Droughts are intensifying in the humid Neotropics, raising concerns about the impacts on ecosystem processes related to C cycling, such as decomposition and CO2 respiration. In particular, the resilience of multiple functions to extreme droughts in Neotropical aquatic systems remains poorly understood, limiting our ability to predict drought-driven feedbacks on C cycling. Here, we used rain shelters placed above tank bromeliads, plants that hold small freshwater ecosystems within their leaf axils, to emulate drought events ranging from the current norm to different IPCC scenarios. We then quantified the resilience of three key ecosystem functions (microbial respiration, litter decomposition, and photosynthetic efficiency) during a post-drought rewetting phase of 60 days. To assess the role of biotic recolonization during rewetting, we used mosquito nets over half of the bromeliads to prevent macroinvertebrates from recolonizing bromeliads from adjacent source patches. We found that extreme droughts (94 days) pushed heterotrophic functions above baseline levels during the rewetting phase. Microbial respiration and litter decomposition increased during this rewetting period, relative to undisturbed bromeliads. This boost was even faster when macroinvertebrate recolonization was allowed. Structural equation models suggested that nutrient release from dead organic matter during the rewetting phase, along with changes in bacterial density and shredder biomass, drove the positive shifts in heterotrophic functions and ecosystem multifunctionality. Extreme droughts accelerated C processing in tank bromeliads, particularly when external recolonization occurred, releasing a noticeable amount of carbon to the atmosphere. Our study shed light on the mechanisms underlying post-drought ecosystem multifunctionality trajectory and its link with C cycling, encouraging future works considering these small but abundant water bodies as sources of C in the Neotropics in the face of drought intensification.

Ants are typically omnivorous insects with ovoid heads equipped with short mandibles, but there is great diversity in both the adaptations of their morphological and behavioral traits, as well as their dietary habits. Here, we review the variety of form and function in ant predation. Predation and scavenging were likely the plesiomorphic modes, with Cretaceous ants evolving mandibles well-suited to prey capture. In contemporary ground-dwelling species, mandible morphology can vary with adaptations to capturing particular prey as they may possess trap-jaw, snapping, or falciform mandibles characterized by their high closure speed. To capture termites or other ants, specialized ants may eliminate guards to prey on workers and brood or use allomones that cause the workers of raided nests to flee, providing access to the brood. Among arboreal ants, many species rely on vision to detect flying insects that land on their host trees. In tropical rainforests, territorially dominant arboreal ants (TDAAs) often hunt in groups, spreadeagling their prey, while venom use is noted in only a few species. Some obligate plant-ant species have developed ambush strategies for prey capture, building traps or hiding in shelters. Consequently, ants, due to their large number, their species diversity, and their capacity to live from the ground to tree crowns, regulate all kinds of arthropods through their predation. Ground-dwelling ants impact arthropods in the leaf-litter or provide biotic protection on small plants, but rarely on trees, while the TDAAs that occupy tree crowns protect their host trees from defoliating insects.

Anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria have recently been recognized as a ubiquitous component of microbial communities in lakes and marine environments, but studies of the ecological factors that control their significance are scarce. We conducted a manipulative field experiment using natural freshwater microcosms, the tank bromeliad ecosystem, to test the response of anoxygenic and oxygenic phototrophic microorganisms to an environmental gradient across the forest edge. We assessed the biomass of these photosynthetic communities by their pigment content and used structural equation modeling to evaluate the importance of different habitat variables as ecological drivers. We show that anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria are primarily driven by small detrital organic particles rather than directly by light. In contrast, light and habitat size were the main factors controlling the biomass of oxygenic phototrophic microorganisms. Anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria inhabiting the bromeliad ecosystem represent huge concentrations of bacteriochlorophyll a relative to large pelagic environments and form an essential and dominant part of photosynthetic biomass across a wide range of ecological conditions. These freshwater photoheterotrophs are likely to play a pivotal and unsuspected role in energy flow and nutrient cycling in neotropical forests.

