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Realized trophic niches of predators are often characterized along a one-dimensional range in predator-prey body mass ratios. This prey range is constrained by an "energy limit" and a "subdue limit" toward small and large prey, respectively. Besides these body mass ratios, maximum speed is an additional key component in most predator-prey interactions.Here, we extend the concept of a one-dimensional prey range to a two-dimensional prey space by incorporating a hump-shaped speed-body mass relation. This new "speed limit" additionally constrains trophic niches of predators toward fast prey.To test this concept of two-dimensional prey spaces for different hunting strategies (pursuit, group, and ambush predation), we synthesized data on 63 terrestrial mammalian predator-prey interactions, their body masses, and maximum speeds.We found that pursuit predators hunt smaller and slower prey, whereas group hunters focus on larger but mostly slower prey and ambushers are more flexible. learn more Group hunters and ambushers have evolved different strategies to occupy a similar trophic niche that avoids competition with pursuit predators. Moreover, our concept suggests energetic optima of these hunting strategies along a body mass axis and thereby provides mechanistic explanations for why there are no small group hunters (referred to as "micro-lions") or mega-carnivores (referred to as "mega-cheetahs").Our results demonstrate that advancing the concept of prey ranges to prey spaces by adding the new dimension of speed will foster a new and mechanistic understanding of predator trophic niches and improve our predictions of predator-prey interactions, food web structure, and ecosystem functions.Positive selection may be the main factor of the between-population divergence in gene expression. Expression profiles of two Drosophila melanogaster laboratory strains of different geographical origin and long-term laboratory maintenance were analyzed using microchip arrays encompassing probes for 18,500 transcripts. The Russian strain D18 and the North American strain Canton-S were compared. A set of 223 known or putative genes demonstrated significant changes in expression levels between these strains. Differentially expressed genes (DEG) were enriched in response to DDT (p = .0014), proteolysis (p = 2.285E-5), transmembrane transport (p = 1.03E-4), carbohydrate metabolic process (p = .0317), protein homotetramerization (p = .0444), and antibacterial humoral response (p = 425E-4). The expression in subset of genes from different categories was verified by qRT-PCR. Analysis of transcript abundance between Canton-S and D18 strains allowed to select several genes to estimate their participation in latitude adaptation. Expression of selected genes was analyzed in five D. melanogaster lines of different geographic origins by qRT-PCR, and we found two candidate genes that may be associated with latitude adaptation in adult flies-smp-30 and Cda9. Quite possible that several alleles of these genes may be important for insect survival in the environments of global warming. It is interesting that the number of genes involved in local adaptation demonstrates expression level appropriate to their geographical origin even after decades of laboratory maintenance.Our knowledge of fundamental drivers of terrestrial net primary production (NPP) is crucial for improving the predictability of ecosystem stability under global climate change. However, the patterns and determinants of NPP are not fully understood, especially in the riparian zone ecosystem disturbed by periodic drought-rewetting (DRW) cycles. The environmental (flooding time, pH, moisture, and clay content) and nutritional properties (soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, ammonium (NH4+-N), nitrate (NO3--N), and CNP stoichiometry) were investigated in the riparian zone of Pengxi River-a typical tributary of Three Gorges Reservoir (TGR). Structure equation modeling was performed to evaluate the relative importance of environmental and nutritional properties on NPP of Cynodon dactylon (Linn.) Pers (C. dactylon)-a dominating plant in the riparian zone of TGR. Our results indicated that NPP was much lower under much severe flooding stress. All of these variables could predict 46% of the NPP variance. Nutrient use efficiency (NUE) was one of the most critical predictor shaping the change of NPP. Specifically, flooding stress as a major driver had a direct positive effect on soil moisture and soil clay content. The soil clay content positively affects the soil C N ratio, which further had an indirect negative impact on NPP by mediating NUE. Overall, our study provided a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the combined effect of environmental and nutrient factors on NPP and showed that continuous DRW cycles induced by hydrological regime stimulate the decrease of NPP of C. dactylon by changing NUE strategies. Further research is needed to explore the responses of NPP and NUE under different land use to DRW cycles and to investigate the DRW effects on the combined effect of environmental and nutrient factors by in situ experiments and long-term studies.To investigate the structural changes of a food-web architecture, we considered real data coming from a soil food web in one abandoned pasture with former low-pressure agriculture management and we reproduced the corresponding ecological network within a multi-agent fully programmable modeling environment in order to simulate dynamically the cascading effects due to the removal of entire functional guilds.We performed several simulations differing from each other for the functional implications. At the first trophic level, we simulated a removal of the prey, that is, herbivores and microbivores, while at the second trophic level, we simulated a removal of the predators, that is, omnivores and carnivores. The five main guilds were removed either separately or in combination.The alteration in the food-web architecture induced by the removal of entire functional guilds was the highest when the entire second trophic level was removed, while the removal of all microbivores caused an alteration in the food-web structure of less than 5% of the total changes due to the removal of opportunistic and predatory species.