Maojun Zhong

Northeast Normal University · School of Life Sciences

Aim Mountain systems harbour disproportionate biodiversity on Earth. However, the mechanism underlying community assembly along elevational gradients remains unclear due to the complexity of environmental constraints and biotic interactions. Birds play a crucial role in mountain system and are sensitive to environmental changes, making them an idea...

Predator–prey interactions are important but difficult to study in the field. Therefore, laboratory studies are often used to examine the outcomes of predator–prey interactions. Previous laboratory studies have shown that moth hearing and ultrasound production can help prey avoid being eaten by bats. We report here that laboratory behavioural outco...

Moths are among the most diverse and abundant animals. They have evolved a suite of acoustic defenses, such as producing ultrasound to guard against predation by low-duty-cycle bats. Recently, we found that the ultrasonic clicks of several moth species can also help decrease the capture success of high-duty-cycle bats. We tested whether moth clicks...

While crypsis is a prominent antipredator adaptation, the role of the brain in predator-driven evolution remains controversial. Resolving this controversy requires contextualizing the brain with established antipredator traits and predation pressure. We hypothesize that the reduced predation risk through crypsis relaxes predation-driven selection o...

Aim Mountain systems offer excellent opportunities to understand β‐diversity patterns and the processes driving them. However, β‐diversity patterns and the underlying mechanisms that lead to dissimilarity in mountain amphibian communities across elevational gradients remain elusive. We aimed to evaluate how amphibian communities respond to environm...

Combining morphological and molecular data, we describe a new amphibian species of the genus Kurixalus Ye, Fei, & Dubois, 1999 from the Qionglai Mountain within the western margin of the Sichuan Basin in China. Kurixalus qionglaiensis sp. nov. can be diagnosed based on a combination of the following morphological characters: medium-sized within gen...

Background Spatial variation of land cover can result in the changes of community similarities and biotic homogenization, whereby the increasing similarity would reduce the adaptive capacity of biotic assemblages to further disturbance, and degenerate ecosystem services they offer. However, it remains scarce to integrate multidimensional diversity...

Mountain systems harbor an evolutionarily unique and exceptionally rich biodiversity, especially for amphibians. However, the associated elevational gradients and underlying mechanisms of amphibian diversity in most mountain systems remain poorly understood. Here, we explored amphibian phylogenetic and functional diversity along a 2 600 m elevation...

Sperm competition is often considered the primary selective force underlying the rapid and diversifying evolution of ejaculate traits. Yet, several recent studies have drawn attention to other forms of selection with the potential of exceeding the effects of sperm competition. Since ejaculates are complex, multivariate traits, it seems plausible th...

Vertebrate eye size typically scales hypoallemetrically with body size—as animals grow larger their eyes get relatively smaller. Additionally, eye size is highly variable across species, and such variability often reflects functional adaptations to differences in behavior and/or ecology. The selective pressures underlying the evolution of eye size...

Understanding how environmental stress modifies life-history traits of vertebrates is highly important for their conservation and management. Amphibians, in particular, have experienced rapid declines in abundance due to their relatively low mobility and strict physiological constraints. Therefore, it is important to understand how amphibians have...

Environmental variation can promote differentiation in life-history traits in species of anurans. Increased environmental stress usually results in larger age at sexual maturity, older mean age, longer longevity, slower growth, larger body size, and a shift in reproductive allocation from offspring quantity to quality, and a stronger trade-off betw...

The 'cognitive buffer' hypothesis predicts that the costs of relatively large brains are compensated for later in life by the increased benefits of large brains providing a higher chance of survival under changing environments through flexible behaviors in the animal kingdom. Thus, animals that live in a larger range (with a higher probability of e...

The challenges of seasonal environments are thought to contribute to brain evolution, but in which way is debated. According to the Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis (CBH) brain size should increase with seasonality, as the cognitive benefits of a larger brain should help overcoming periods of food scarcity via, for instance, increased behavioral flexibi...

The evolution of sperm quality and quantity is shaped by various selective processes, with sperm competition generally considered the primary selective agent. Particularly in external fertilizers, however, sperm limitation through gamete dispersal can also influence gamete investments, but empirical data examining this effect are limited. Here, we...

Phenotypic flexibility of morphological characters is widespread in the animal kingdom. In the present paper, we investigated altitudinal variation in organ size (heart, lungs, livers, kidneys and digestive tract) in the spot-legged treefrog (Polypedates megacephalus) across three populations along an altitudinal gradient in southwestern China. Bot...

Muscles are vital for the process of movement, mating and escape of predators in amphibians. During evolution, the morphological and genetic characteristics as well as the size of muscles in species will change to adapt different environments. Theory predicts that low male-male competition in high-altitude/latitude selects for small limb muscles. H...

The digestive tract provides a functional relationship between energy intake and allocation. An understanding of the causes for the effects of environmental factors on the evolution of digestive tract morphology across different environments is especially important. In the view, variation in digestive tract length associated with temperature and pr...

The digestive tract provides a functional relationship between energy intake and allocation. An understanding of effects of environmental factors on the evolution of digestive tract morphology is especially important. To investigate this, we studied the variation in digestive tract length across 10 populations of the Andrew’s toad (Bufo andrewsi) b...

The Expensive Brain Framework (EBF) and the Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis are commonly used to explain inter- and intraspecific variation in brain size and brain architecture. Using Andrew’s toad (Bufo andrewsi) as a model species, we investigated whether brain attributes in amphibians are shaped by the interplay between age and the length of the act...