Understanding what shapes variation in genetic diversity among species remains a major challenge in evolutionary ecology, and it has been seldom studied in parasites and other host-symbiont systems. Here, mtDNA variation has been studied in a host-symbiont non-model system.

Wild and managed bees are well documented as effective pollinators of global crops of economic importance. However, the contributions by pollinators other than bees have been little explored. This study focus on non-bee insects and synthesize 39 field studies from five continents that directly measured the crop pollination services provided by non-bees, honey bees, and other bees to compare the relative contributions of these taxa.

Conservation plans can be greatly improved when information on the evolutionary and demographic consequences of habitat fragmentation is available for several codistributed species. Here it has been studied the spatial patterns of phenotypic and genetic variation among five grasshopper species that are codistributed across a network of microreserves but show remarkable differences in dispersal-related morphology, degree of habitat specialization and extent of fragmentation of their respective...

Road-kill is the most recognized impact of traffic and an important threat for biodiversity. Nevertheless, most research on this topic deals with particular species or with road features, describing proximate correlates and rarely making inference on the mechanisms. Here it is provided a more general approximation by describing life-history, temporal and spatial factors affecting vertebrate road-kills in Mediterranean landscapes.

Maternal effects have a great influence on offspring phenotype. In oviparous species, females can adjust offspring development by changing the levels of certain components of the egg (like yolk hormones, particularly androgens), thus buffering the impacts of environmental heterogeneity on the performance of their descendants. Several studies have reported short term benefits of high yolk androgen levels, but such high hormone levels can also entail some costs. In this research article it is...