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Floral resource partitioning of coexisting bumble bees: Distinguishing species-, colony-, and individual-level effects Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-17 Zhong-Ming Ye, Yong-Deng He, Pedro J. Bergamo, Michael C. Orr, Wen Huang, Xiao-Fang Jin, Han-Ning Lun, Qing-Feng Wang, Chun-Feng Yang
Resource partitioning is considered a key factor in alleviating competitive interactions, enabling coexistence among consumer species. However, most studies have focused on resource partitioning between species, ignoring the potentially critical role of intraspecific variation in resource use. We investigated floral resource partitioning across species, colonies, and individuals in a species-rich bumblebee
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Host plant‐mediation of viral transmission and its consequences for a native butterfly Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Tara Christensen, Lee A. Dyer, Matthew L. Forister, M. Deane Bowers, Adrian Carper, Mike B. Teglas, Paul Hurtado, Angela M. Smilanich
Pathogens play a key role in insect population dynamics, contributing to short‐term fluctuations in abundance as well as long‐term demographic trends. Two key factors that influence the effects of entomopathogens on herbivorous insect populations are modes of pathogen transmission and larval host plants. In this study, we examined tritrophic interactions between a sequestering specialist lepidopteran
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Cue the chorus: Canyon treefrog calling phenology on the falling limb of spring floods and warming nights Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Heather L. Bateman, Margaret A. Huck, Heidi Klingel, David M. Merritt
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Erratum Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-11
Errata for Friend, A.D., Shugart, H.H. and Running, S.W. 1993. “ A Physiology-Based Gap Model of Forest Dynamics.” Ecology 74(3): 792–797. https://doi.org/10.2307/1940806 The last name of the second author was incorrectly published as ‘Schugart’. The correct name should be ‘H. H. Shugart’. We apologize for this error.
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Gypsum lichens: A global data set of lichen species from gypsum ecosystems Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-06 Sergio Muriel, Gregorio Aragón, Isabel Martínez, María Prieto
Lichens are significant components of the biological soil crust communities in gypsum ecosystems and are involved in several processes related to ecosystem functioning, such as water and nutrient cycles or protection against soil erosion. Although numerous studies centered on lichen taxonomy and ecology have been performed in these habitats, global information about lichen species from gypsum substrates
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Osmotic responses and oceanic dispersal of upper brackish nemertean: Ecophysiology from field to in vitro observation Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Natsumi Hookabe, Yuma Fujino, Hikaru Nagano
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Brown bear digging decreases tree growth: Implication for ecological role of top predators in anthropogenic landscapes Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Kanji M. Tomita, Tsutom Hiura
Large carnivores have recently increased in number and recolonized in human‐dominated landscapes; however, their ecological roles in these landscapes have not been well studied. In the Shiretoko World Heritage (SWH) site, brown bears have recolonized a previously abandoned mosaic landscape of natural forests and conifer plantations after land abandonment. We previously reported that the bears had recently
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Restoring spatiotemporal variability to enhance the capacity for dispersal‐limited species to track climate change Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Gregory A. Backus, Christopher F. Clements, Marissa L. Baskett
Climate refugia are areas where species can persist through climate change with little to no movement. Among the factors associated with climate refugia are high spatial heterogeneity, such that there is only a short distance between current and future optimal climates, as well as biotic or abiotic environmental factors that buffer against variability in time. However, these types of climate refugia
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Evaluating top‐down, bottom‐up, and environmental drivers of pelagic food web dynamics along an estuarine gradient Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Tanya L. Rogers, Samuel M. Bashevkin, Christina E. Burdi, Denise D. Colombano, Peter N. Dudley, Brian Mahardja, Lara Mitchell, Sarah Perry, Parsa Saffarinia
Identification of the key biotic and abiotic drivers within food webs is important for understanding species abundance changes in ecosystems, particularly across ecotones where there may be strong variation in interaction strengths. Using structural equation models (SEMs) and four decades of integrated data from the San Francisco Estuary, we investigated the relative effects of top‐down, bottom‐up
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Dispersal synchronizes giant kelp forests Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-28 Miriam S. Wanner, Jonathan A. Walter, Daniel C. Reuman, Tom W. Bell, Max C. N. Castorani
Spatial synchrony is the tendency for population fluctuations to be correlated among different locations. This phenomenon is a ubiquitous feature of population dynamics and is important for ecosystem stability, but several aspects of synchrony remain unresolved. In particular, the extent to which any particular mechanism, such as dispersal, contributes to observed synchrony in natural populations has