Background Together with the intensification of dry seasons in Neotropical regions, increasing deforestation is expected to exacerbate species extinctions, something that could lead to dramatic shifts in multitrophic communities and ecosystem functions. Recent studies suggest that the effects of habitat loss are greater where precipitation has decreased. Yet, experimental studies of the pure and interactive effects of drought and deforestation at ecosystem level remain scarce. Methods Here, we used rainshelters and transplantation from rainforest to open areas of natural microcosms (the aquatic ecosystem and microbial-faunal food web found within the rainwater-filled leaves of tank bromeliads) to emulate drought and deforestation in a full factorial experimental design. We analysed the pure and interactive effects of our treatments on functional community structure (including microorganisms, detritivore and predatory invertebrates), and on leaf litter decomposition in tank bromeliad ecosystems. Results Drought or deforestation alone had a moderate impact on biomass at the various trophic level, but did not eliminate species. However, their interaction synergistically reduced the biomass of all invertebrate functional groups and bacteria. Predators were the most impacted trophic group as they were totally eliminated, while detritivore biomass was reduced by about 95%. Fungal biomass was either unaffected or boosted by our treatments. Decomposition was essentially driven by microbial activity, and did not change across treatments involving deforestation and/or drought. Conclusions Our results suggest that highly resistant microorganisms such as fungi (plus a few detritivores) maintain key ecosystem functions in the face of drought and habitat change. We conclude that habitat destruction compounds the problems of climate change, that the impacts of the two phenomena on food webs are mutually reinforcing, and that the stability of ecosystem functions depends on the resistance of a core group of organisms. Assuming that taking global action is more challenging than taking local-regional actions, policy-makers should be encouraged to implement environmental action plans that will halt habitat destruction, to dampen any detrimental interactive effect with the impacts of global climate change.

In ecological communities, several species interact with one another to regulate their abundance. For example, mutualisms benefit all species involved, commensalism benefits one species but not the other, competition (for a resource) lowers the fitness of all species involved, whereas for predation, herbivory and parasitism one species is negatively affected by the other. We present the biological interactions between the myrmecophyte Hirtella physophora (i.e. a plant sheltering ants in hollow structures) and other organisms. Two Allomerus ants build gallery-shaped traps on this plant using hairs from its stems and the mycelium of an Ascomycota fungus to capture prey. They also use their refuse to provide their host plant and the fungi with nutrients (myrmecotrophy). Social wasps build their nests under the Hirtella leaves to benefit from the protection provided by Allomerus against army ants. Several insects can rob parts of Allomerus prey (cleptobiosis), but can be captured in turn. Finally, the reduviid Zelus annulosus, which foils attacks by Allomerus due to the production of a sticky substance that covers its egg masses and coats its legs, mostly attacks prey in groups and then shares them. Their populations are regulated by parasitoid wasps. Consequently, almost all possible biological interactions were noted in this study.

In this review, we show that predatory ants have a wide range of foraging behavior, something expected given their phylogenetic distance and the great variation in their colony size, life histories, and nesting habitats as well as prey diversity. Most ants are central-place foragers that detect prey using vision and olfaction. Ground-dwelling species can forage solitarily, the ancestral form, but generally recruit nestmates to retrieve large prey or a group of prey. Typically, ants are omnivorous, but some species are strict predators preying on detritivorous invertebrates or arthropod eggs, while those specialized on termites or other ants often have scouts that localize their target and then trigger a raid. They can use compounds that ease this task, including chemical insignificance, mimicry, and venoms triggering submissive behavior. Army ants include 8 Dorylinae and some species from other subfamilies, all having wingless queens and forming raids. Dorylinae from the Old World migrate irregularly to new nesting sites. The foraging of most New World species that prey on the brood of other ants is regulated by their biological cycle that alternates between a "nomadic phase" when the colony relocates between different places and a "stationary phase" when the colony stays in a bivouac constituting a central place. Among arboreal ants, dominant species forage in groups, detecting prey visually, but can use vibrations, particularly when associated with myrmecophytes. Some species of the genera Allomerus and Azteca use fungi to build a gallery-shaped trap with small holes under which they hide to ambush prey.

