Hot off the presses! Oct 01 Trends Ecol Evol

The Oct 01 issue of the Trends Ecol Evol is now up on Pubget (About Trends Ecol Evol): if you're at a subscribing institution, just click the link in the latest link at the home page. (Note you'll only be able to get all the PDFs in the issue if your institution subscribes to Pubget.)

Latest Articles Include:

• Editorial Board
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):i (2009)
  
• The need for environmental horizon scanning
  Sutherland WJ Woodroof HJ - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):523-527 (2009)
  Policymakers and practitioners in most fields, including conservation and the environment, often make decisions based on insufficient evidence. One reason for this is that issues appear unexpectedly, when with hindsight, many of them were foreseeable. A solution to the problem of being insufficiently prepared is routine horizon scanning, which we describe as the systematic search for potential threats and opportunities that are currently poorly recognized. Researchers can then decide which issues might be most worthwhile to study. Practitioners can also use horizon scanning to ensure timely policy development and research procurement. Here, we suggest that horizon scanning is an underused tool that should become a standard element of environmental and conservation practice. We make recommendations for its incorporation into research, policy and practice. We argue that, as an ecological and conservation community, we are failing to provide timely advice owing to a weakn! ess in identifying forthcoming issues. We outline possible horizon-scanning methods, and also make recommendations as to how horizon scanning could have a more central role in environmental and conservation practice.
• Eutrophication science: moving into the future
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):527-528 (2009)
  
• Reply to Russell and Connell: "Eutrophication science: moving into the future"
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):528-529 (2009)
  
• Creatures from the depths of time
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):529-530 (2009)
  
• A cultured debate
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):530-531 (2009)
  
• Snaking through primate evolution
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):531-532 (2009)
  
• Doubts about complex speciation between humans and chimpanzees
  Presgraves DC Yi SV - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):533-540 (2009)
  Two patterns from large-scale DNA sequence data have been put forward as evidence that speciation between humans and chimpanzees was complex, involving hybridization and strong selection. First, divergence between humans and chimpanzees varies considerably across the autosomes. Second, divergence between humans and chimpanzees (but not gorillas) is markedly lower on the X chromosome. Here, we describe how simple speciation and neutral molecular evolution explain both patterns. In particular, the wide range in autosomal divergence is consistent with stochastic variation in coalescence times in the ancestral population; and the lower human–chimpanzee divergence on the X chromosome is consistent with species differences in the strength of male-biased mutation caused by differences in mating system. We also highlight two further patterns of divergence that are problematic for the complex speciation model. Our conclusions raise doubts about complex speciation between huma! ns and chimpanzees.
• Urgent preservation of boreal carbon stocks and biodiversity
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):541-548 (2009)
  Containing approximately one-third of all remaining global forests, the boreal ecosystem is a crucial store of carbon and a haven for diverse biological communities. Historically, fire and insects primarily drove the natural dynamics of this biome. However, human-mediated disturbances have increased in these forests during recent years, resulting in extensive forest loss for some regions, whereas others face heavy forest fragmentation or threat of exploitation. Current management practices are not likely to maintain the attendant boreal forest communities, nor are they adequate to mitigate climate change effects. There is an urgent need to preserve existing boreal forests and restore degraded areas if we are to avoid losing this relatively intact biodiversity haven and major global carbon sink.
• Integrating resilience thinking and optimisation for conservation
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):549-554 (2009)
  Conservation strategies need to be both effective and efficient to be successful. To this end, two bodies of research should be integrated, namely 'resilience thinking' and 'optimisation for conservation,' both of which are highly policy relevant but to date have evolved largely separately. Resilience thinking provides an integrated perspective for analysis, emphasising the potential of nonlinear changes and the interdependency of social and ecological systems. By contrast, optimisation for conservation is an outcome-oriented tool that recognises resource scarcity and the need to make rational and transparent decisions. Here we propose that actively embedding optimisation analyses within a resilience-thinking framework could draw on the complementary strengths of the two bodies of work, thereby promoting cost-effective and enduring conservation outcomes.
• Ecological and evolutionary dynamics under coloured environmental variation
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):555-563 (2009)
  Environmental variation is a ubiquitous component of individual, population and community processes in the natural world. Here, we review the consequences of spatio-temporally autocorrelated (coloured) environmental variation for ecological and evolutionary population dynamics. In single-species population models, environmental reddening increases (decreases) the amplitude of fluctuations in undercompensatory (overcompensatory) populations. This general result is also found in structurally more complex models (e.g. with space or species interactions). Environmental autocorrelation will also influence evolutionary dynamics as the changing environment is filtered through ecological dynamics. In the context of long-term environmental change, it becomes crucial to understand the potential impacts of different regimes of environmental variation at different scales of organization, from genes to species to communities.
• Extinction debt: a challenge for biodiversity conservation
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):564-571 (2009)
  Local extinction of species can occur with a substantial delay following habitat loss or degradation. Accumulating evidence suggests that such extinction debts pose a significant but often unrecognized challenge for biodiversity conservation across a wide range of taxa and ecosystems. Species with long generation times and populations near their extinction threshold are most likely to have an extinction debt. However, as long as a species that is predicted to become extinct still persists, there is time for conservation measures such as habitat restoration and landscape management. Standardized long-term monitoring, more high-quality empirical studies on different taxa and ecosystems and further development of analytical methods will help to better quantify extinction debt and protect biodiversity.
• Contrasting evolutionary dynamics between angiosperm and mammalian genomes
  - Trends Ecol Evol 24(10):572-582 (2009)
  Continuing advances in genomics are revealing substantial differences between genomes of major eukaryotic lineages. Because most data (in terms of depth and phylogenetic breadth) are available for angiosperms and mammals, we explore differences between these groups and show that angiosperms have less highly compartmentalized and more diverse genomes than mammals. In considering the causes of these differences, four mechanisms are highlighted: polyploidy, recombination, retrotransposition and genome silencing, which have different modes and time scales of activity. Angiosperm genomes are evolutionarily more dynamic and labile, whereas mammalian genomes are more stable at both the sequence and chromosome level. We suggest that fundamentally different life strategies and development feedback on the genome exist, influencing dynamics and evolutionary trajectories at all levels from the gene to the genome.