While climate change is recognized as a major future threat to biodiversity, most species are currently threatened by extensive human-induced habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation. Tropical high-altitude alpine and montane forest ecosystems and their biodiversity are particularly sensitive to temperature increases under climate change, but they are also subject to accelerated pressures from land conversion and degradation due to a growing human population. https://www.selleckchem.com/Bcl-2.html We studied the combined effects of anthropogenic land-use change, past and future climate changes and mountain range isolation on the endemic Ethiopian Highlands long-eared bat, Plecotus balensis, an understudied bat that is restricted to the remnant natural high-altitude Afroalpine and Afromontane habitats. We integrated ecological niche modelling, landscape genetics and model-based inference to assess the genetic, geographic and demographic impacts of past and recent environmental changes. We show that mountain range isolation and historic climates shaped population structure and patterns of genetic variation, but recent anthropogenic land-use change and habitat degradation are associated with a severe population decline and loss of genetic diversity. Models predict that the suitable niche of this bat has been progressively shrinking since the last glaciation period. This study highlights threats to Afroalpine and Afromontane biodiversity, squeezed to higher altitudes under climate change while losing genetic diversity and suffering population declines due to anthropogenic land-use change. We conclude that the conservation of tropical montane biodiversity requires a holistic approach, using genetic, ecological and geographic information to understand the effects of environmental changes across temporal scales and simultaneously addressing the impacts of multiple threats.Biological invasion is a global problem with large negative impacts on ecosystems and human societies. When a species is introduced, individuals will first have to pass through the invasion stages of uptake and transport, before actual introduction in a non-native range. Selection is predicted to act during these earliest stages of biological invasion, potentially influencing the invasiveness and/or impact of introduced populations. Despite this potential impact of pre-introduction selection, empirical tests are virtually lacking. To test the hypothesis of pre-introduction selection, we followed the fate of individuals during capture, initial acclimation, and captivity in two bird species with several invasive populations originating from the international trade in wild-caught pets (the weavers Ploceus melanocephalus and Euplectes afer). We confirm that pre-introduction selection acts on a wide range of physiological, morphological, behavioral, and demographic traits (incl. sex, age, size of body/brain/bill, bill shape, body mass, corticosterone levels, and escape behavior); these are all traits which likely affect invasion success. Our study thus comprehensively demonstrates the existence of hitherto ignored selection acting before the actual introduction into non-native ranges. This could ultimately change the composition and functioning of introduced populations, and therefore warrants greater attention. More knowledge on pre-introduction selection also might provide novel targets for the management of invasive species, if pre-introduction filters can be adjusted to change the quality and/or quantity of individuals passing through such that invasion probability and/or impacts are reduced.Resident microbes (microbiota) can shape host organismal function and adaptation in the face of environmental change. Invasion of new habitats exposes hosts to novel selection pressures, but little is known about the impact on microbiota and the host-microbiome relationship (e.g., how rapidly new microbial associations are formed, whether microbes influence invasion success). We used high-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing of New Zealand (native) and European (invasive) populations of the freshwater snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum and found that while invaders do carry over some core microbial taxa from New Zealand, their microbial community is largely distinct. This finding highlights that invasions can result in the formation of novel host-microbiome relationships. We further show that the native microbiome is composed of fewer core microbes than the microbiome of invasive snails, suggesting that the microbiota is streamlined to a narrower set of core members. Furthermore, native snails exhibit relatively low alpha diversity but high inter-individual variation, whereas invasive snails have higher alpha diversity but are relatively similar to each other. Together, our findings demonstrate that microbiota comparisons across native and invasive populations can reveal the impact of a long coevolutionary history and specialization of microbes in the native host range, as well as new associations occurring after invasion. We lay essential groundwork for understanding how microbial relationships affect invasion success and how microbes may be utilized in the control of invasive hosts.Hybridization may increase the probability of adaptation to extreme stresses. This advantage could be caused by an increased genome plasticity in hybrids, which could accelerate the search for adaptive mutations. High ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a particular challenge in terms of adaptation because it affects the viability of organisms by directly damaging DNA, while also challenging future generations by increasing mutation rate. Here we test whether hybridization accelerates adaptive evolution in response to DNA damage, using yeast as a model. We exposed 180 populations of hybrids between species (Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus) and their parental strains to UV mimetic and control conditions for approximately 100 generations. Although we found that adaptation occurs in both hybrids and parents, hybrids achieved a lower rate of adaptation, contrary to our expectations. Adaptation to DNA damage conditions comes with a large and similar cost for parents and hybrids, suggesting that this cost is not responsible for the lower adaptability of hybrids.