Horse domestication revolutionized warfare and accelerated travel, trade and the geographic expansion of languages. This study presents the largest genome-scale time-series for a non-human organism to access the legacy of past equestrian civilizations in the genetic makeup of modern horses.

To predict the threat of biological invasions to native species, it is critical to understand how increasing abundance of invasive alien species affects native populations and communities. The form of this relationship across taxa and ecosystems is unknown, but is expected to depend strongly on the trophic position. Using a global metaanalysis based on empirical studies, the authors assessed the shape, direction, and strength of native responses to increasing invader abundance.

Host shifts are widespread among avian haemosporidians, although the success of transmission depends upon parasite?host and parasite?vector compatibility. Insular avifaunas are typically characterized by a low prevalence and diversity of haemosporidians, although the underlying ecological and evolutionary processes remain unclear. This study investigated the parasite transmission network in an insular system formed by Eleonora's falcons, louse flies that parasitize the falcons , and...

Members of the crow family (Corvidae) are known to disperse seeds by frugivory or by scatter hoarding, but are rarely recognized as vectors of plants lacking a fleshy fruit, or a large nut. A century ago, S.A. Heintze carried out extensive field studies of seed dispersal by 11 species of European Corvidae, especially Magpies Pica pica and Hooded Crows Corvus cornix. His work was published in Swedish and has been overlooked until now, and suggests that contemporary views about seed dispersal...

Established plants can affect the recruitment of young plants, filtering out some and allowing the recruitment of others, with profound effects on plant community dynamics. Recruitment networks (RNs) depict which species recruit under which others. Here, whether species abundance and phylogenetic distance explain the structure of RNs across communities is investigated.