We suggest that biogeomorphology should challenge the traditional dichotomy between living and non‐living components of Earth surface systems. To achieve this, biogeomorphologists should gain a better understanding of eco‐evolutionary models and empirical findings developing at the interface between ecology and evolutionary biology. Eco‐evolutionary models explore feedback loops between genes, organisms and the physical or biological components outside the organism's body. This changes our understanding of how organisms interact with their environment and the functional and evolutionary significance of biologically induced landforms. In the niche construction framework, genes can be conceived as the foundational evolutionary units of selection and inheritance, and everything beyond of this unit can be considered as the ‘environment’ for gene expression, either packaged within or unpackaged outside the organism. Both the packaged biological and unpackaged environments can be influenced by genes and manufactured by organisms, respectively, in the form of phenotypes or niche constructions. We propose that biomineralized structures, such as bones, osteoderms, antlers and shells, which can be packaged at varying degrees within an organism, as well as external products of genes such as termite mounds, which are unpackaged at the periphery of the organism, form a gradient of variation in the relative dominance and functional integration of biotic and abiotic components in ecosystems. A more explicit consideration of the functional interrelationships between physical and biological components transcending their traditional boundaries should promote a re‐evaluation of the dichotomy between biological and geomorphological entities.

Little is known of how Neotropical freshwater ecosystems will respond to future climate scenarios. In Neotropical rainforests, a substantial fraction of the freshwater available to the aquatic fauna is found within phytotelmata, plant-held waters that form aquatic islands in a terrestrial matrix. We hypothesized that phytotelmata in close proximity have higher resilience capacity to severe drought than the isolated ones, under the assumption that immigration from nearby sources promotes faster recovery. We used rainshelters to emulate an extreme drought (67 days without rainfall) in tank-forming bromeliads arranged in patches of 1, 3 or 6 plants in a primary forest of French Guiana. Habitat size was a stronger determinant of invertebrate species richness and biomass per bromeliad than patch size. Larger bromeliad patches attenuated the adverse effect of drought on the biomass of predators, probably because short-range migration within dense patches allowed individuals to find moist refuges. However, the recovery of aquatic communities and ecosystem functions was mostly supported by in situ resistance, and a rescue effect of immigration was weak. Whilst environmental management plans tend to focus on dense networks of connected water bodies, our study shows that efforts should not omit the isolated ones.

