The impact of parental and developmental stress on DNA methylation in the avian hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis coordinates an organism's response to environmental stress. The responsiveness and sensitivity of an offspring's stress response may be shaped not only by stressors encountered in their early post-natal environment but also by stressors in their parent's environment. Yet, few studies have considered how stressors encountered in both of these early life environments may function together to impact the developing HPA axis. Here, we manipulated stressors in the parental and post-natal environments in a population of house sparrows (Passer domesticus) to assess their impact on changes in DNA methylation (and corresponding gene expression) in a suite of genes within the HPA axis. We found that nestlings that experienced early life stress across both life-history periods had higher DNA methylation in a critical HPA axis gene, the glucocorticoid receptor (NR3C1). In addition, we found that the life-history stage when stress was encountered impacted some genes (HSD11B1, NR3C1 and NR3C2) differently. We also found evidence for the mitigation of parental stress by post-natal stress (in HSD11B1 and NR3C2). Finally, by assessing DNA methylation in both the brain and blood, we were able to evaluate cross-tissue patterns. While some differentially methylated regions were tissue-specific, we found cross-tissue changes in NR3C2 and NR3C1, suggesting that blood is a suitable tissue for assessing DNA methylation as a biomarker of early life stress. Our results provide a crucial first step in understanding the mechanisms by which early life stress in different life-history periods contributes to changes in the epigenome of the HPA axis.

Epigenetic modification of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during development in the house sparrow (Passer domesticus).

Epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation are important mechanisms for mediating developmental plasticity, where ontogenetic processes and their phenotypic outcomes are shaped by early environments. In particular, changes in DNA methylation of genes within the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis can impact offspring growth and development. This relationship has been well documented in mammals but is less understood in other taxa. Here, we use target-enriched enzymatic methyl sequencing (TEEM-seq) to assess how DNA methylation in a suite of 25 genes changes over development, how these modifications relate to the early environment, and how they predict differential growth trajectories in the house sparrow (Passer domesticus). We found that DNA methylation changes dynamically over the postnatal developmental period: genes with initially low DNA methylation tended to decline in methylation over development, whereas genes with initially high DNA methylation tended to increase in methylation. However, sex-specific differentially methylated regions (DMRs) were maintained across the developmental period. We also found significant differences in post-hatching DNA methylation in relation to hatch date, with higher levels of DNA methylation in nestlings hatched earlier in the season. Although these differences were largely absent by the end of development, a number of DMRs in HPA-related genes (CRH, MC2R, NR3C1, NR3C2, POMC)-and to a lesser degree HPG-related genes (GNRHR2)-predicted nestling growth trajectories over development. These findings provide insight into the mechanisms by which the early environment shapes DNA methylation in the HPA axis, and how these changes subsequently influence growth and potentially mediate developmental plasticity.

Environmental quality mediates the ecological dominance of cooperatively breeding birds.

Although social species as diverse as humans and ants are among the most abundant organisms on Earth, animals cooperate and form groups for many reasons. How these different reasons for grouping affect a species' ecological dominance remains unknown. Here we use a theoretical model to demonstrate that the different fitness benefits that animals receive by forming groups depend on the quality of their environment, which in turn impacts their ecological dominance and resilience to global change. We then test the model's key predictions using phylogenetic comparative analysis of >6500 bird species. As predicted, we find that cooperative breeders occurring in harsh and fluctuating environments have larger ranges and greater abundances than non-cooperative breeders, but cooperative breeders occurring in benign and stable environments do not. Using our model, we further show that social species living in harsh and fluctuating environments will be less vulnerable to climate change than non-social species.

Higher temperature variability in deforested mountain regions impacts the competitive advantage of nocturnal species.

Deforestation is a major contributor to biodiversity loss, yet the impact of forest loss on daily microclimate variability and its implications for species with different daily activity patterns remain poorly understood. Using a recently developed microclimate model, we investigated the effects of deforestation on the daily temperature range (DTR) in low-elevation tropical regions and high-elevation temperate regions. Our results show that deforestation substantially increases DTR in these areas, suggesting a potential impact on species interactions. To test this hypothesis, we studied the competitive interactions between nocturnal burying beetles and all-day-active blowfly maggots in forested and deforested habitats in Taiwan. We show that deforestation leads to increased DTR at higher elevations, which enhances the competitiveness of blowfly maggots during the day and leads to a higher failure rate of carcass burial by the beetles at night. Thus, deforestation-induced temperature variability not only modulates exploitative competition between species with different daily activity patterns, but also likely exacerbates the negative impacts of climate change on nocturnal organisms. In order to limit potential adverse effects on species interactions and their ecological functions, our study highlights the need to protect forests, especially in areas where deforestation can greatly alter temperature variability.

