In previous years, such in situ deaths had occurred only in association with heavy mosquito parasitism (Gaston et al., 2002; A.J. Gaston, unpubl. data). A minimum of 25 additional deaths were observed elsewhere on the colony, but the total number of deaths was probably higher: our observations covered only a small part of the mosquito-affected zone, as large parts of the colony were not visible from the cliff top.

Northern Hudson Bay, Canada, has been subject to recent temperature increases (Galbraith and Larouche, 2011) and is situated on the borderline between Low and High Arctic regions, making it a particularly suitable area for the study of climate change effects. Their proximity to the Low/High Arctic boundary makes local ecosystems susceptible to rapid transition from food webs characteristic of the High Arctic to more Low Arctic configurations.

Our study was conducted predominantly within the tropical montane forest of the Talamanca Cordillera, but also included data from lowland forests of the Pacific slope (Figure 2). Both lowland and highland sites are characterized by a dry season (December-April) and a wet season (May-November), with average annual precipitation ranging from 300 to 800 cm. The average temperature in the highlands varies between 10–20°C; lowland temperatures average 24–32°C (CCSA, 2019; Herrera, 2004).

Our results support the underlying assumptions of the predation risk and visual acuity models, but indicate that neither can fully predict lunar-related activity patterns. With diurnal human “super predators” forcing a global increase in activity during the night by mammals, our findings can contribute to a better understanding of nocturnal activity patterns and the development of conservation approaches to mitigate forced temporal niche shifts.

In non-clonal organisms, single-generation breeding designs and parent–offspring comparisons can be used to estimate additive genetic variance (h2), the variance component that can readily respond to selection (variance due to heritable, genetic variation that is additive in nature)

Quantitative genetics approaches use comparisons among relatives with known genetic relatedness to partition observed phenotypic variance into their environmental and genetic components [13]. The advantage of these methods is that they can be applied to a range of organisms without requiring prior molecular genetic information and they can focus directly on fitness traits with no need to identify the specific genes involved.

Ocean acidification – the increase in partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) and reduction in pH associated with uptake of fossil fuel-derived CO2 from the atmosphere – profoundly alters the inorganic conditions of the oceans. Although increased pCO2 can enhance photosynthesis and growth of photoautotrophic organisms, ocean acidification is a stressor for many organisms (i.e., decreases fitness, reviewed in [4]).

Temperature also affected the behavioural preferences of the infauna associated with mussels. Polychaetes, crustaceans, and molluscs altered their behaviour to colonise the habitat created by one species of mussel to another. This altered behavioural preference of infauna can be driven by habitat-specific cues and the ability of infauna to make habitat choices

After the 4-week acclimation period, the mussels were defaunated by carefully removing all infauna and separating adult mussels (>1 cm) into 10-cm-diameter clumps (Cole, 2010).

The outdoor experiment was performed in a purpose-built facility (Pereira et al., 2019) at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science (SIMS), Chowder Bay, Sydney Harbour, New South Wales, Australia. The experiment was performed during the summer peak recruitment period of marine invertebrates in Sydney Harbour.