Resurveys of historical collecting localities have revealed range shifts, primarily leading edge expansions, which have been attributed to global warming. However, there have been few spatially replicated community-scale resurveys testing whether species' responses are spatially consistent. Here we repeated early twentieth century surveys of small mammals along elevational gradients in northern, central and southern regions of montane California. Of the 34 species we analysed, 25 shifted their ranges upslope or downslope in at least one region. However, two-thirds of ranges in the three regions remained stable at one or both elevational limits and none of the 22 species found in all three regions shifted both their upper and lower limits in the same direction in all regions. When shifts occurred, high-elevation species typically contracted their lower limits upslope, whereas low-elevation species had heterogeneous responses. For high-elevation species, site-specific change in temperature better predicted the direction of shifts than change in precipitation, whereas the direction of shifts by low-elevation species was unpredictable by temperature or precipitation. While our results support previous findings of primarily upslope shifts in montane species, they also highlight the degree to which the responses of individual species vary across geographically replicated landscapes.

The passerine family Meliphagidae (the honeyeaters) comprises 175–180 species in 40–50 genera. It is an iconic element of the Australo‐Papuan avifauna and also occurs in Indonesia and on remote Pacific Ocean islands. Building on previous molecular studies that have pioneered a renewed understanding of the family's circumscription and systematics, we present an updated phylogenetic and systematics synthesis of honeyeaters derived from 112 mostly Australian, New Guinean and Wallacean species‐ and subspecies‐rank taxa aligned across 9246 positions spanning four mitochondrial and four nuclear genes. We affirm many of the recent changes advocated to the group's genus‐level systematics and offer some further refinements. The group's radiation appears to coincide broadly with the aridification of Australia in the Miocene, consistent with the time of origin of diversification of extant lineages in several other groups of Australian organisms. Most importantly, the complexity of the biogeography underlying the group's spectacular radiation, especially within Australia, is now apparent. Foremost among such examples is the robust evidence indicating that multiple, independent lineages of honeyeaters, including several monotypic genera, are endemic to the Australian arid zone, presumably having diverged and evolved within it. Also apparent and warranting further study are the phenotypic diversity among close relatives and the remarkably disjunct distributions within some clades, perhaps implying extinction of geographically intermediate lineages. Given such complexity, understanding the evolution of this radiation, which has thus far been intractable, relies on integration of molecular data with morphology, ecology and behaviour.

Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly applied to predict species ' responses to anticipated global change, but lack of data from future time periods precludes assessment of their reliability. Instead, performance against test data in the same era is assumed to correlate with accuracy in the future. Moreover, high-confi dence absence data is required for testing model accuracy but is often unavailable since a species may be present when undetected. Here we evaluate the performance of eight SDMs trained with historic (1900 -1939) or modern (1970 -2009) climate data and occurrence records for 18 mammalian species. Models were projected to the same or the opposing time period and evaluated with data obtained from surveys conducted by Joseph Grinnell and his colleagues in the Sierra Nevada of California from 1900 to 1939 and modern resurveys from 2003 to 2011. Occupancy modeling was used to confi dently assign absences at test sites where species were undetected. SDMs were evaluated using species ' presences combined with this high-confi dence absence (HCA) set, a low-confi dence set in which non-detections were assumed to indicate absence (LCA), and randomly located ' pseudoabsences ' (PSA). Model performance increased signifi cantly with the quality of absences (mean AUC Ϯ SE: 0.76 Ϯ 0.01 for PSA, 0.79 Ϯ 0.01 for LCA, and 0.81 Ϯ 0.01 for HCA), and apparent diff erences between SDMs declined as the quality of test absences increased. Models projecting across time performed as well as when projecting within the same time period when assessed with threshold-independent metrics. However, accuracy of presence and absence predictions sometimes declined in cross-era projections. Although most variation in performance occurred among species, autecological traits were only weakly correlated with model accuracy. Our study indicates that a) the quality of evaluation data aff ects assessments of model performance; b) within-era performance correlates positively but unreliably with cross-era performance; and c) SDMs can be reliably but cautiously projected across time.