Group augmentation underlies the evolution of complex sociality in the face of environmental instability.

Although kin selection is assumed to underlie the evolution of sociality, many vertebrates-including nearly half of all cooperatively breeding birds-form groups that also include unrelated individuals. Theory predicts that despite reducing kin structure, immigration of unrelated individuals into groups can provide direct, group augmentation benefits, particularly when offspring recruitment is insufficient for group persistence. Using population dynamic modeling and analysis of long-term data, we provide clear empirical evidence of group augmentation benefits favoring the evolution and maintenance of complex societies with low kin structure and multiple reproductives. We show that in the superb starling (Lamprotornis superbus)-a plural cooperative breeder that forms large groups with multiple breeding pairs, and related and unrelated nonbreeders of both sexes-offspring recruitment alone cannot prevent group extinction, especially in smaller groups. Further, smaller groups, which stand to benefit more from immigration, exhibit lower reproductive skew for immigrants, suggesting that reproductive opportunities as joining incentives lead to plural breeding. Yet, despite a greater likelihood of becoming a breeder in smaller groups, immigrants are more likely to join larger groups where they experience increased survivorship and greater reproductive success as breeders. Moreover, immigrants form additional breeding pairs, increasing future offspring recruitment into the group and guarding against complete reproductive failure in the face of environmental instability and high nest predation. Thus, plural breeding likely evolves because the benefits of group augmentation by immigrants generate a positive feedback loop that maintains societies with low and mixed kinship, large group sizes, and multiple reproductives.

Target-enriched enzymatic methyl sequencing: Flexible, scalable and inexpensive hybridization capture for quantifying DNA methylation.

The increasing interest in studying DNA methylation to understand how traits or diseases develop requires new and flexible approaches for quantifying DNA methylation in a diversity of organisms. In particular, we need efficient yet cost-effective ways to measure CpG methylation states over large and complete regions of the genome. Here, we develop TEEM-Seq (target-enriched enzymatic methyl sequencing), a method that combines enzymatic methyl sequencing with a custom-designed hybridization capture bait set that can be scaled to reactions including large numbers of samples in any species for which a reference genome is available. Using DNA from a passerine bird, the superb starling (Lamprotornis superbus), we show that TEEM-Seq is able to quantify DNA methylation states similarly well to the more traditional approaches of whole-genome and reduced-representation sequencing. Moreover, we demonstrate its reliability and repeatability, as duplicate libraries from the same samples were highly correlated. Importantly, the downstream bioinformatic analysis for TEEM-Seq is the same as for any sequence-based approach to studying DNA methylation, making it simple to incorporate into a variety of workflows. We believe that TEEM-Seq could replace traditional approaches for studying DNA methylation in candidate genes and pathways, and be effectively paired with other whole-genome or reduced-representation sequencing approaches to increase project sample sizes. In addition, TEEM-Seq can be combined with mRNA sequencing to examine how DNA methylation in promoters or other regulatory regions is related to the expression of individual genes or gene networks. By maximizing the number of samples in the hybridization reaction, TEEM-Seq is an inexpensive and flexible sequence-based approach for quantifying DNA methylation in species where other capture-based methods are unavailable or too expensive, particularly for non-model organisms.

Intersexual social dominance mimicry drives female hummingbird polymorphism.

Female-limited polymorphisms, where females have multiple forms but males have only one, have been described in a variety of animals, yet are difficult to explain because selection typically is expected to decrease rather than maintain diversity. In the white-necked jacobin (Florisuga mellivora), all males and approximately 20% of females express an ornamented plumage type (androchromic), while other females are non-ornamented (heterochromic). Androchrome females benefit from reduced social harassment, but it remains unclear why both morphs persist. Female morphs may represent balanced alternative behavioural strategies, but an alternative hypothesis is that androchrome females are mimicking males. Here, we test a critical prediction of these hypotheses by measuring morphological, physiological and behavioural traits that relate to resource-holding potential (RHP), or competitive ability. In all these traits, we find little difference between female types, but higher RHP in males. These results, together with previous findings in this species, indicate that androchrome females increase access to food resources through mimicry of more aggressive males. Importantly, the mimicry hypothesis provides a clear theoretical pathway for polymorphism maintenance through frequency-dependent selection. Social dominance mimicry, long suspected to operate between species, can therefore also operate within species, leading to polymorphism and perhaps similarities between sexes more generally.

