Ecology

Central carbon metabolism switching in lytic versus temperate coral reef viral communities

1. Jacob Kelman
2. Meena Khan
3. Chibundu Umunna
4. Russell Brainard
5. Grace Donohue
6. Rob Edwards
7. Natalie A Falta
8. Emma George
9. Eleanor Gorham
10. Juris Grasis
11. Kevin Green
12. Andreas Haas
13. Kimberly Halsey
14. Eric Hester
15. Summer Jacob
16. Aydin Loid Karatas
17. Yan Wei Lim
18. Mark Little
19. Stuart Sandin
20. Jessie Segnitz
21. Maya Serota
22. Natalia Shahwan
23. Giselle Simmons
24. Jennifer E Smith
25. Isha Tripathi
26. Linda Wegley Kelly
27. Lauren Woodward
28. Nickie Yang
29. Charles Young
30. Brian Zgliczynski
31. Forest Rohwer
32. Ben Knowles

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  The worldwide decline in the health of coral reefs is well documented, and overgrowth by microbial consortia can be a contributing factor. Kelman and colleagues used metagenomic analysis to interrogate potential changes in phage-associated genes predicted to be involved in central carbon metabolism. The study addresses the hypothesis that metabolic genes associated with carbon metabolism that are encoded by viruses reflect the health of the corals. The study contributes a valuable perspective on the potential role of phages in coral health, although limitations of the data and analyses offer an exploratory examination rather than a definitive result. Overall, the evidence supporting the major findings is incomplete, in part because the conceptual model relies on qualitative assumptions rather than empirical data.

Reviewed by eLife

The urban tree of life: synthesizing relationships between body size and urban affinity

1. Corey T Callaghan
2. Diana E Bowler
3. Vaughn Shirey
4. Brittany M Mason
5. Laura H Antão
6. Ingmar Staude
7. John H Wilshire
8. Thomas Merckx

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This study provides an important assessment of how body size influences the occurrence of macro-organisms in urban areas across the globe. Size in most plants, but only some animal families, was positively associated with urban affinity. The data set is impressive and the strength of evidence solid.

Reviewed by eLife

Prey attracting but not avoiding predators suggests an asymmetric investment in the predation sequence

1. Nicolas Ferry
2. Christian Fiderer
3. Anne Peters
4. Axel Ballmann
5. Marco Heurich

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Benefit Transfer Loops Turn Cheating into a Scaffold for Microbial Diversity

1. Jiqi Shao
2. Yinxiang Li
3. Shaohua Gu
4. Xiaoyi Zhang
5. Shaopeng Wang
6. Xueming Liu
7. Zhiyuan Li

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript provides a valuable perspective on microbial community diversity and how this is shaped by the presence of cheaters. The evidence provided is solid, and the methods used to assess the research question are convincing. However, a major weakness is the general framing (or lack of embedding in recent literature), reducing the usefulness of the paper for a broad audience.

Reviewed by eLife

Dopamine and its receptor DcDop2 are involved in the coevolution between ‘Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus’ and Diaphorina citri

1. Xiaoge Nian
2. Jiayun Li
3. Jilei Huang
4. Weiwei Yuan
5. Paul Holford
6. George Andrew Charles Beattie
7. Jielan He
8. Yijing Cen
9. Yurong He
10. Songdou Zhang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  Insects can act as vectors of plant diseases, hence the study of insect-pathogen interactions is relevant for agriculture. This important study identifies in Diaphorina citri a dopamine receptor responsive to 'Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus' infection, demonstrate direct regulation of this receptor by a microRNA, and integrate dopamine signaling into an established insect reproductive hormone framework. Multiple complementary experimental approaches convincingly support for the findings, although key conclusions rely on correlative data and the mechanistic evidence for the proposed linear signaling cascade is limited. This work will be of interest for insect physiology and vector-pathogen biology, and more broadly for citrus agriculture.

Reviewed by eLife

Disentangling different sources of variation in functional responses: between-individual variability, measurement error and inherent stochasticity of the prey-predator interaction process

1. Charlotte Baey
2. Sylvain Billiard
3. Maud Delattre

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Camera trap monitoring of unmarked animals: a map of the relationships between population size estimators

1. Clément Calenge

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Using a sequential sampling algorithm to apply the niche-neutral model to species occurrence patterns

1. Nadiah P. Kristensen
2. Yong Chee Keita Sin
3. Hyee Shynn Lim
4. Frank E. Rheindt
5. Ryan A. Chisholm

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Tracking changes in birds' interaction milieu

1. Stanislas Rigal
2. Vincent Devictor
3. Vasilis Dakos

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Full factorial construction of synthetic microbial communities

1. Juan Diaz-Colunga
2. Pablo Catalan
3. Magdalena San Roman
4. Andrea Arrabal
5. Alvaro Sanchez

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This manuscript introduces a new low-cost and accessible method for assembling combinatorially complete microbial consortia using basic laboratory equipment, which is a valuable contribution to the field of microbial ecology and biotechnology. The evidence presented is compelling, demonstrating the method's effectiveness through empirical testing on both synthetic colorants and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains.

Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science