Background: Distributional responses by alpine taxa to repeated, glacial-interglacial cycles throughout the last two million years have signi cantly in uenced the spatial genetic structure of populations. These effects have been exacerbated for the American pika (Ochotona princeps), a small alpine lagomorph constrained by thermal sensitivity and a limited dispersal capacity. As a species of conservation concern, long-term lack of gene ow has important consequences for landscape genetic structure and levels of diversity within populations. Here, we use reduced representation sequencing (ddRADseq) to provide a genome-wide perspective on patterns of genetic variation across pika populations representing distinct subspecies. To investigate how landscape and environmental features shape genetic variation, we collected genetic samples from distinct geographic regions as well as across ner spatial scales in two geographically proximate mountain ranges of eastern Nevada. Results: Our genome-wide analyses corroborate range-wide, mitochondrial subspeci c designations and reveal pronounced ne-scale population structure between the Ruby Mountains and East Humboldt Range of eastern Nevada. Populations in Nevada were characterized by low genetic diversity (=0.0006-0.0009; W =0.0005-0.0007) relative to populations in California (=0.0014-0.0019; W =0.0011-0.0017) and the Rocky Mountains (=0.0025-0.0027; W =0.0021-0.0024), indicating substantial genetic drift in these isolated populations. Tajima's D was positive for all sites (D=0.240-0.811), consistent with recent contraction in population sizes range-wide. Conclusions: Substantial in uences of geography, elevation and climate variables on genetic differentiation were also detected and may interact with the regional effects of anthropogenic climate change to force the loss of unique genetic lineages through continued population extirpations in the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada.

Twenty-two children (5-12 year old) who were profoundly, prelingually deaf were given two tests designed to tap their 'theory of mind', that is, their ability to attribute independent mental states to other people. The tests were versions of Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith's Sally-Anne task and of Baron-Cohen's breakfast task. Seventy percent of the children were successful on all questions requiring belief attribution, a considerably and significantly larger percentage than the 29% obtained by Peterson and Siegal for a similar sample, though it is still lower than would be expected on the basis on chronological age. Children were universally successful on questions requiring the attribution of desire. We discuss implications of the findings.

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Invasive species can have complex invasion histories, harbor cryptic levels of diversity, and pose taxonomic problems for pest management authorities. Roof rats, Rattus rattus sensu lato, are common invasive pests of the San Francisco Bay Area in California, USA. They are a significant health risk and pest management efforts impose a large financial investment from public institutions and private individuals. Recent molecular genetic and taxonomic studies of black rats in their native range in Asia have shown that the species is a complex of two karyotypic forms and four mitochondrial genetic lineages that may represent four distinct species. We used mtDNA sequences and nuclear microsatellite variation to identify which mitochondrial lineages of the R. rattus group are present in the San Francisco Bay Area and to test for gene flow among them. We recovered specimens with mtDNA sequences representing two of the major mtDNA lineages of the R. rattus group. Microsatellite variation, however, was not structured in concordance with mtDNA lineages, suggesting a more complex history involving hybridization and introgression between these lineages. Although Aplin et al. (2011) andLack et al. (2012) reported R. rattus Lineage II in North America, this is the first detailed examination of possible gene flow amongst lineages in this region.

Archipelagoes serve as important ‘natural laboratories’ which facilitate the study of island radiations and contribute to the understanding of evolutionary processes. The white-eye genus Zosterops is a classical example of a ‘great speciator’, comprising c. 100 species from across the Old World, most of them insular. We achieved an extensive geographic DNA sampling of Zosterops by using historical specimens and recently collected samples. Using over 700 genome-wide loci in conjunction with coalescent species tree methods and gene flow detection approaches, we untangled the reticulated evolutionary history of Zosterops, which comprises three main clades centered in Indo-Africa, Asia, and Australasia, respectively. Genetic introgression between species permeates the Zosterops phylogeny, regardless of how distantly related species are. Crucially, we identified the Indonesian archipelago, and specifically Borneo, as the major center of diversity and the only area where all three main clades overlap, attesting to the evolutionary importance of this region.