Demographic inference provides insights into the extirpation and ecological dominance of eusocial snapping shrimps.

Although eusocial animals often achieve ecological dominance in the ecosystems where they occur, many populations are unstable, resulting in local extinction. Both patterns may be linked to the characteristic demography of eusocial species-high reproductive skew and reproductive division of labor support stable effective population sizes that make eusocial groups more competitive in some species, but also lower effective population sizes that increase susceptibility to population collapse in others. Here, we examine the relationship between demography and social organization in Synalpheus snapping shrimps, a group in which eusociality has evolved recently and repeatedly. We show using coalescent demographic modeling that eusocial species have had lower but more stable effective population sizes across 100,000 generations. Our results are consistent with the idea that stable population sizes may enable competitive dominance in eusocial shrimps, but they also suggest that recent population declines are likely caused by eusocial shrimps' heightened sensitivity to environmental changes, perhaps as a result of their low effective population sizes and localized dispersal. Thus, although the unique life histories and demography of eusocial shrimps have likely contributed to their persistence and ecological dominance over evolutionary time scales, these social traits may also make them vulnerable to contemporary environmental change.

Plasticity in social behaviour varies with reproductive status in an avian cooperative breeder.

Cooperatively breeding vertebrates are common in unpredictable environments where the costs and benefits of providing offspring care fluctuate temporally. To balance these fitness outcomes, individuals of cooperatively breeding species often exhibit behavioural plasticity according to environmental conditions. Although individual variation in cooperative behaviours is well-studied, less is known about variation in plasticity of social behaviour. Here, we examine the fitness benefits, plasticity and repeatability of nest guarding behaviour in cooperatively breeding superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus). After demonstrating that the cumulative nest guarding performed at a nest by all breeders and helpers combined is a significant predictor of reproductive success, we model breeder and helper behavioural reaction norms to test the hypothesis that individuals invest more in guarding in favourable seasons with high rainfall. Variation in nest guarding behaviour across seasons differed for individuals of different reproductive status: breeders showed plastic nest guarding behaviour in response to rainfall, whereas helpers did not. Similarly, we found that individual breeders show repeatability and consistency in their nest guarding behaviour while individual helpers did not. Thus, individuals with the potential to gain direct fitness benefits exhibit greater plasticity and individual-level repeatability in cooperative behaviour.

The spatial and temporal distribution of females influence the evolution of testes size in Australian rodents.

Male-male competition after mating (sperm competition) favours adaptations in male traits, such as elevated sperm numbers facilitated by larger testes. Ultimately, patterns of female distribution will affect the strength of sperm competition by dictating the extent to which males are able to prevent female remating. Despite this, our understanding of how the spatial and temporal distributions of mating opportunities have shaped the evolutionary course of sperm competition is limited. Here, we use phylogenetic comparative methods to explore interspecific variation in testes size in relation to patterns of female distribution in Australian rodents. We find that as mating season length (temporal distribution of females) increases, testes size decreases, which is consistent with the idea that it is difficult for males to prevent females from remating when overlap among oestrous females is temporally concentrated. Additionally, we find that social species (spatially clustered) have smaller testes than non-social species (spatially dispersed). This result suggests that males may be effective in monopolizing reproduction within social groups, which leads to reduced levels of sperm competition relative to non-social species where free-ranging females cannot be controlled. Overall, our results show that patterns of female distribution, in both space and time, can influence the strength of post-mating sexual selection among species.

Cooperation and Lateral Forces: Moving Beyond Bottom-Up and Top-Down Drivers of Animal Population Dynamics.