EcologyVolume 104, Issue 5 e4030 THE SCIENTIFIC NATURALIST The Pharaoh's snakes of the teasel: New insights into Francis Darwin's observations Antoine Vergne, Antoine Vergne Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorEric Giraud, Eric Giraud Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), IRD, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, TA-A82/J- Campus de Baillarguet, Montpellier, 34398 France Plant Health Institute, IRD, Université Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorAlicia Camuel, Alicia Camuel Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), IRD, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, TA-A82/J- Campus de Baillarguet, Montpellier, 34398 France Plant Health Institute, IRD, Université Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorCorinne Bardot, Corinne Bardot Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorHermine Billard, Hermine Billard Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorClémentin Bouquet, Clémentin Bouquet Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorBruno Corbara, Bruno Corbara Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorDjamel Gully, Djamel Gully Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), IRD, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, TA-A82/J- Campus de Baillarguet, Montpellier, 34398 France Plant Health Institute, IRD, Université Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorFrédéric Mathonat, Frédéric Mathonat Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorChristian Jeanthon, Christian Jeanthon CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Station Biologique de Roscoff, Adaptation et Diversité en Milieu Marin, Roscoff, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorIsabelle Mary, Isabelle Mary Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorJean-Claude Caissard, Jean-Claude Caissard Université de Lyon, UJM-Saint-Etienne, CNRS, LBVpam UMR 5079, 23 rue du Dr Paul Michelon, Saint-Etienne, F-42023 FranceSearch for more papers by this authorAnne-Catherine Lehours, Corresponding Author Anne-Catherine Lehours [email protected] Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France Correspondence Anne-Catherine Lehours Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author Antoine Vergne, Antoine Vergne Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorEric Giraud, Eric Giraud Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), IRD, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, TA-A82/J- Campus de Baillarguet, Montpellier, 34398 France Plant Health Institute, IRD, Université Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorAlicia Camuel, Alicia Camuel Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), IRD, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, TA-A82/J- Campus de Baillarguet, Montpellier, 34398 France Plant Health Institute, IRD, Université Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorCorinne Bardot, Corinne Bardot Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorHermine Billard, Hermine Billard Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorClémentin Bouquet, Clémentin Bouquet Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorBruno Corbara, Bruno Corbara Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorDjamel Gully, Djamel Gully Laboratoire des Symbioses Tropicales et Méditerranéennes (LSTM), IRD, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, TA-A82/J- Campus de Baillarguet, Montpellier, 34398 France Plant Health Institute, IRD, Université Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorFrédéric Mathonat, Frédéric Mathonat Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorChristian Jeanthon, Christian Jeanthon CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Station Biologique de Roscoff, Adaptation et Diversité en Milieu Marin, Roscoff, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorIsabelle Mary, Isabelle Mary Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, FranceSearch for more papers by this authorJean-Claude Caissard, Jean-Claude Caissard Université de Lyon, UJM-Saint-Etienne, CNRS, LBVpam UMR 5079, 23 rue du Dr Paul Michelon, Saint-Etienne, F-42023 FranceSearch for more papers by this authorAnne-Catherine Lehours, Corresponding Author Anne-Catherine Lehours [email protected] Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, LMGE, F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France Correspondence Anne-Catherine Lehours Email: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author First published: 13 March 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4030 Handling Editor: John Pastor Antoine Vergne and Eric Giraud have equally contributed to this work. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest. Open Research DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT Video documenting the Pharaoh's snakes of the Teasel (Lehours et al., 2023) is available in Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21842163.v1. Values of nifH gene numbers and of acetylene reduction assays (Lehours, 2023) are available in Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21856494.v1. REFERENCES Abaurrea-Velasco, C., T. Auth, and G. 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Poplars establish on alluvial bars within sand and gravel-bed rivers. Alluvial bars also provide particularly suitable habitats for the proliferation of ants. We hypothesized that ants, by modifying substrate structure and resource availability in fluvial habitats, positively influence poplar growth during its establishment stage. We conducted a preliminary nine-month ex situ greenhouse experiment with one ant species (Lasius niger L.) and six different genotypes of poplar cuttings (Populus nigra L.), both collected on the Garonne River, SW France. Three main treatments: ‘P. nigra alone’, ‘P. nigra without ants and with ant food’ and ‘P. nigra with ants and ant food’ were applied. After one growing season, we tested differences in branching length and biomass of stems, roots and leaves. Certain genotypes showed significant differences in growth, but there were no significant differences in stem length, dry mass of stems and roots between the three treatments. The total biomass of poplars after the first growing season was positively affected by the initial size of the cuttings and was modulated by the genotype independently from the treatments. However, an increased poplar growth for the treatment without ants and with ant food was observed according to significant differences in dry weight of leaves and total biomass (i.e. dry mass of stems, roots and leaves) for the pooled genotypes across treatments. We discuss our results with the aim of serving as a reference for future in situ and ex situ experiments and field measurements exploring interactions between ants and poplars, specifically in riparian ecosystems.