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Speed and degree of functional and compositional recovery varies with latitude and community age Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Mariana Bonfim, Diana P. López, Michele F. Repetto, Amy L. Freestone
Rates at which a community recovers after disturbance, or its resilience, can be accelerated by increased net primary productivity and recolonization dynamics such as recruitment. These mechanisms can vary across biogeographic gradients, such as latitude, suggesting that biogeography is likely important to predicting resilience. To test whether community resilience, informed by functional and compositional
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Early warning indicators capture catastrophic transitions driven by explicit rates of environmental change Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Ramesh Arumugam, Frederic Guichard, Frithjof Lutscher
In response to external changes, ecosystems can undergo catastrophic transitions. Early warning indicators aim to predict such transitions based on the phenomenon of critical slowing down at bifurcation points found under a constant environment. When an explicit rate of environmental change is considered, catastrophic transitions can become distinct phenomena from bifurcations, and result from a delayed
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Food quality shapes gradual phenotypic plasticity in ectotherms facing temperature variability Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Marine Van Baelen, Alexandre Bec, Erik Sperfeld, Nathan Frizot, Apostolos‐Manuel Koussoroplis
Organisms exhibit reversible physiological adjustments as a response to rapidly changing environments. Yet such plasticity of the phenotype is gradual and may lag behind environmental fluctuations, thereby affecting long‐term average performance of the organisms. By supplying energy and essential compounds for optimal tissue building, food determines the range of possible phenotypic changes and potentially
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Long‐term drought promotes invasive species by reducing wildfire severity Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Sarah Kimball, Jessica Rath, Julie E. Coffey, Moises R. Perea‐Vega, Matthew Walsh, Nicole M. Fiore, Priscilla M. Ta, Katharina T. Schmidt, Michael L. Goulden, Steven D. Allison
Anthropogenic climate change has increased the frequency of drought, wildfire, and invasions of non‐native species. Although high‐severity fires linked to drought can inhibit recovery of native vegetation in forested ecosystems, it remains unclear how drought impacts the recovery of other plant communities following wildfire. We leveraged an existing rainfall manipulation experiment to test the hypothesis
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Using the multivariate Hawkes process to study interactions between multiple species from camera trap data Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Lisa Nicvert, Sophie Donnet, Mark Keith, Mike Peel, Michael J. Somers, Lourens H. Swanepoel, Jan Venter, Hervé Fritz, Stéphane Dray
Interspecific interactions can influence species' activity and movement patterns. In particular, species may avoid or attract each other through reactive responses in space and/or time. However, data and methods to study such reactive interactions have remained scarce and were generally limited to two interacting species. At this time, the deployment of camera traps opens new opportunities but adapted
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Structural diversity is better associated with forest productivity than species or functional diversity Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Lu Zhai, Rodney E. Will, Bo Zhang
Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and productivity can be advanced by improving metrics used to quantify biodiversity. Structural diversity, that is, variation of size and form of plant organs, is an emerging biodiversity metric. However, compared with the other biodiversity metrics, its relative importance in specific components of forest productivity, for example, recruitment of
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Masting, fire-stimulated flowering, and the evolutionary ecology of synchronized reproduction Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-16 Jared J. Beck, Mark J. McKone, Stuart Wagenius
Synchronized episodic reproduction among long-lived plants shapes ecological interactions, ecosystem dynamics, and evolutionary processes worldwide. Two active scientific fields investigate the causes and consequences of such synchronized reproduction: the fields of masting and fire-stimulated flowering. While parallels between masting and fire-stimulated flowering have been previously noted, there
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Maintenance of different life stages of old-growth forest trees in deforested tropical landscapes Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Marisela Martínez-Ruiz, Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez, Ricard Arasa-Gisbert, Manuel Alejandro Hernández-Ruedas, Miriam San-José
Tropical tree species are increasingly being pushed to inhabit deforested landscapes. The habitat amount hypothesis posits that, in remaining forest patches, species diversity in equal-sized samples decreases with decreasing forest cover in the surrounding landscape. We tested this prediction by taking into account three important factors that can affect species responses to forest loss. First, forest