Biologists have long known that animal population dynamics are regulated by a combination of bottom-up (resource availability) and top-down forces (predation). Yet, economists have argued that human population dynamics can also be influenced by intraspecific cooperation. Despite awareness of the role of interspecific cooperation (mutualism) in influencing resource availability and animal population dynamics, the role of intraspecific cooperation (sociality) under different environmental conditions has rarely been considered. Here we examine the role of what we call "lateral forces" that act within populations and interact with external top-down and bottom-up forces in influencing population dynamics using an individual-based model linking environmental quality, intraspecific cooperation, and population size. We find that the proportion of cooperators is higher when the environment is poor and population sizes are greatest under intermediate resources levels due to the contrasting effects of resource availability on behavior and population size. We also show that social populations are more resilient to environmental change than non-social ones because the benefits of intraspecific cooperation can outweigh the effects of constrained resource availability. Our study elucidates the complex relationship between environmental harshness, cooperation, and population dynamics, which is important for understanding the ecological consequences of cooperation.

Prenatal environmental conditions underlie alternative reproductive tactics that drive the formation of a mixed-kin cooperative society.

Although animal societies often evolve due to limited natal dispersal that results in kin clustering and facilitates cooperation among relatives, many species form cooperative groups with low kin structure. These groups often comprise residents and immigrants of the same sex that compete for breeding opportunities. To understand how these mixed-kin societies form, we investigated the causes and fitness consequences of dispersal decisions in male cooperatively breeding superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus) inhabiting a climatically unpredictable environment. We show that the two alternative reproductive tactics-natal dispersal or philopatry-exhibit reproductive trade-offs resulting in equivalent lifetime inclusive fitness. Unexpectedly, an individual's tactic is related to the prenatal environment its parents experience before laying rather than the environment it experiences as a juvenile. Individuals that adopt the tactic not predicted by prenatal environmental conditions have lower fitness. Ultimately, climate-driven oscillating selection appears to stabilize mixed-kin societies despite the potential for social conflict.

Antagonistic effects of long- and short-term environmental variation on species coexistence.

Assessing the impact of environmental fluctuations on species coexistence is critical for understanding biodiversity loss and the ecological impacts of climate change. Yet determining how properties like the intensity, frequency or duration of environmental fluctuations influence species coexistence remains challenging, presumably because previous studies have focused on indefinite coexistence. Here, we model the impact of environmental fluctuations at different temporal scales on species coexistence over a finite time period by employing the concepts of time-windowed averaging and performance curves to incorporate temporal niche differences within a stochastic Lotka-Volterra model. We discover that short- and long-term environmental variability has contrasting effects on transient species coexistence, such that short-term variation favours species coexistence, whereas long-term variation promotes competitive exclusion. This dichotomy occurs because small samples (e.g. environmental changes over long time periods) are more likely to show large deviations from the expected mean and are more difficult to predict than large samples (e.g. environmental changes over short time periods), as described in the central limit theorem. Consequently, we show that the complex set of relationships among environmental fluctuations and species coexistence found in previous studies can all be synthesized within a general framework by explicitly considering both long- and short-term environmental variation.

Long-Term Measures of Climate Unpredictability Shape the Avian Endocrine Stress Axis.

AbstractThe vertebrate glucocorticoid stress response is an important mechanism facilitating pleiotropic phenotypic adjustments for coping with environmental change and optimizing fitness. Although circulating glucocorticoid hormones are mediators of plasticity that individuals can adjust rapidly in response to environmental challenges, they are also shaped by ecological selection. It remains unclear, however, how environmental variation on different timescales influences glucocorticoids. Here, we use an intraspecific comparative approach to determine how variation in precipitation on different timescales (months, years, decades) shapes distinct components of the glucocorticoid response. We sampled superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus) at eight sites across Kenya in multiple years that differed in precipitation. Among-population variation in baseline glucocorticoids was shaped by both short- and long-term precipitation, whereas variation in stress-induced levels was poorly explained by precipitation on any timescale. Adrenal sensitivity, quantified via adrenocorticotropic hormone injections, was shaped by long-term precipitation and was highest in unpredictable environments. Together, these results suggest that variation in glucocorticoids can be best explained by environmental variation at timescales that extend beyond the lives of individuals, although baseline glucocorticoids also reflect short-term environmental conditions. Patterns of long-term precipitation may represent a microevolutionary selective pressure shaping the endocrine stress axis across populations and influencing how individuals cope with environmental change.

Male-like ornamentation in female hummingbirds results from social harassment rather than sexual selection.

