and reliability of cues, and grain of environmental variation relative to generation time. A second important question is how phenological shifts will amplify or ameliorate selection on physiological hardiness. Shifts in phenology can preserve the thermal niche despite shifts in climate, but may fail to completely conserve the niche or may even expose life stages to conditions that cause mortality. Considering distinct environmental sensitivities of life history stages will be key to refining models that forecast susceptibility to climate change. Third, we must identify critical physiological phenotypes that underlie seasonal adaptation and work toward understanding the genetic architectures of these responses. These architectures are key for predicting evolutionary responses. Pleiotropic genes that regulate multiple responses to changing seasons may facilitate coordination among functionally related traits, or conversely may constrain the expression of optimal phenotypes. Finally, we must advance our understanding of how changes in seasonal fluctuations are impacting ecological interaction networks. We should move beyond simple dyadic interactions, such as predator prey dynamics, and understand how these interactions scale up to affect ecological interaction networks. As global climate change alters many aspects of seasonal variability, including extreme events and changes in mean conditions, organisms must respond appropriately or go extinct. The outcome of adaptation to seasonality will determine responses to climate change.

The domestic dog has undergone extensive artificial selection resulting in an extreme diversity in body size, personality, life‐history, and metabolic traits among breeds. Here we tested whether proactive personalities (high levels of activity, boldness, and aggression) are related to a fast “pace of life” (high rates of growth, mortality, and energy expenditure). Data from the literature provide preliminary evidence that artificial selection on dogs (through domestication) generated variations in personality traits that are correlated with life histories and metabolism. We found that obedient (or docile, shy) breeds live longer than disobedient (or bold) ones and that aggressive breeds have higher energy needs than unaggressive ones. These correlations could result from either human preference for particular trait combinations or, more likely, correlated responses to artificial selection on personality. Our results suggest the existence of a general pace‐of‐life syndrome arising from the coevolution of personality, metabolic, and life‐history traits.

Synopsis If heat generated through activity can substitute for heat required for thermoregulation, then activity in cold environments may be energetically free for endotherms. Although the possibility of activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution has been long recognized, its empirical generality and ecological implications remain unclear. We combine a review of the literature and a model of heat exchange to explore the generality of activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution, to assess the extent to which substitution is likely to vary with body size and ambient temperature, and to examine some potential macroecological implications. A majority of the 51 studies we located showed evidence of activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution (35 of 51 studies), with 28 of 32 species examined characterized by substitution in one or more study. Among studies that did detect substitution, the average magnitude of substitution was 57%, but its occurrence and extent varied taxonomically, allometrically, and with ambient temperature. Modeling of heat production and dissipation suggests that large birds and mammals, engaged in intense activity and exposed to relatively warm conditions, have more scope for substitution than do smaller endotherms engaged in less intense activity and experiencing cooler conditions. However, ambient temperature has to be less than the lower critical temperature (the lower bound of the thermal neutral zone) for activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution to occur and this threshold is lower in large endotherms than in small endotherms. Thus, in nature, substitution is most likely to be observed in intermediate-sized birds and mammals experiencing intermediate ambient temperatures. Activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution may be an important determinant of the activity patterns and metabolic ecology of endotherms. For example, a pattern of widely varying field metabolic rates (FMR) at low latitudes that converges to higher and less variable FMR at high latitudes has been interpreted as suggesting that warm environments at low latitudes allow a greater variety of feasible metabolic niches than do cool, high-latitude environments. However, activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution will generate this pattern of latitudinal FMR variation even if endotherms from cold and warm climates are metabolically and behaviorally identical, because the metabolic rates of resting and active animals are more similar in cold than in warm environments. Activity-thermoregulatory heat substitution is an understudied aspect of endotherm thermal biology that is apt to be a major influence on the physiological, behavioral and ecological responses of free-ranging endotherms to variation in temperature.