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Estimation and interpretation problems and solutions when using proportion covariates in linear regression models Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Denis Valle, Jeffrey Mintz, Ismael Verrastro Brack
Proportion variables, also known as compositional data, are very common in ecology. Unfortunately, few scientists are aware of how compositional data, when used as covariates, can adversely impact statistical analysis. We describe here how proportion covariates result in multicollinearity and parameter identifiability problems. Using simulated data on bird species richness as a function of land use
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Cougars, wolves, and humans drive a dynamic landscape of fear for elk Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Taylor R. Ganz, Melia T. DeVivo, Aaron J. Wirsing, Sarah B. Bassing, Brian N. Kertson, Savanah L. Walker, Laura R. Prugh
To manage predation risk, prey navigate a dynamic landscape of fear, or spatiotemporal variation in risk perception, reflecting predator distributions, traits, and activity cycles. Prey may seek to reduce risk across this landscape using habitat at times and in places when predators are less active. In multipredator landscapes, avoiding one predator could increase vulnerability to another, making the
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Coexistence mechanism of sympatric predaceous diving beetle larvae Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Reiya Watanabe, Shin-ya Ohba, Shiro Sagawa
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Natal dispersal and exploratory forays through atypical habitat in the mountain-bound snow leopard Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Örjan Johansson, Justine Shanti Alexander, Purevjav Lkhagvajav, Charudutt Mishra, Gustaf Samelius
Understanding how landscapes affect animal movements is key to effective conservation and management (Rudnick et al., 2012; Zeller et al., 2012). Movement defines animal home ranges, where animals generally access resources such as food and mates, and also their dispersal and exploratory forays. These movements are important for individual survival and fitness through genetic exchange within and between
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Intraspecific leaf trait variation mediates edge effects on litter decomposition rate in fragmented forests Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-14 Shilu Zheng, Mingjian Yu, Bruce L. Webber, Raphael K. Didham
There is strong trait dependence in species-level responses to environmental change and their cascading effects on ecosystem functioning. However, there is little understanding of whether intraspecific trait variation (ITV) can also be an important mechanism mediating environmental effects on ecosystem functioning. This is surprising, given that global change processes such as habitat fragmentation
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Vicuña antipredator diel movement drives spatial nutrient subsidies in a high Andean ecosystem Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Julia D. Monk, Emiliano Donadio, Pablo F. Gregorio, Oswald J. Schmitz
Large animals could be important drivers of spatial nutrient subsidies when they ingest resources in some habitats and release them in others, even moving nutrients against elevational gradients. In high Andean deserts, vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) move daily between nutrient-rich wet meadows, where there is abundant water and forage but high risk of predation by pumas (Puma concolor), and nutrient-poor
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Refrigerated flowers in the torrid Mediterranean summer Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Carlos M. Herrera
Torrid summers are consubstantial with the Mediterranean-type climate that prevails over most of the Iberian Peninsula (Capel Molina, 1981). Daily maximum temperature >40°C and relative humidity <10% occur frequently during the rainless period of 3–4 months that follows springtime. This long harsh season brings considerable hardship to plants, particularly in lowland and mid-elevation habitats. Annuals
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Spawning and larval development of Colossendeis megalonyx, a giant Antarctic sea spider Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-11 Amy L. Moran, Graham T. Lobert, Ming Wei Aaron Toh
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Wandering outside of the Styx: Surface activity of an iconic subterranean vertebrate, the olm (Proteus anguinus) Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Raoul Manenti, Matteo Riccardo Di Nicola, Veronica Zampieri, Giorgio Grassi, Thomas Creanza, Edgardo Mauri, Gentile Francesco Ficetola, Benedetta Barzaghi
Animals living in caves have attracted the interest of naturalists and biologists since the beginning of modern science (Poulson & White, 1969; Vandel, 1964). Caves and other subterranean habitats are often perceived as extreme environments that deserve investigation because their simplified settings can help to understand evolutionary and ecological processes (Howarth, 1993; Mammola, 2019; Moldovan
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Diurnal temperature variation impacts energetics but not reproductive effort across seasons in a temperate dung beetle Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 J. Morgan Fleming, Katie E. Marshall, Alexander J. Coverley, Kimberly S. Sheldon
Temperature varies on multiple timescales and ectotherms must adjust to these changes to survive. These adjustments may lead to energetic trade-offs between self-maintenance and reproductive investment. However, we know little about how diurnal and seasonal temperature changes impact energy allocation. Here we used a combination of empirical data and modeling of both thermoregulatory behaviors and