Ornamentation is typically observed in sexually mature adults, is often dimorphic in expression, and is most apparent during breeding, supporting a role for sexual selection in its evolution.1-4 Yet, increasing evidence suggests that nonsexual social selection may also have a role in the evolution of ornamentation, especially in females.5-9 Distinguishing between these alternatives remains challenging because sexual and nonsexual factors may both play important and overlapping roles in trait evolution.7,10 Here, we show that female ornamentation in a dichromatic hummingbird, the white-necked jacobin (Florisuga mellivora), cannot be explained by sexual selection. Although all males are ornamented, nearly 30% of females have male-like plumage. Remarkably, all juveniles of both sexes express ornamented plumage similar to adult males (androchromatism), but 80% of females acquire non-ornamented plumage (heterochromatism) as they age. This unique ontogeny excludes competition for mates as an explanation for female ornamentation because non-reproductive juveniles are more likely to be ornamented than adults. Instead, avoidance of social harassment appears to underlie this female-limited polymorphism, as heterochrome taxidermy mounts received more aggressive and sexual attention than androchrome mounts from this and other hummingbird species. Monitoring electronically tagged birds at data-logging feeders showed that androchrome females accessed feeders more than heterochrome females, presumably because of reduced harassment. Our findings demonstrate that ornamentation can arise purely through nonsexual social selection, and this hypothesis must be considered in the evolution of not only female-limited polymorphism but also the spectacular ornamentation often assumed to result from sexual selection.

Eusociality in snapping shrimps is associated with larger genomes and an accumulation of transposable elements.

Despite progress uncovering the genomic underpinnings of sociality, much less is known about how social living affects the genome. In different insect lineages, for example, eusocial species show both positive and negative associations between genome size and structure, highlighting the dynamic nature of the genome. Here, we explore the relationship between sociality and genome architecture in Synalpheus snapping shrimps that exhibit multiple origins of eusociality and extreme interspecific variation in genome size. Our goal is to determine whether eusociality leads to an accumulation of repetitive elements and an increase in genome size, presumably due to reduced effective population sizes resulting from a reproductive division of labor, or whether an initial accumulation of repetitive elements leads to larger genomes and independently promotes the evolution of eusociality through adaptive evolution. Using phylogenetically informed analyses, we find that eusocial species have larger genomes with more transposable elements (TEs) and microsatellite repeats than noneusocial species. Interestingly, different TE subclasses contribute to the accumulation in different species. Phylogenetic path analysis testing alternative causal relationships between sociality and genome architecture is most consistent with the hypothesis that TEs modulate the relationship between sociality and genome architecture. Although eusociality appears to influence TE accumulation, ancestral state reconstruction suggests moderate TE abundances in ancestral species could have fueled the initial transitions to eusociality. Ultimately, we highlight a complex and dynamic relationship between genome and social evolution, demonstrating that sociality can influence the evolution of the genome, likely through changes in demography related to patterns of reproductive skew.

Feather Gene Expression Elucidates the Developmental Basis of Plumage Iridescence in African Starlings.

Iridescence is widespread in the living world, occurring in organisms as diverse as bacteria, plants, and animals. Yet, compared to pigment-based forms of coloration, we know surprisingly little about the developmental and molecular bases of the structural colors that give rise to iridescence. Birds display a rich diversity of iridescent structural colors that are produced in feathers by the arrangement of melanin-containing organelles called melanosomes into nanoscale configurations, but how these often unusually shaped melanosomes form, or how they are arranged into highly organized nanostructures, remains largely unknown. Here, we use functional genomics to explore the developmental basis of iridescent plumage using superb starlings (Lamprotornis superbus), which produce both iridescent blue and non-iridescent red feathers. Through morphological and chemical analyses, we confirm that hollow, flattened melanosomes in iridescent feathers are eumelanin-based, whereas melanosomes in non-iridescent feathers are solid and amorphous, suggesting that high pheomelanin content underlies red coloration. Intriguingly, the nanoscale arrangement of melanosomes within the barbules was surprisingly similar between feather types. After creating a new genome assembly, we use transcriptomics to show that non-iridescent feather development is associated with genes related to pigmentation, metabolism, and mitochondrial function, suggesting non-iridescent feathers are more energetically expensive to produce than iridescent feathers. However, iridescent feather development is associated with genes related to structural and cellular organization, suggesting that, while nanostructures themselves may passively assemble, barbules and melanosomes may require active organization to give them their shape. Together, our analyses suggest that iridescent feathers form through a combination of passive self-assembly and active processes.

Male-like female morphs in hummingbirds: the evolution of a widespread sex-limited plumage polymorphism.

