Multilevel societies (MLSs)-stable nuclear social units within a larger collective encompassing multiple nested social levels-occur in several mammalian lineages. Their architectural complexity and size impose specific demands on their members requiring adaptive solutions in multiple domains. The functional significance of MLSs lies in their members being equipped to reap the benefits of multiple group sizes. Here we propose a unifying terminology and operational definition of MLS. To identify new avenues for integrative research, we synthesise current literature on the selective pressures underlying the evolution of MLSs and their implications for cognition, intersexual conflict, and sexual selection. Mapping the drivers and consequences of MLS provides a reference point for the social evolution of many taxa including our own species.

Tropical forests harbor extremely high levels of biological diversity and are quickly disappearing. Despite the increasingly recognized high rate of habitat loss, it is expected that new species will be discovered as more effort is put to document tropical biodiversity. Exploring under-studied regions is particularly urgent if we consider the rapid changes in habitat due to anthropogenic activities. Madagascar is known for its extraordinary biological diversity and endemicity. It is also threatened by habitat loss and fragmentation. It holds more than 100 endemic primate species (lemurs). Among these, Microcebus (mouse lemurs) is one of the more diverse genera.We sampled mouse lemurs from several sites across northern Madagascar, including forests never sampled before. We obtained morphological data from 99 Microcebus individuals; we extracted DNA from tissue samples of 42 individuals and amplified two mitochondrial loci (cytb and cox2) commonly used for species identification. Our findings update the distribution of three species (Microcebus tavaratra, Microcebus arnholdi, and Microcebus mamiratra), including a major increase in the distribution *Gabriele Maria Sgarlata and Jordi Salmona are shared first co-authors. area of M. arnholdi. We also report the discovery of a new Microcebus lineage genetically related to M. arnholdi. Several complementary approaches suggest that the newly identified Microcebus lineage might correspond to a new putative species, to be confirmed or rejected with additional data. In addition, morphological analyses showed (a) clear phenotypic differences between M. tavaratra and M. arnholdi, but no clear differences between the new Microcebus lineage and the sister species M. arnholdi; and (b) a significant correlation between climatic variables and morphology, suggesting a possible relationship between species identity, morphology, and environment. By integrating morphological, climatic, genetic, and spatial data of two northern Microcebus species, we show that the spatial distribution of forestdwelling species may be used as a proxy to reconstruct the past spatial changes in forest cover and vegetation type.

Leader election is one of the fundamental problems in distributed computing. It calls for all nodes of a network to agree on a single node, called the leader . If the nodes of the network have distinct labels, then agreeing on a single node means that all nodes have to output the label of the elected leader. If the nodes of the network are anonymous, the task of leader election is formulated as follows: every node v of the network must output a simple path, which is coded as a sequence of port numbers, such that all these paths end at a common node, the leader. In this article, we study deterministic leader election in anonymous trees. Our aim is to establish tradeoffs between the allocated time τ and the amount of information that has to be given a priori to the nodes to enable leader election in time τ in all trees for which leader election in this time is at all possible. Following the framework of algorithms with advice , this information (a single binary string) is provided to all nodes at the start by an oracle knowing the entire tree. The length of this string is called the size of advice . For a given time τ allocated to leader election, we give upper and lower bounds on the minimum size of advice sufficient to perform leader election in time τ. For most values of τ, our upper and lower bounds are either tight up to multiplicative constants, or they differ only by a logarithmic factor. Let T be an n -node tree of diameter diam ⩽ D . While leader election in time diam can be performed without any advice, for time diam − 1 we give tight upper and lower bounds of Θ(log D ). For time diam − 2 we give tight upper and lower bounds of Θ(log D ) for even values of diam , and tight upper and lower bounds of Θ(log n ) for odd values of diam . Moving to shorter time, in the interval [β · diam , diam − 3] for constant β > 1/2, we prove an upper bound of O ( n log n / D ) and a lower bound of Ω( n / D ), the latter being valid whenever diam is odd or when the time is at most diam − 4. Hence, with the exception of the special case when diam is even and time is exactly diam − 3, our bounds leave only a logarithmic gap in this time interval. Finally, for time α · diam for any constant α < 1/2 (except for the case of very small diameters), we again give tight upper and lower bounds, this time Θ( n ).