It has been argued that the mechanisms structuring ecological communities may be more generalizable when based on traits than on species identities. If so, patterns in the assembly of community-level traits along environmental gradients should be similar in different places in the world. Alternatively, geographical change in the species pool and regional variation in climate might result in site-specific relationships between community traits and local environments. These competing hypotheses are particularly untested for animal communities. Here we test the geographical constancy of trait-based assembly patterns using a widespread multi-trophic community: aquatic macroinvertebrates within bromeliads. We used data on 615 invertebrate taxa from 1,656 bromeliads in 26 field sites from Mexico to Argentina. We summarized invertebrate traits with four orthogonal axes, and used these trait axes to examine trait convergence and divergence assembly patterns along three environmental gradients: detrital biomass and water volume in bromeliads, and canopy cover over bromeliads. We found no overall signal of trait-based assembly patterns along any of the environmental gradients. However, individual sites did show trait convergence along detrital and water gradients, and we built predictive models to explore these site differences. Sites that showed trait convergence along detrital gradients were all north of the Northern Andes. This geographical pattern may be related to phylogeographical differences in bromeliad morphology. Bromeliads with low detritus were dominated by detritivorous collectors and filter feeders, where those with high detritus had more sclerotized and predatory invertebrates. Sites that showed the strongest trait convergence along gradients in bromeliad water were in regions with seasonal precipitation. In such sites, bromeliads with low water were dominated by soft-bodied, benthic invertebrates with simple life cycles. In less seasonal sites, traits associated with short-term desiccation resistance, such as hard exoskeletons, were more important. In summary, we show that there are strong geographical effects on the trait-based assembly patterns of this invertebrate community, driven by the biogeography of their foundational plant species as well as by regional climate. We suggest that inclusion of biogeography and climate in trait-based community ecology could help make it a truly general theory. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

A large part of freshwater microorganism biodiversity is contained in the bromeliad ecosystem of the Neotropics, which form a multitude of small islands in a terrestrial matrix. While aquatic communities of bromeliads and their food-web organisation are relatively well documented, processes that shape diversity in such small water bodies remain largely understudied. Based on 217 bromeliad ecosystems from six sites located in French Guiana, we determined the factors that shape the diversity pattern of algal communities. We considered a broad range of environmental and ecological variables, including canopy openness, habitat characteristics, and invertebrate biomass, to identify the main drivers of algal community structure and biodiversity across bromeliads in a c. 25,000 km(2) region. We found no evidence of random distribution or spatial structuring of algal communities. Algal biomass was mainly influenced by habitat size and complexity, particulate organic matter content, and light energy, while algal richness was primarily controlled by habitat size. Change in community structure as habitat size increases was driven by species turnover with increasing proportion of filamentous taxa. Our results indicate that, due to the large diversity of aquatic habitats they provide at a small spatial scale, bromeliads are critical ecosystems sustaining freshwater microorganism biodiversity.

Animal community responses to extreme climate events can be predicted from the functional traits represented within communities. However, it is unclear whether geographic variation in the response of functional community structure to climate change is primarily driven by physiological matching to local conditions (local adaptation hypothesis) or by differences between species pools in functional redundancy (insurance hypothesis). We conducted a coordinated experiment to understand how aquatic invertebrate traits mediate the responses of multitrophic communities to changes in the quantity and evenness of rainfall in 180 natural freshwater microcosms (tank bromeliads) distributed across six sites from 18 degrees N in the Caribbean to 29 degrees S in South America. At each site, we manipulated the mean and dispersion of the daily amount of rainfall that entered tank bromeliads over a 2-month period. Manipulations covered a response surface representing 50% to 200% of the dispersion of daily rainfall crossed with 10% to 300% of the mean amounts of rainfall. The response of functional community structure to precipitation regimes differed across sites. These geographic differences were not consistent with the local adaptation hypothesis, as responses did not correlate with the current amplitude in precipitation. Geographic differences in community responses were consistent with the insurance hypothesis: sites with the lowest functional redundancy in their species pools had the strongest response to a gradient in hydrological variability induced by uneven precipitation. In such sites, an increase in the hydrologic variability induced a shift from communities with both pelagic and benthic traits using both green and brown energy channels to strictly benthic, brown energy communities. Our results predict uneven impacts of precipitation change on community structure and energy channels within communities across Neotropical regions. This geographic variation is due more to differences in the size and redundancy of species pools than to local adaptation. Strategies for climate change adaptation should thus seek to identify and preserve functionally unique species and their habitats. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Host tree survey counts 1. Presentation of the data gathered from 10 x 5 m plots along the road leading to Petit Saut. Every horizontal lines is highlited for readlability; the vertical lines 2. Pesentation of the data gathered from 10 x 5 m plots near Régina over 90 m on Route 2 around kilometric point 118