Differences in the way males and females look or behave are common in animals. However, discrete variation within sexes (sex-limited polymorphism) also occurs in several vertebrate and invertebrate lineages. In birds, female-limited polymorphism (FLP) in which some females resemble males in coloration is most prominent in hummingbirds, a group known for its morphological and behavioural sexual dimorphism. Yet, it remains unclear whether this intrasexual colour variation in hummingbirds arises through direct selection on females, or indirectly as a non-adaptive byproduct resulting from selection on males. Here, we analysed specimens from more than 300 hummingbird species to determine the extent, evolutionary history and function of FLP. We found that FLP evolved independently in every major clade and occurs in nearly 25% of hummingbird species. Using phylogenetically informed analyses, we rejected non-adaptive hypotheses that FLP is the result of indirect selection or pleiotropy across species. Instead, FLP is associated with ecology, migratory status, and marginally with social dominance, suggesting a socioecological benefit to females. Ultimately, we show that FLP is not only widespread in hummingbirds and likely adaptive, but may also be useful for understanding the evolution of female ornamentation in systems under strong sexual selection.

Social rank modulates how environmental quality influences cooperation and conflict within animal societies.

Although dominance hierarchies occur in most societies, our understanding of how these power structures influence individual investment in cooperative and competitive behaviours remains elusive. Both conflict and cooperation in animal societies are often environmentally regulated, yet how individuals alter their cooperative and competitive investments as environmental quality changes remain unclear. Using game theoretic modelling, we predict that individuals of all ranks will invest more in cooperation and less in social conflict in harsh environments than individuals of the same ranks in benign environments. Counterintuitively, low-ranking subordinates should increase their investment in cooperation proportionally more than high-ranking dominants, suggesting that subordinates contribute relatively more when facing environmental challenges. We then test and confirm these predictions experimentally using the Asian burying beetle Nicrophorus nepalensis. Ultimately, we demonstrate how social rank modulates the relationships between environmental quality and cooperative and competitive behaviours, a topic crucial for understanding the evolution of complex societies.

Antagonistic effects of intraspecific cooperation and interspecific competition on thermal performance.

Understanding how climate-mediated biotic interactions shape thermal niche width is critical in an era of global change. Yet, most previous work on thermal niches has ignored detailed mechanistic information about the relationship between temperature and organismal performance, which can be described by a thermal performance curve. Here, we develop a model that predicts the width of thermal performance curves will be narrower in the presence of interspecific competitors, causing a species' optimal breeding temperature to diverge from that of its competitor. We test this prediction in the Asian burying beetle Nicrophorus nepalensis, confirming that the divergence in actual and optimal breeding temperatures is the result of competition with their primary competitor, blowflies. However, we further show that intraspecific cooperation enables beetles to outcompete blowflies by recovering their optimal breeding temperature. Ultimately, linking abiotic factors and biotic interactions on niche width will be critical for understanding species-specific responses to climate change.

Insects, reptiles and many other animals are often referred to as being 'cold-blooded' because, unlike mammals and birds, their body temperature fluctuates with the temperature of their surrounding environment. As a result, many cold-blooded animals are very sensitive to changes in local climate. Environmental factors, such as temperature and precipitation, as well biotic factors, such as two species competing for food or the presence of a predator, may influence how well an animal performs at different temperatures. However, few studies have examined how both environmental and biotic factors affect the range of temperatures in which a cold-blooded animal is able to survive and reproduce. When Asian burying beetles reproduce, they lay their eggs around buried animal carcasses that can provide food for their offspring. Previous studies have found that individual burying beetles can cooperate with each other to defend themselves against their main competitor, blowflies, which also lay their eggs on animal carcasses. Here, Tsai et al. used mathematical and experimental approaches to study how blowflies affect the range of temperatures in which burying beetles are able to live under different environmental conditions. The experiments showed that when blowflies were present, the range of temperatures that burying beetles were able to survive and reproduce in was smaller. Furthermore, the optimal temperature for the burying beetles to live in shifted back, away from that of their competitor. Larger groups of burying beetles were able to survive and reproduce in a greater range of temperatures than smaller groups, even when blowflies were present. This suggests that increasing the amount bury beetles cooperate with each other may make them more resilient to changes in temperature. The Earth is currently experiencing a period of climate change and therefore it is important to understand how different species of animals may respond to to changing temperatures. These findings reinforce the idea that even a small change in temperature may lead to changes in how different species interact with each other, which in turn influences the ecosystem in which they live.