Biology subjects

Cardillo, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Cardillo, M..

9 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Over-the-horizon extinction risk assessment reveals rapidly shifting geographic and taxonomic priorities for conservation

A central challenge in conservation is understanding how climate change interacts with other global-change drivers to shape future species extinction risk, threatened-species hotspots, and the effectiveness of protected areas. Here, we use an integrated over-the-horizon forecasting framework to jointly model changing species range dynamics and shifts in extinction risk for 1,914 Australian terrestrial vertebrates to 2100. Our approach links ensemble species distribution models with machine-learning-based automated threat assessment, incorporating species traits, changing distributions of invasive species, and projections of land use and human population density. Under a high-emissions scenario, up to 109 species are projected to lose all climatically accessible habitat by 2100 and the number of threatened species is predicted to increase, while under a moderate emissions scenario (SSP1.26) the number of threatened species remains relatively stable, and up to 19 lose all climatically accessible habitat. Spatially, threatened-species richness becomes increasingly concentrated in southeastern Australia. These shifts elevate the representation of threatened species within existing protected areas, largely because extinctions and range contractions occur disproportionately outside protected areas. Our results highlight that the identity of at-risk species and the occurrence of threatened-species hotspots will change dramatically, underscoring the need for forward-looking conservation strategies that anticipate future biodiversity patterns.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Asymmetric induction of IL-23R by CpG and IL-15 in proliferative CLL fractions highlights intraclonal heterogeneity in chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is sustained by complex interactions with the microenvironment, which provides signals for leukemic cell survival and proliferation. Among these, cytokines of the IL-12 family have emerged as relevant regulators of immune responses and tumor biology, yet their contribution to CLL remains incompletely defined. Previous studies showed that CLL cells can acquire responsiveness to IL-23 after T cell-dependent stimulation with CD40L, raising the question of whether T cell-independent signals can similarly induce functional receptor expression. Here we investigated the effect of CpG oligodeoxynucleotides, alone or in combination with interleukin-15 (IL-15), on IL-12 family receptor expression in CLL cells. We found that CpG + IL-15 stimulation significantly increased IL-23R and IL-12R{beta}1 expression, while IL-12R{beta}2 remained largely unresponsive. As a consequence, the complete IL-23 receptor complex was robustly induced, whereas IL-12 receptor assembly was only marginally enhanced. This skewing toward IL-23 rather than IL-12 signaling suggests that innate immune stimuli preferentially promote pathways supporting inflammation and survival, while limiting tumor-suppressive IL-12 responsiveness. Analysis of intraclonal heterogeneity revealed an asymmetric distribution of IL-23R among CXCR4/CD5-defined subfractions: the proliferative fraction, representing recently divided cells, expressed higher levels of IL-23R compared to the resting fraction. These findings suggest that IL-23 responsiveness is particularly enriched in the proliferating compartment of the leukemic clone. Overall, our results indicate that CpG and IL-15 stimulation drive a selective expansion of IL-23 signaling capacity in CLL, with preferential engagement of proliferative subfractions. This imbalance between IL-23 activation and insufficient IL-12R{beta}2 induction may represent a critical pathogenic mechanism and a potential therapeutic target.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2021

Adapting to extremes: reconstructing niche evolution in Australian Acacia over time and space

AimMacroevolutionary analysis is increasingly being used to study biodiversity responses to climate change, for example by using phylogenetic node ages to infer periods of diversification, or phylogenetic reconstruction of traits to infer adaptation to particular stresses. Here we apply a recently developed macroevolutionary method to investigate the responses of a diverse plant genus, Acacia, to increasing aridity and salinity in Australia from the Miocene to the present. We ask whether increase in tolerance of aridity and salinity coincided with periods of aridification, and if it allowed the radiation of Acacia into a wide range of niches. TaxonAcacia LocationAustralia MethodsWe applied the Niche Evolution Model (NEMo), which combines Environmental (or Ecological) Niche Modelling (ENM) with phylogenetic comparative methods (PCM) in a single statistical framework, to a large database of Acacia presence-only records and presence-absence survey sites in order to infer current environmental tolerances of Australia Acacia species and reconstruct the evolution of environmental tolerance to increasing aridity and salinity. ResultsWe find that patterns in evolution of Acacia, over time and across different habitat types, are consistent with the aridification history of Australia and suggests substantial ability to adapt to high aridity and salinity. Main conclusionsOur results suggest that many Acacia lineages have been able to exploit new environments created during the aridification of Australia through evolution of environmental tolerance, resulting in their current dominance of many habitats across the continent. This study demonstrates that phylogenetic studies of the evolution of responses to changing environment can move beyond application of simple trait-based models, allowing the underlying processes of speciation, adaptation and dispersal to be explicitly modelled in a macroecological and macroevolutionary context. Statement of significanceAcacia species are found throughout Australia, from rainforests to deserts, and are striking in their environmental adaptability, so they are a perfect case study for understanding evolution of tolerance to environmental extremes in a changing climate. We use the largest database of spatial distribution records yet assembled, using both surveys and atlas data, and a new analytical method that combines the strengths of environmental niche modelling with phylogenetic comparative methods, to demonstrate rapid evolution in aridity and salinity tolerance in response to aridification of the Australian continent during the Neogene and Quaternary.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Clarifying the relationship between body size and extinction risk in amphibians by complete mapping of model space

