Ecology

Particle foraging strategies promote microbial diversity in marine environments

1. Ali Ebrahimi
2. Akshit Goyal
3. Otto X Cordero

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript explores how microbial foraging strategies contribute to species coexistence in aquatic environments, and will be of interest to microbial ecologists and theoretical ecologists. Using mathematical modeling, the authors demonstrate that differences in particle detachment rates across bacterial species can promote coexistence. Additional explanation and documentation of methods, along with a discussion of the generality of the results, would strengthen the manuscript and ensure reproducibility.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Aggregation pheromone 4-vinylanisole promotes the synchrony of sexual maturation in female locusts

1. Dafeng Chen
2. Li Hou
3. Jianing Wei
4. Siyuan Guo
5. Weichan Cui
6. Pengcheng Yang
7. Le Kang
8. Xianhui Wang

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The current study follows up on previous studies from this group, uncovering the role of olfactory signaling in the migratory locust. Specifically, it follows up on a recent report demonstrating that 4-vinylanisole serves as a locust aggregation pheromone. Here, this pheromone is also assigned an instrumental role in control and synchronization of female sexual maturation. This study will be useful for the understanding of swarming behaviour in locusts, and it will also interest those who work on behaviour and its modulation.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 agreed to share their names with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Life history predicts global population responses to the weather in terrestrial mammals

1. John Jackson
2. Christie Le Coeur
3. Owen Jones

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  In this manuscript, the authors use long-term population records for 157 mammal species to investigate how populations respond to annual weather anomalies, whether the responses are explained by species' life-history traits, and whether responses vary among species and biomes. They find that populations of shorter-lived species that have larger litter sizes respond more to weather anomalies than longer-lived species with smaller litter sizes. Their results can help understand and predict how different species may respond to climate change, and ultimately, what makes species more sensitive to climate change.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Serum Proteomics Identifies Immune Pathways and Candidate Biomarkers of Coronavirus Infection in Wild Vampire Bats

1. Daniel J. Becker
2. Guang-Sheng Lei
3. Michael G. Janech
4. Alison M. Bland
5. M. Brock Fenton
6. Nancy B. Simmons
7. Ryan F. Relich
8. Benjamin A. Neely

Reviewed by ScreenIT

Metacommunity framework and its core terms entanglement

1. Jurek Kolasa
2. Matthew P. Hammond
3. Joyce Yan

Reviewed by PeerRef

Predictors of human-infective RNA virus discovery in the United States, China, and Africa, an ecological study

1. Feifei Zhang
2. Margo Chase-Topping
3. Chuan-Guo Guo
4. Mark EJ Woolhouse

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This study will be of interest to readers in the field of virus discovery. This study attempts to identify predictors of human-infective RNA virus discovery and predict high risk areas in a recent period in the United States, China and Africa using an ecological modelling framework. The study has potential to inform future discovery efforts for human-infective viruses . However it is not clear that key claims of the manuscript are currently fully supported.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #1 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Eco-evolutionary dynamics modulate plant responses to global change depending on plant diversity and species identity

1. Peter Dietrich
2. Jens Schumacher
3. Nico Eisenhauer
4. Christiane Roscher

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  The overarching goal of this study was to identify eco-evolutionary feedbacks between plant community diversity and global change drivers. The authors aimed to test the hypothesis that a decline in species richness due to various global change drivers selects for traits that will make species more vulnerable to the further effects of these drivers, amplifying thus the initial diversity decline. This research is of prime importance to botanists, plant ecologists and ecosystem ecologists wanting to understand the effects of global change on plant diversity and productivity.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife

Present and future distribution of bat hosts of sarbecoviruses: implications for conservation and public health

1. Renata L. Muylaert
2. Tigga Kingston
3. Jinhong Luo
4. Maurício Humberto Vancine
5. Nikolas Galli
6. Colin J. Carlson
7. Reju Sam John
8. Maria Cristina Rulli
9. David T. S. Hayman

Reviewed by ScreenIT

Alternate patterns of temperature variation bring about very different disease outcomes at different mean temperatures

1. Charlotte Kunze
2. Pepijn Luijckx
3. Andrew L Jackson
4. Ian Donohue

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  Kunze et al. provide a fine experiment to show that both increases in mean temperature and (extreme) variability in temperature regimes have important consequences in host-pathogen interactions. The results presented in this manuscript shed a light on why disease spread models fed by experimental data (commonly obtained in stable environmental conditions) are frequently inaccurate. These results lead us to more realistic understanding of the impacts of climate change in biological species but also identify the need of mechanisms behind species interaction in fluctuating environments/temperatures. This manuscript thus comes timely as the planet is warming, and disease ecologists, limnologists, epidemiologists and physiologists are interested in the consequences.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors).

Reviewed by eLife

Both consumptive and non-consumptive effects of predators impact mosquito populations and have implications for disease transmission

1. Marie C Russell
2. Catherine M Herzog
3. Zachary Gajewski
4. Chloe Ramsay
5. Fadoua El Moustaid
6. Michelle V Evans
7. Trishna Desai
8. Nicole L Gottdenker
9. Sara L Hermann
10. Alison G Power
11. Andrew C McCall

• Curated by eLife

  Evaluation Summary:

  This manuscript will be of interest to community ecologists working on the impact of predators on prey populations, as well as disease ecologists interested in understanding the potential role of predators on vector traits. The authors uncovered trends in the research that support beneficial impacts of predators on mosquito traits, from the standpoint of vector control.

  (This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. Reviewer #2 agreed to share their name with the authors.)

Reviewed by eLife