Approximately 85% of the global forest estate is neither formally protected nor in areas dedicated to intensive wood production (e.g., plantations). Given the spatial extent of unprotected forests, finding management approaches that will sustain their multiple environmental, economic, and cultural values and prevent their conversion to other uses is imperative. The major global challenge of native forest management is further demonstrated by ongoing steep declines in forest biodiversity and carbon stocks. Here, we suggest that an essential part of such management—supplementing the protection of large reserves and sensitive areas within forest landscapes (e.g., aquatic features)—is the adoption of the retention approach in forests where logging occurs. This ecological approach to harvesting provides for permanent retention of important selected structures (e.g., trees and decayed logs) to provide for continuity of ecosystem structure, function, and species composition in the postharvest forest. The retention approach supports the integration of environmental, economic, and cultural values and is broadly applicable to tropical, temperate, and boreal forests, adaptable to different management objectives, and appropriate in different societal settings. The widespread adoption of the retention approach would be one of the most significant changes in management practice since the onset of modern high‐yield forestry.

Patterns of polyandry in nuptial-gift-giving insects are often explained in terms of sexually antagonistic coevolution. However, the potential influence of environmental constraints and life-history traits on polyandry in these species is still largely unexplored. As an initial step in examining the role of these factors, this study measured the number of matings (spermatodoses per female) of female Roesel's bush-crickets, Metrioptera roeselii Hagenbach (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae), along a latitudinal gradient in northern Europe (16 sites, 53.89–60.47° N). Females contained between 0 and 5 spermatodoses (mean ± SE: 1.7 ± 0.08; N = 114), with the degree of polyandry generally increasing at higher latitudes (approximately 0.12–0.3 matings per degree of latitude). As expected, female body size also had an influence on polyandry; the number of matings increased from small to moderately large individuals before declining. The field-based results suggested that there were potentially interesting interactions between environment, life-history traits, and patterns of polyandry in nuptial-gift-giving insect species, and these potentially interesting interactions are used to outline future research directions.

The presence of small RNAs in sperm is a relatively recent discovery and little is currently known about their importance and functions. Environmental changes including social conditions and dietary manipulations are known to affect the composition and expression of some small RNAs in sperm and may elicit a physiological stress response resulting in an associated change in gamete miRNA profiles. Here, we tested how microRNA profiles in sperm are affected by variation in both sexual selection and dietary regimes in Drosophila melanogaster selection lines. The selection lines were exposed to standard versus low yeast diet treatments and three different population sex ratios (male‐biased, female‐biased, or equal sex) in a full‐factorial design. After 38 generations of selection, all males were maintained on their selected diet and in a common garden male‐only environment prior to sperm sampling. We performed transcriptome analyses on miRNAs in purified sperm samples. We found 11 differentially expressed miRNAs with the majority showing differences between male‐ and female‐biased lines. Dietary treatment only had a significant effect on miRNA expression levels in interaction with sex ratio. Our findings suggest that long‐term adaptation may affect miRNA profiles in sperm and that these may show varied interactions with short‐term environmental changes.

Background Morphological differentiation between populations resulting from local adaptations to environmental conditions is likely to be more pronounced in populations with increasing genetic isolation. In a previous study a positive clinal variation in body size was observed in isolated Roesel’s bush-cricket, Metrioptera roeselii, populations, but were absent from populations within a continuous distribution at the same latitudinal range. This observational study inferred that there was a phenotypic effect of gene flow on climate-induced selection in this species. Methods To disentangle genetic versus environmental drivers of population differences in morphology, we measured the size of four different body traits in wild-caught individuals from the two most distinct latitudinally-matched pairs of populations occurring at about 60°N latitude in northern Europe, characterised by either restricted or continuous gene flow, and corresponding individuals raised under laboratory conditions. Results Individuals that originated from the genetically isolated populations were always bigger (femur, pronotum and genital appendages) when compared to individuals from latitudinally-matched areas characterised by continuous gene flow between populations. The magnitude of this effect was similar for wild-caught and laboratory-reared individuals. We found that previously observed size cline variation in both male and female crickets was likely to be the result of local genetic adaptation rather than phenotypic plasticity. Conclusions This strongly suggests that restricted gene flow is of major importance for frequencies of alleles that participate in climate-induced selection acting to favour larger phenotypes in isolated populations towards colder latitudes.