In vertebrates, large body size is often a key diagnostic feature of species threatened with extinction. However, in amphibians the link between body size and extinction risk is highly uncertain, with previous studies suggesting positive, negative, u-shaped, or no relationship. Part of the reason for this uncertainty is "researcher degrees of freedom": the subjectivity and selectivity in choices associated with model specification. Here I clarify the size - threat association in amphibians using Specification Curve Analysis, an analytical approach from the social sciences that attempts to minimize this problem by complete mapping of model space. I find strong support for prevailing negative associations between body size and threat status, the opposite of patterns typical in other vertebrates. This pattern is largely explained by smaller species having smaller geographic ranges, but smaller amphibian species also appear to lack some of the life-history advantages (e.g. higher reproductive output) that are often assumed to "protect" small species in other taxa. These results highlight the need for a renewed conservation focus on the smallest species of the worlds most threatened class of vertebrates, as aquatic habitats become increasingly degraded by human activity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Tracking niche change through time: simultaneous inference of environmental niche evolution and estimation of contemporary niches

O_LIThe ecological niche of species is often studied from two different perspectives. Environmental niche modelling (ENM) infers a species current niche from contemporary occurrence records, while phylogenetic comparative methods (PCM) infer the history of niche evolution. Although these two areas of research are conceptually linked, they are analysed independently, within separate analytical frameworks. C_LIO_LIHere we provide a new method, NEMo (Niche Evolution Model), for simultaneous inference of niche evolution and estimation of contemporary niches of species. NEMo explicitly models three fundamental processes of niche evolution - adaptation, speciation, and dispersal - applying a reversible jump algorithm to infer occurrences of these processes on a phylogeny. The model permits ENMs to account for the role of history in shaping current species distributions, and offers more realistic models of evolution in PCMs. C_LIO_LISimulations show that NEMo has high accuracy for estimating the ecological niche of species, and reasonable power to identify the occurrences of the three processes on phylogeny. When applied to a real case study (the Australian plant genus Acacia), the method is more effective at predicting a key environmental niche axis (salt tolerance) than using ENM alone, and it infers temporal patterns in the evolution of drought tolerance in response to aridification that are consistent with prior expectations C_LIO_LINEMo makes it possible to combine many types of data to study niche evolution and estimate species niches, not only species distributions and phylogeny, but also paleoclimate, species tolerance range, and fossil records. C_LI

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Spatiophylogenetic modelling of extinction risk reveals evolutionary distinctiveness and brief flowering period as risk factors in a diverse hotspot plant genus

Comparative models used to predict species threat status often combine variables measured at the species level with spatial variables, causing multiple statistical challenges, including phylogenetic and spatial non-independence. We present a novel bayesian approach for modelling threat status that simultaneously deals with both forms of non-independence and estimates their relative contribution, and we apply the approach to modelling threat status in the Australian plant genus Hakea. We find that after phylogenetic and spatial effects are accounted for, species with greater evolutionary distinctiveness and a shorter annual flowering period are more likely to be threatened. The model allows us to combine information on evolutionary history, species biology, and spatial data, to calculate latent extinction risk (potential for non-threatened species to become threatened), and estimate the most important drivers of risk for individual species. This could be of value for proactive conservation decision-making that targets species of concern before they become threatened.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity

