Droughts can strongly affect grassland productivity and biodiversity, but responses differ widely. Nutrient availability may be a critical factor explaining this variation, but is often ignored in analyses of drought responses. Here, we used a standardized nutrient addition experiment covering 10 European grasslands to test if full‐factorial nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium addition affected plant community responses to inter‐annual variation in drought stress and to the extreme summer drought of 2018 in Europe. We found that nutrient addition amplified detrimental drought effects on community aboveground biomass production. Drought effects also differed between functional groups, with a negative effect on graminoid but not forb biomass production. Our results imply that eutrophication in grasslands, which promotes dominance of drought‐sensitive graminoids over forbs, amplifies detrimental drought effects. In terms of climate change adaptation, agricultural management would benefit from taking into account differential drought impacts on fertilized versus unfertilized grasslands, which differ in ecosystem services they provide to society.

The spread of vector‐borne pathogens depends on a complex set of interactions among pathogen, vector, and host. In single‐host systems, pathogens can induce changes in vector preferences for infected vs. healthy hosts. Yet it is unclear if pathogens also induce changes in vector preference among host species, and how changes in vector behaviour alter the ecological dynamics of disease spread. Here, we couple multi‐host preference experiments with a novel model of vector preference general to both single and multi‐host communities. We show that viruliferous aphids exhibit strong preferences for healthy and long‐lived hosts. Coupling experimental results with modelling to account for preference leads to a strong decrease in overall pathogen spread through multi‐host communities due to non‐random sorting of viruliferous vectors between preferred and non‐preferred host species. Our results demonstrate the importance of the interplay between vector behaviour and host diversity as a key mechanism in the spread of vectored‐diseases.

Evolutionary biologists have long been interested in how expansions of the photosensory system might contribute to morphological differentiation of animals. Comparative studies in vertebrate and arthropod lineages have provided considerable insight into how the duplication of opsin, the first gene of the phototransduction pathway, have led to functional differentiation and new ecological opportunities; however, this relationship cannot be examined in many invertebrate groups as we have yet to characterize their opsin content. Scallops (Pectinidae) are a promising molluscan model to study the evolution of opsin and its potential role in speciation. Recently, we discovered a second Gq-coupled, or r-, opsin gene expressed in the eyes of two scallop species. To investigate the evolutionary origin of this opsin, we screened 12 bivalve species from 4 families, representing both mobile and sessile species, with and without eyes. Although only one ortholog was recovered from the genome of the eyeless, immobile oyster, we found both genes to have been retained in 3 families comprising the order Pectinoida. Within this clade, non-mobile species of scallops appear to have lost one gene. Phylogeny-based tests of selection indicate different degrees of purifying selection following duplication. These data, in conjunction with highly divergent gene sequences and ortholog-specific retention, suggest functional differences. Our results are congruent with a Gq-opsin gene duplication in an oyster-Pectinoida ancestor, approximately 470 Mya, and suggest the likelihood of retaining both genes is associated with either the presence of eyes and/or degree of mobility. The identification of two highly divergent Gq-opsin genes in scallops is valuable for future functional investigations and provides a foundation for further study of a morphologically and ecologically diverse clade of bivalves that has been understudied with respect to visual ecology and diversification of opsin.

1. The spread of many diseases depends on the demography and dispersal of arthropod vectors. Classic epidemiological theory typically ignores vector dynamics and instead makes the simplifying assumption of frequency-dependent transmission. Yet, vector ecology may be critical for understanding the spread of disease over space and time and how disease dynamics respond to environmental change. 2. Here, we ask how environmental change shapes vector demography and dispersal, and how these traits of vectors govern the spatiotemporal spread of disease. 3. We developed disease models parameterised by traits of vectors and fit them to experimental epidemics. The experiment featured a viral pathogen (CYDV-RPV) vectored by aphids Rhopalosiphum padi among populations of grass hosts Avena sativa under two rates of environmental resource supply (i.e. fertilisation of the host). We compared a non-spatial model that ignores vector movement, a lagged dispersal model that emphasises the delay between vector reproduction and dispersal, and a travelling wave model that generates waves of infections across space and time. 4. Resource supply altered both vector demography and dispersal. The lagged dispersal model fit best, indicating that vectors first reproduced locally and then dispersed globally among hosts in the experiment. Elevated resources decreased vector population growth rates, nearly doubled their carrying capacity per host, increased dispersal rates when vectors carried the virus, and homogenised disease risk across space. 5. Together, the models and experiment show how environmental eutrophication can shape spatial disease dynamics-for example, homogenising disease risk across space-by altering the demography and behaviour of vectors.

BackgroundOpsins are the only class of proteins used for light perception in image-forming eyes. Gene duplication and subsequent functional divergence of opsins have played an important role in expanding photoreceptive capabilities of organisms by altering what wavelengths of light are absorbed by photoreceptors (spectral tuning). However, new opsin copies may also acquire novel function or subdivide ancestral functions through changes to temporal, spatial or the level of gene expression. Here, we test how opsin gene copies diversify in function and evolutionary fate by characterizing four rhabdomeric (Gq-protein coupled) opsins in the scallop, Argopecten irradians, identified from tissue-specific transcriptomes.ResultsUnder a phylogenetic analysis, we recovered a pattern consistent with two rounds of duplication that generated the genetic diversity of scallop Gq-opsins. We found strong support for differential expression of paralogous Gq-opsins across ocular and extra-ocular photosensitive tissues, suggesting that scallop Gq-opsins are used in different biological contexts due to molecular alternations outside and within the protein-coding regions. Finally, we used available protein models to predict which amino acid residues interact with the light-absorbing chromophore. Variation in these residues suggests that the four Gq-opsin paralogs absorb different wavelengths of light.ConclusionsOur results uncover novel genetic and functional diversity in the light-sensing structures of the scallop, demonstrating the complicated nature of Gq-opsin diversification after gene duplication. Our results highlight a change in the nearly ubiquitous shadow response in molluscs to a narrowed functional specificity for visual processes in the eyed scallop. Our findings provide a starting point to study how gene duplication may coincide with eye evolution, and more specifically, different ways neofunctionalization of Gq-opsins may occur.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0823-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.