Birds harbor complex gut bacterial communities that may sustain their ecologies and
facilitate their biological roles, distribution, and diversity. Research on gut microbiomes in …

Trait‐based ecology aims to understand the processes that generate the overarching
diversity of organismal traits and their influence on ecosystem functioning. Achieving this …

Functional traits offer a rich quantitative framework for develo** and testing theories in
evolutionary biology, ecology and ecosystem science. However, the potential of functional …

An organism's ability to disperse influences many fundamental processes, from speciation
and geographical range expansion to community assembly. However, the patterns and …

Quantifying the abundance of species is essential to ecology, evolution, and conservation.
The distribution of species abundances is fundamental to numerous longstanding questions …

As human density increases, biodiversity must increasingly co-exist with urbanization or face
local extinction. Tolerance of urban areas has been linked to numerous functional traits, yet …

Identifying species that are both geographically restricted and functionally distinct, ie
supporting rare traits and functions, is of prime importance given their risk of extinction and …

The origin, distribution, and function of biological diversity are fundamental themes of
ecology and evolutionary biology. Research on birds has played a major role in the history …

A longstanding issue in biology is whether the intelligence of animals can be predicted by
absolute or relative brain size. However, progress has been hampered by an insufficient …

After decades of debate, biologists today largely agree that most speciation events require
an allopatric phase (that is, geographic separation), but the role of adaptive ecological …