Language diversity is distributed unevenly over the globe. Why do some areas have so many different languages and other areas so few? Intriguingly, patterns of language diversity resemble biodiversity patterns, leading to suggestions that similar mechanisms may underlie both linguistic and biological diversification. Here we present the first global analysis of language diversity that identifies the relative importance of two key ecological mechanisms suggested to promote language diversification - isolation and ecological risk - after correcting for spatial autocorrelation and phylogenetic non-independence. We find significant effects of climate on language diversity consistent with the ecological risk hypothesis that areas of high year-round productivity lead to more languages by supporting human cultural groups with smaller distributions. Climate has a much stronger effect on language diversity than landscape features that might contribute to isolation of cultural groups, such as altitudinal variation, river density, or landscape roughness. The association between biodiversity and language diversity appears to be an incidental effect of their covariation with climate, rather than a causal link between the two. While climate and landscape provide strong explanatory signal for variation in language diversity, we identify a number of areas of high unexplained language diversity, with more languages than would be predicted from environmental features alone; notably New Guinea, the Himalayan foothills, West Africa, and Mesoamerica. Additional processes may be at play in generating higher than expected language diversity in these regions.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Habitat loss is information loss: Species distribution models are compromised in anthropogenic landscapes

Species distribution models (SDMs) are valuable tools to estimate species distributions, but are vulnerable to biases in the probability of a species being observed. One such bias is habitat loss, which has affected a substantial and increasing proportion of the Earth. In regions of severe habitat loss, data on a species occurrence may represent a small, non-random subset of sites it once occupied. This could cause distorted reconstructions of species distributions, and misleading inferences of evolutionary and ecological processes. We present a statistical approach for quantifying the influence on SDMs of habitat loss, and generating distribution predictions that are robust to these biases. We explored some of the effects of accounting for habitat loss on inferences from common downstream biogeographic and ecological analysis methods.\n\nWe used herbarium record data to model the distribution of 325 plant species in the genera Banksia and Hakea across Australia, using point process models. We accounted for biases in the models by including a proxy variable representing habitat loss, and compared the fit of models without this variable to those with it. We explored the influence of habitat loss by mapping biodiversity patterns predicted with and without accounting for it.\n\nGenerally, accounting for habitat loss in SDMs led to increases in the mean area of modelled species distributions of ~10% for Banksia and ~12% for Hakea across Australia (in some cases, up to several 100,000 km2 increases in predicted range), with somewhat greater average increases (11% and 15%) for species in the southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot. Accounting for habitat loss leads to an increase in predicted species richness (Alpha and Gamma diversity), but a decrease in compositional turnover (Beta diversity), across most of Australia. Accounting for habitat loss in SDMs had minimal influence on a downstream macroevolutionary analysis (Age-Range Correlation) that utilizes species distributions, seemingly because exposure to habitat loss did not show a phylogenetic pattern in this taxonomic group.\n\nThe influence of habitat loss on species distributions estimated with SDM is likely to be context-dependent and difficult to generalize, but will tend to cause underestimates of range sizes. This may have consequences for mapping spatial patterns of diversity and for some downstream analyses of biogeographic, evolutionary, or ecological processes, based on species distributions, as well as conservation measures that rely on accurate species mapping.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Larger legume plants host a greater diversity of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria

A major goal in microbial ecology is to understand the factors that structure bacterial communities across space and time. For microbes that have symbiotic relationships with plants, an important factor that may influence their communities is host size or age, yet this has received little attention.\n\nUsing tree diameter size as a proxy for age, we quantified the diversity of rhizobia that associate with an endemic legume, Acacia acuminata, of variable size across a climate gradient in southwest Australia. We examined the 16S rRNA diversity (V1-V3 hypervariable region) of rhizobia at the taxonomic level and at higher sequence level diversity within taxonomic groups.\n\nWe identified 3 major taxonomic clades that associated with Acacia acuminata: Bradyrhizobiaceae, Rhizobiaceae, and Burkholderiaceae. Within these groups, we found extensive genetic variability, especially within Bradyrhizobiaceae. Using binomial multivariate statistical models that controlled for other factors that affect plant size and rhizobia community structure (climate and local soil characteristics), we determined that soil sampled at the base of larger Acacia trees was much more likely to contain a greater number of taxonomic clades and cryptic genetic variants within the Rhizobiaceae clade.\n\nDespite strong influences of climate and highly heterogeneous soil conditions on rhizobial diversity, our results show that host tree size is a prominent factor in structuring nitrogen-fixing symbionts diversity across a large landscape. The identification of a positive relationship between plant host size and microbial diversity raise interesting questions about the role of plant host size in driving ecological processes that govern microbial community assembly. Specifically, our results suggest that hosts may modify the habitat of their surrounding soil to enhance growth (niche construction hypothesis) or that symbiotic microbes have large differences in dispersal capability. Our results also suggest that host plants may be analogous to islands, where larger legume hosts may accumulate diversity over time, through migration opportunities or in situ diversification. From a practical perspective, including plant size as an additional variable may assist sampling and analyses designs of future soil microbial studies.

ecology↗