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Sparse modeling for climate variable selection across trophic levels Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Eliza M. Grames, Matthew L. Forister
Understanding how populations respond to climate is fundamentally important to many questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. Climate is complex and multifaceted, with aspects affecting populations in different and sometimes unexpected ways. Thus, when measuring the changing climate it is important to consider the complexity of the phenomenon and the number of ways it can be characterized
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Ambush hunter attacks land snails in its burrow: Unique larval stage of the click beetle Anthracalaus sakaguchii Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Nozomu Sato, Hisanori Okamiya, Aiki Yamada
Snail-eating predators have various specialized organs and predation behaviors to overcome the hard shells and defensive traits of gastropods (Symondson, 2004; Vermeij, 2015). In terrestrial ecosystems, larvae of some species of the Lampyridae, Carabidae, and Elateridae families (Coleoptera) prey on land snails by attaching to the shell and injecting venom to weaken them or else by breaking open the
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Stabilizing effects of spatially heterogeneous disturbance via reduced spatial synchrony on a rocky shore community Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Caterina Mintrone, Luca Rindi, Lisandro Benedetti-Cecchi
Understanding how synchronous species fluctuations affect community stability is a main research topic in ecology. Yet experimental studies evaluating how changes in disturbance regimes affect the synchrony and stability of populations and communities remain rare. We hypothesized that spatially heterogeneous disturbances of moderate intensity would promote metacommunity stability by decreasing the
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BatFly: A database of Neotropical bat–fly interactions Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-28 Natalya Zapata-Mesa, Sebastián Montoya-Bustamante, Juliana Hoyos, Daniela Peña, Jorge Galindo-González, Julio J. Chacón-Pacheco, Jesús Ballesteros-Correa, Maria Raquel Pastrana-Montiel, Gustavo Graciolli, Marcelo R. Nogueira, Marco A. R. Mello
Global changes have increased the risk of emerging infectious diseases, which can be prevented or mitigated by studying host–parasite interactions, among other measures. Bats and their ectoparasitic flies of the families Streblidae and Nycteribiidae are an excellent study model but, so far, our knowledge has been restricted to fragmented records at a local scale. To help boost research, we assembled
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Fire sparks upslope range shifts of North Cascades plant species Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Rachel N. Wilson, Christopher W. Kopp, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Amy L. Angert
As ongoing climate change drives suitable habitats to higher elevations, species ranges are predicted to follow. However, observed range shifts have been surprisingly variable, with most species differing in rates of upward shift and others failing to shift at all. Disturbances such as fires could play an important role in accelerating range shifts by facilitating recruitment in newly suitable habitats
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Dual species interaction and ecological community stability Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Akihiko Mougi
How diverse species coexist in nature remains a challenging issue that is not yet resolved in ecology. The traditional approach to tackling this problem uses an ecological community network comprising various biological interaction links between species, such as predator–prey, mutualism, and competition. However, in nature, the interaction between any species pair is not limited to a singular interaction;
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Contrasting roles of fungal and oomycete pathogens in mediating nitrogen addition and winter grazing effects on biomass Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Peng Zhang, Mengjiao Huang, Chaorui Chen, Kui Hu, Junsheng Ke, Mu Liu, Yao Xiao, Xiang Liu
Both bottom-up and top-down processes modulate plant communities. Fungal and oomycete pathogens are most common in global grasslands, and due to differences in their physiology, function, host range, and life cycles, they may differentially affect plants (in both intensity and direction). However, how fungal and oomycete pathogens regulate bottom-up and top-down effects on plant community biomass remains
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Variance reflects resilience to disturbance along a stress gradient: Experimental evidence from coastal marshes Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Yinhua Wang, Hongyu Guo, Merryl Alber, Steven C. Pennings
Quantifying ecosystem resilience to disturbance is important for understanding the effects of disturbances on ecosystems, especially in an era of rapid global change. However, there are few studies that have used standardized experimental disturbances to compare resilience patterns across abiotic gradients in real-world ecosystems. Theoretical studies have suggested that increased return times are
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Specialist reassociation and residence time modulate the evolution of defense in invasive plants: A meta-analysis Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Jiahui Yi, Jinlong Wan, Katja Tielbörger, Zhibin Tao, Evan Siemann, Wei Huang
