Alison Eyres

RSPB · RSPB Centre for Conservation Science

Body size evolution has long been hypothesized to have been driven by factors linked to climate change, but the specific mechanisms are difficult to disentangle due to the wide range of functional traits that covary with body size. In this study, we investigated the impact of regional habitat changes as a potential indirect effect of climate change...

Distribution data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey shows an increasing mismatch between species distribution and climate.

One of the most general expectations of species range dynamics is that widespread species tend to have broader niches. However, it remains unclear how this rela- tionship is expressed at different levels of biological organisation, which involve potentially distinctive processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Here, we show that...

Climatic niches describe the climatic conditions in which species can persist. Shifts in climatic niches have been observed to coincide with major climatic change, suggesting that species adapt to new conditions. We test the relationship between rates of climatic niche evolution and paleo‐climatic conditions through time for 71 Old‐World flycatcher...

The question of whether migratory birds track a specific climatic niche by seasonal movements has important implications for understanding the evolution of migration, the factors affecting species' distributions, and the responses of migrants to climate change. Despite much research, previous studies of bird migration have produced mixed results. H...

Aim We advocate an interdisciplinary approach to biogeography, integrating geology and paleobiology to examine how biodiversity dynamics evolved as mountain ranges formed through (geological) time. Location Global; case study: Anatolia (Turkey). Methods We discuss the links between surface uplift and biodiversity dynamics and review recent develo...

Quantification of the climatic niche from geographic occurrences is an increasingly important tool for studying species’ relationships to their environment, for example to predict responses to climate change. However, as the geographic distributions of birds are seasonally dynamic, they pose a challenge to carrying out comparable and appropriate qu...

Pectobacterium atrosepticum (Pca) is a Gram-negative phytopathogen which causes disease by secreting plant cell wall degrading exoenzymes (PCWDEs). Previous studies have shown that PCWDE production is regulated by (i) the intercellular quorum sensing (QS) signal molecule, 3-oxo-hexanoyl-l-homoserine lactone (OHHL), and (ii) the intracellular ‘alarm...

All microbes trigger immune responses in plants via host pattern recognition receptors (PRR's) that detect pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Successful pathogens suppress PAMP-triggered immunity (PTI) by secreting virulence effectors to the host apoplast or delivering them intracellularly during host cell colonization. The oomycete pa...

After initiation of the leaf primordium, biomass accumulation is controlled mainly by cell proliferation and expansion in the leaves1. However, the Arabidopsis leaf is a complex organ made up of many different cell types and several structures. At the same time, the growing leaf contains cells at different stages of development, with the cells furt...