Delimitation of cryptic species is increasingly based on genetic analyses but the integration of distributional, morphological, behavioral, and ecological data offers unique complementary insights into species diversification. We surveyed communities of nocturnal mouse lemurs (Microcebus spp.) in five different sites of northeastern Madagascar, measuring a variety of morphological parameters and assessing reproductive states for 123 individuals belonging to five different lineages. We documented two different non‐sister lineages occurring in sympatry in two areas. In both cases, sympatric species pairs consisted of a locally restricted (M. macarthurii or M. sp. #3) and a more widespread lineage (M. mittermeieri or M. lehilahytsara). Estimated Extents of Occurrence (EOO) of these lineages differed remarkably with 560 and 1,500 km2 versus 9,250 and 50,700 km2, respectively. Morphometric analyses distinguished unambiguously between sympatric species and detected more subtle but significant differences among sister lineages. Tail length and body size were most informative in this regard. Reproductive schedules were highly variable among lineages, most likely impacted by phylogenetic relatedness and environmental variables. While sympatric species pairs differed in their reproductive timing (M. sp. #3/M. lehilahytsara and M. macarthurii/M. mittermeieri), warmer lowland rainforests were associated with a less seasonal reproductive schedule for M. mittermeieri and M. lehilahytsara compared with populations occurring in montane forests. Distributional, morphological, and ecological data gathered in this study support the results of genomic species delimitation analyses conducted in a companion study, which identified one lineage, M. sp. #3, as meriting formal description as a new species. Consequently, a formal species description is included. Worryingly, our data also show that geographically restricted populations of M. sp. #3 and its sister species (M. macarthurii) are at high risk of local and perhaps permanent extinction from both deforestation and habitat fragmentation.

In rendezvous, two agents traverse network edges in synchronous rounds and have to meet at some node. In treasure hunt, a single agent has to find a stationary target situated at an unknown node of the network. We study tradeoffs between the amount of information (advice) available a priori to the agents and the cost (number of edge traversals) of rendezvous and treasure hunt. Our goal is to find the smallest size of advice which enables the agents to solve these tasks at some cost C in a network with e edges. This size turns out to depend on the initial distance D and on the ratio e C , which is the relative cost gain due to advice. For arbitrary graphs, we give upper and lower bounds of O(D log(D · e C ) + log log e) and Ω(D log e C ), respectively, on the optimal size of advice. For the class of trees, we give nearly tight upper and lower bounds of O(D log e C + log log e) and Ω(D log e C ), respectively.

Two mobile agents, starting from different nodes of a network at possibly different times, have to meet at the same node. This problem is known as rendezvous. Agents move in synchronous rounds. Each agent has a distinct integer label from the set {1, . . . , L}.Two main efficiency measures of rendezvous are its time (the number of rounds until the meeting) and its cost (the total number of edge traversals). We investigate tradeoffs between these two measures. A natural benchmark for both time and cost of rendezvous in a network is the number of edge traversals needed for visiting all nodes of the network, called the exploration time. Hence we express the time and cost of rendezvous as functions of an upper bound E on the time of exploration (where E and a corresponding exploration procedure are known to both agents) and of the size L of the label space. We present two natural rendezvous algorithms. Algorithm Cheap has cost O(E) (and, in fact, a version of this algorithm for the model where the agents start simultaneously has cost exactly E) and time O(EL). Algorithm Fast has both time and cost O(E log L). Our main contributions are lower bounds showing that, perhaps surprisingly, these two algorithms capture the tradeoffs between time and cost of rendezvous almost tightly. We show that any deterministic rendezvous algorithm of cost asymptotically E (i.e., of cost E + o(E)) must have time Ω(EL). On the other hand, we show that any deterministic rendezvous algorithm with time complexity O(E log L) must have cost Ω(E log L).

Broadcast is one of the fundamental network communication primitives. One node of a network, called the source, has a message that has to be learned by all other nodes. We consider broadcast in radio networks, modeled as simple undirected connected graphs with a distinguished source. Nodes communicate in synchronous rounds. In each round, a node can either transmit a message to all its neighbours, or stay silent and listen. At the receiving end, a node v hears a message from a neighbour w in a given round if v listens in this round and if w is its only neighbour that transmits in this round. If more than one neighbour of a node v transmits in a given round, we say that a collision occurs at v. We do not assume collision detection: in case of a collision, node v does not hear anything (except the background noise that it also hears when no neighbour transmits).We are interested in the feasibility of deterministic broadcast in radio networks. If nodes of the network do not have any labels, deterministic broadcast is impossible even in the fourcycle. On the other hand, if all nodes have distinct labels, then broadcast can be carried out, e.g., in a round-robin fashion, and hence O(log n)-bit labels are sufficient for this task in n-node networks. In fact, O(log ∆)-bit labels, where ∆ is the maximum degree, are enough to broadcast successfully. Hence, it is natural to ask if very short labels are sufficient for broadcast. Our main result is a positive answer to this question. We show that every radio network can be labeled using 2 bits in such a way that broadcast can be accomplished by some universal deterministic algorithm that does not know the network topology nor any bound on its size. Moreover, at the expense of an extra bit in the labels, we can get the following additional strong property of our algorithm: there exists a common round in which all nodes know that broadcast has been completed. Finally, we show that 3-bit labels are also sufficient to solve both versions of broadcast in the case where the labeling scheme does not know which node is the source.

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