Photosynthetic microbes are omnipresent in land and water. While they critically influence primary productivity in aquatic systems, their importance in terrestrial ecosystems remains largely overlooked. In terrestrial systems, photoautotrophs occur in a variety of habitats, such as sub-surface soils, exposed rocks, and bryophytes. Here, we study photosynthetic microbial communities associated with bryophytes from a boreal peatland and a tropical rainforest. We interrogate their contribution to bryophyte C uptake and identify the main drivers of that contribution. We found that photosynthetic microbes take up twice more C in the boreal peatland (~4.4 mg CO 2 .h −1 .m −2 ) than in the tropical rainforest (~2.4 mg CO 2 .h −1 .m −2 ), which corresponded to an average contribution of 4% and 2% of the bryophyte C uptake, respectively. Our findings revealed that such patterns were driven by the proportion of photosynthetic protists in the moss microbiomes. Low moss water content and light conditions were not favourable to the development of photosynthetic protists in the tropical rainforest, which indirectly reduced the overall photosynthetic microbial C uptake. Our investigations clearly show that photosynthetic microbes associated with bryophyte effectively contribute to moss C uptake despite species turnover. Terrestrial photosynthetic microbes clearly have the capacity to take up atmospheric C in bryophytes living under various environmental conditions, and therefore potentially support rates of ecosystem-level net C exchanges with the atmosphere.

Since Darwin's theory of evolution, adaptationism is frequently invoked to explain cognition and cultural processes. Adaptationism can be described as a prescriptive view, as phenotypes that do not optimize fitness should not be selected by natural selection. From an epistemological perspective, the principle of a prescriptive definition of adaptation seems incompatible with recent advances in epigenetics, evolutionary developmental biology, ethology, and genomics. From these challenges, a proscriptive view of adaptation has emerged, postulating that phenotypes that are not deleterious will be evolutionary maintained. In this epistemological investigation, we examine how the shift from adaptationism to a proscriptive view changes our view of cognition and culture. We argue that, while adaptationism leads to cognitivism and a view of culture as strategies to optimize overall fitness, the proscriptive definition favors embodied theories of cognition and a view of culture as the cumulative diffusion of behaviors allowed by the constraints of reproduction.

The impact of climate change is intensifying in Amazonia through, among other causes, the higher frequency of both severe droughts and floods due to El Nino and La Nina events as well as an Atlantic influence. Over a 25-year period (1997-2021) we examined in French Guiana the impact of different climatic parameters on the most frequent social wasp, Polybia bistriata (Polistinae). As it commonly nests on Clusia grandiflora (Clusiaceae), its nests are easily found. Heavy rainfall, particularly during the 1999-2000 La Nina episode, negatively affected this social wasp species as the percentage of Clusia sheltering an active P. bistriata nest decreased from approximate to 40% during the pre-2000 period to zero in 2021. We conclude that extreme wet seasons related to climate change translated into the decline of this species and likely were detrimental to many other polistine wasps of north-eastern Amazonia.