Summary Given fundamental energetic trade‐offs among growth, maintenance and reproduction, individual differences in energy saving should have consequences for survival and reproductive success. Many endotherms use periodic heterothermy to reduce energy and water requirements and individual variation in heterothermy should have fitness consequences. However, attempts to disentangle individual‐ and population‐level variation in heterothermy are scarce. Here, we quantified patterns of heterothermy of 55 free‐ranging eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus), food‐hoarding hibernators. Over five hibernation periods, we obtained a total of 7108 daily individual heterothermy indices (median: 118 per individual). Based on an individual reaction norm approach, we found that the use of heterothermy was repeatable and varied among individuals of the same population under similar environmental conditions. This among‐individual variation had consequences for winter survival and reproductive success. Individuals using less heterothermy at the beginning of the winter had decreased survival in resource‐rich but not in resource‐poor years and higher reproductive success in the subsequent breeding season. These results support the hypothesis that fluctuating selection maintains heterothermic diversity and suggest that individualized ecophysiology can contribute to a more thorough understanding of the evolution of energy‐saving strategies in endotherms. A lay summary is available for this article. Lay Summary

ABSTRACT Biodiversity loss can lead to losses in ecological functions, ecosystem services, and cultural values. Yet, literature that empirically relates species’ ecological and cultural importance is scarce. We investigate tree species’ cultural importance in a settled landscape in Canada by combining biophysical plot sampling (n = 122) and semi-structured interviews (n = 31). We examined relationships between cultural importance, ecosystem services (benefits from trees), services-to-ecosystems (actions toward trees), and the abundance, mortality, and modification of trees. We found that tree abundance generally correlated with cultural emphasis. Maple was the most biophysically abundant and culturally important tree, associated with the greatest diversity of ecosystem services. However, some trees were mentioned disproportionately more frequently than their biophysical abundance, likely due to high mortality in the case of ash and cultural importance in the case of apples. Apple trees were culturally important and linked to the most diverse services-to-ecosystems. Our findings suggest that cultural importance relates to provisioning ecosystem services and services-to-ecosystems, which may, in turn, influence the abundance of these culturally important genera on the landscape. This connection between cultural importance and services-to-ecosystems could be a potential lever for wider biocultural conservation. This study contributes to ongoing discussions about cultural ecosystem services and highlights the importance of services-to-ecosystems in understanding human-nature relationships. The results have implications for protected area management, suggesting that reduced human-tree interactions could negatively impact biocultural values.

Environmental knowledge networks (EKNs) link research collaborators in a common purpose to produce data and knowledge to better understand social-ecological phenomena and address environmental challenges. Over recent years, as scientists have grappled with how to produce data and actionable knowledge for conservation and sustainability, more EKNs have been established. Although each network is founded for its own purposes and maintains its own goals and ways of operating, these networks are generally managed by scientists to produce knowledge to advance science and decision making. In this Insight article, we articulate key qualities and benefits of EKNs and shows how EKNs can address grand challenges that cannot be answered by a single team or institution, create a diverse, vibrant culture of science and community of practice, and provide innovative solutions and knowledge to society. We also discuss challenges of EKN governance, and how challenges may vary with a network’s development. Finally, based on a synthesis of structured discussions about key issues in EKN management, we share recommendations and best practices, emphasizing management practices that are inclusive, reflexive, adaptive, and flexible, so that others may benefit from our experience leading EKNs.

Pulsed systems are characterized by boom and bust cycles of resource production that are expected to cascade through multiple trophic levels. Many of the consumers within pulsed resource systems have specific adaptations to cope with these cycles that may serve to either amplify or dampen their community-wide consequences. We monitored a seed predator, the eastern chipmunk ( Tamias striatus ), in an American beech ( Fagus grandifolia ) dominated forest, and used capture - mark - recapture analyses to estimate chipmunk vital rates and relate them to interannual variation in beech seed production. The summer activity and reproduction of adults anticipated autumn beech production, with high activity and intense reproduction occurring in summers prior to beech masts. Chipmunks also reproduced every spring following a beech mast. However, adult survival was independent of beech production. In contrast, juvenile survival was lower in years of mast failure than in years of mast production, but their activity was consistently high and independent of beech production. Population growth was strongly affected by the number of juveniles and therefore by beech seed production, which explains nearly 70%% of variation in population growth. Our results suggest that a combination of resource-dependent reproduction and variable activity levels associated with anticipation and response to resource pulses allows consumers to buffer potential deleterious effects of low food abundance on their survival.