Invasive plants typically escape specialist herbivores but are often attacked by generalist herbivores in their introduced ranges. The shifting defense hypothesis suggests that this will cause invasive plants to evolve lower resistance against specialists, higher resistance against generalists, and greater tolerance to herbivore damage. However, the duration and direction of selective pressures can
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Sources of bias in applying close-kin mark–recapture to terrestrial game species with different life histories Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Anthony Sévêque, Robert C. Lonsinger, Lisette P. Waits, Kristin E. Brzeski, Lisa M. Komoroske, Caitlin N. Ott-Conn, Sarah L. Mayhew, D. Cody Norton, Tyler R. Petroelje, John D. Swenson, Dana J. Morin
Close-kin mark–recapture (CKMR) is a method analogous to traditional mark–recapture but without requiring recapture of individuals. Instead, multilocus genotypes (genetic marks) are used to identify related individuals in one or more sampling occasions, which enables the opportunistic use of samples from harvested wildlife. To apply the method accurately, it is important to build appropriate CKMR models
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Plant metabolic response to stress in an arid ecosystem is mediated by the presence of neighbors Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Alicia Montesinos-Navarro, Maria F. López-Climent, Rosa M. Pérez-Clemente, Cristina Arenas-Sánchez, Ricardo Sánchez-Martín, Aurelio Gómez-Cadenas, Miguel Verdú
Plant neighbors in arid environments can ameliorate abiotic stress by reducing insolation, but they also attract herbivores and pathogens, especially when neighbors are close relatives that share similar antagonists. Plants' metabolic profiles provide a chemical fingerprint of the physiological processes behind plant responses to different environmental stresses. For example, abscisic acid and proline
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Yellow tails in Iasis cylindrica (Salpida: Salpidae) chains suggest zooid-type subspecialization in salp colonies Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-21 Alejandro Damian-Serrano
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The author declares no conflicts of interest.
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Shoreline armoring potentially diminishes the ecological roles of parrotfishes in urban coral reefs Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-18 Rachel Y. Y. Mark, Daisuke Taira, Peter A. Todd
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Zombie leaves: Novel repurposing of senescent fronds in the tree fern Cyathea rojasiana in a tropical montane forest Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-18 James W. Dalling, Evidelio Garcia, Carlos Espinosa, Camila Pizano, Astrid Ferrer, Jéssica Lira Viana
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Expression of Concern: Trait variation across biological scales shapes community structure and ecosystem function Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-17
Start, D. and Gilbert, B., Trait variation across biological scales shapes community structure and ecosystem function. Ecology, 2019, (https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2769). This Expression of Concern is for the above article, published online on 3 September 2019 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and has been published by agreement between the journal Editor in Chief, Ecological Society
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The return of Scarface: Philopatry in an ocean wandering shark? Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Jorge Fontes, Martijn Schouten, Pedro Afonso, Bruno Macena
The blue shark, Prionace glauca (Carcharhinidae), is the most abundant and wide ranging of all oceanic sharks, ranging from oligotrophic tropical systems to the highly productive slopes of temperate continental shelves (Druon et al., 2022; Vandeperre et al., 2014). It is also the most heavily exploited shark globally, with an estimated 10 million animals fished per year (Clarke et al., 2006; Pacoureau
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A test of the frost wave hypothesis in a temperate ungulate Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Anna C. Ortega, Jerod A. Merkle, Hall Sawyer, Kevin L. Monteith, Patrick Lionberger, Miguel Valdez, Matthew J. Kauffman
Growing evidence supports the hypothesis that temperate herbivores surf the green wave of emerging plants during spring migration. Despite the importance of autumn migration, few studies have conceptualized resource tracking of temperate herbivores during this critical season. We adapted the frost wave hypothesis (FWH), which posits that animals pace their autumn migration to reduce exposure to snow
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Time-varying habitat selection analysis: A model and applications for studying diel, seasonal, and post-release changes Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-05 Romain Dejeante, Marion Valeix, Simon Chamaillé-Jammes
Resource selection functions are commonly used to evaluate animals' habitat selection, for example, the disproportionate use of habitats relative to their availability. While environmental conditions or animal motivations may vary over time, sometimes in an unknown manner, studying changes in habitat selection usually requires an a priori segmentation of time in distinct periods. This limits our ability
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Behavioral interactions are modulated by facilitation along a heterotrophic succession Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-07 Lara Naves-Alegre, Esther Sebastián-González, José Antonio Sánchez-Zapata
Competition and facilitation drive ecological succession but are often hard to quantify. In this sense, behavioral data may be a key tool to analyze interaction networks, providing insights into temporal trends in facilitation and competition processes within animal heterotrophic succession. Here, we perform the first in-depth analysis of the factors driving temporal dynamics of carcass consumption
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How does parasite environmental transmission stage concentration change before, during, and after disease outbreaks? Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2024-01-07 Elizabeth S. Davenport, Marcin K. Dziuba, Logan E. Jacobson, Siobhan K. Calhoun, Kira J. Monell, Meghan A. Duffy
Outbreaks of environmentally transmitted parasites require that susceptible hosts encounter transmission stages in the environment and become infected, but we also know that transmission stages can be in the environment without triggering disease outbreaks. One challenge in understanding the relationship between environmental transmission stages and disease outbreaks is that the distribution and abundance
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Descriptive inference using large, unrepresentative nonprobability samples: An introduction for ecologists Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Robin J. Boyd, Gavin B. Stewart, Oliver L. Pescott
Biodiversity monitoring usually involves drawing inferences about some variable of interest across a defined landscape from observations made at a sample of locations within that landscape. If the variable of interest differs between sampled and nonsampled locations, and no mitigating action is taken, then the sample is unrepresentative and inferences drawn from it will be biased. It is possible to
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Testing foraging optimization models in brown bears: Time for a paradigm shift in nutritional ecology? Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Ashlee J. Mikkelsen, Keith A. Hobson, Agnieszka Sergiel, Anne G. Hertel, Nuria Selva, Andreas Zedrosser
How organisms obtain energy to survive and reproduce is fundamental to ecology, yet researchers use theoretical concepts represented by simplified models to estimate diet and predict community interactions. Such simplistic models can sometimes limit our understanding of ecological principles. We used a polyphagous species with a wide distribution, the brown bear (Ursus arctos), to illustrate how disparate
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Weather influences survival probability in two coexisting mammals directly and indirectly via competitive asymmetry Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Austin Z. T. Allison, Courtney J. Conway, Amanda R. Goldberg
Ecologists have studied the role of interspecific competition in structuring ecological communities for decades. Differential weather effects on animal competitors may be a particularly important factor contributing to the outcome of competitive interactions, though few studies have tested this hypothesis in free-ranging animals. Specifically, weather might influence competitive dynamics by altering
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NestWatch: An open-access, long-term data set on avian reproductive success Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-10 Robyn L. Bailey, Lisa Larson, David N. Bonter
Long-term avian nesting data are valuable to researchers studying various aspects of avian ecology, conservation, and management. Administered by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, NestWatch accepts nesting data from volunteers and professionals who agree to follow its protocol and submit data in a standardized form using either the website NestWatch.org, the mobile app, or a bulk upload template. These
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A long-lasting, distant journey of a male griffon vulture informs on the success of differential parental investment Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Félix Martínez, Juan Oltra, Óscar Frías, José L. González del Barrio, Juan M. Pérez-García, Martina Carrete, Guillermo Blanco
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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The house of a thousand species: The untapped potential of comprehensive biodiversity censuses of urban properties Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Andrew M. Rogers, Russell Q-Y. Yong, Matthew H. Holden
Formal biodiversity surveys and citizen science programs have contributed greatly to our understanding of urban biodiversity (Mesaglio & Callaghan, 2021). The collection and interpretation of such data are usually predicated on understanding ecological communities on large spatial scales (e.g., Shochat et al., 2010), yet to understand urban ecosystems, it is equally important to understand communities
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The effectiveness of species distribution models in predicting local abundance depends on model grain size Ecology (IF 4.8) Pub Date : 2023-12-01 Mattia Brambilla, Gaia Bazzi, Luca Ilahiane
The use of species distribution models (SDMs) to predict local abundance has been often proposed and contested. We tested whether SDMs at different spatiotemporal resolutions may predict the local density of 14 bird species of open/semi-open habitats. SDMs were built at 1 ha and 1 km, and with long-term versus a mix of current and long-term climatic variables. The estimated environmental suitability