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Effects of heat stress and green cover on urban birds in the megacity of Bengaluru Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-16 Ravi Jambhekar, Dilip G. T. Naidu, Jagdish Krishnaswamy
Cities, despite being responsible for the loss of habitat as they grow, are also an important refugium for biodiversity. Many urban areas in the tropical areas of the global south are rich in biodiversity and are also undergoing climate warming and heat island impacts. Eliciting support from policy and decision makers for sustaining the habitats for birds in cities may depend on how conservation of
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Optimizing control of a freshwater invader in time and space Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-14 Jessica O. Diallo, Sarah J. Converse, Matthew Chmiel, Andrew J. Stites, Julian D. Olden
The global spread of invasive species in aquatic ecosystems has prompted population control efforts to mitigate negative impacts on native species and ecosystem functions. Removal programs that optimally allocate removal effort across space and time offer promise for improving invader suppression or eradication, especially given the limited resources available to these programs. However, science‐based
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Declining conifer productivity will drive future forest dynamics as climate changes in northern New England Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 Erin Simons‐Legaard, Kasey Legaard, Aaron Weiskittel
Climate change is expected to decrease habitat suitability for conifers in the mixed species, temperate forests of New England in the northeastern United States. How existing forests will be affected during the transition from current to future growing conditions, however, is less clear and has important implications for commercially managed forests and the growing interest in forest carbon as a natural
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National‐scale mapping of potential floral resources for honeybees and native pollinators in New Zealand Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 James K. McCarthy, Sarah J. Richardson, Gary J. Houliston, Thomas R. Etherington, Matt S. McGlone, Anne‐Gaelle E. Ausseil
Floral resources are important food resources for pollinators. These resources are produced in different quantities depending on land cover and plant species composition, and the quantity of production varies seasonally. As such, land use change and management of natural resources can have substantial impacts on conservation through resource provision for pollinators, and also commercial enterprises
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Diverging restoration pathways for overstory and understory communities in a Mediterranean‐climate riparian ecosystem Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 Brook M. Constantz, John C. Stella, Karen D. Holl
The classic restoration ecology model of ecosystem recovery predicts that restoring the initial conditions of a formerly degraded site will facilitate recovery and convergence with a reference site. Few restoration studies have long‐term longitudinal data to evaluate recovery trajectories, which typically vary among different aspects of ecosystem structure and composition. We used repeat surveys to
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Evaluating ecosystem caps on fishery yield in the context of climate stress and predation Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 Alberto Rovellini, André E. Punt, Martin W. Dorn, Isaac C. Kaplan, Meaghan D. Bryan, Grant Adams, Kerim Aydin, Matthew R. Baker, Cheryl L. Barnes, Bridget E. Ferriss, Elizabeth A. Fulton, Melissa A. Haltuch, Albert J. Hermann, Kirstin K. Holsman, Carey R. McGilliard, Elizabeth A. McHuron, Hem Nalini Morzaria‐Luna, Szymon Surma
Ecosystem‐based fisheries management strives to account for species interactions and ecosystem processes in natural resource management and conservation. In this context, ecosystem‐wide caps on total fishery catches have been proposed as one tool to manage multispecies fisheries with an ecosystem approach. However, determining effective ecosystem caps is complicated because fish stock production is
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Historical frequency of plants in nursery catalogues predicts likelihood of naturalization in ornamental species Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-13 Thomas N. Dawes, Jennifer L. Bufford, Philip E. Hulme
Ornamental horticulture is the major pathway of non‐native plant species introductions worldwide. Historic nursery catalogues capture a long‐term view of introduction effort arising from garden plantings and are a powerful resource for understanding why some introduced ornamental species subsequently jump the garden fence. Analyses of historic nursery catalogues can help us understand the reasons for
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Context‐dependent disturbance synergies: Subcortical competitors may constrain bark beetle outbreaks following wildfires Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-09 Katherine A. Mitchell, Lori D. Daniels, Allan L. Carroll
Wildfires and bark beetles have historically interacted to create complex and resilient forests. However, recent record‐breaking wildfires in western North America raise concerns that the large areas of injured and dead trees could facilitate increases in insect populations that respond to resource pulses. Populations of Douglas‐fir beetle (Dendroctonus pseudotsugae), the primary mortality agent of
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Mixed forests with native species mitigate impacts of introduced Douglas fir on soil decomposers (Collembola) Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-05 Jing‐Zhong Lu, Junbo Yang, Christian Bluhm, Estela Foltran, Carmen Alicia Rivera Pérez, Jonas Glatthorn, Christian Ammer, Norbert Lamersdorf, Andrea Polle, Matty Berg, Anton M. Potapov, Stefan Scheu
Forest ecosystem management requires the conservation of associated biodiversity. Enriching native forests with economically valuable conifer species provides economic gains and meets the increasing societal demand for timber but may threaten biodiversity. Soil sustains most of forest biodiversity, but the impact of changes in tree species composition, including native and non‐native species, on soil
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Differential impacts of invasion on plant communities of two types of savannas in India Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-02 Megha Ojha, Bhushan K. Shigwan, Ashish N. Nerlekar, Mandar N. Datar, Bhanudas P. Chavan, Deepak Barua
Biological invasions pose a threat to biodiversity in tropical savannas. Invasive plants can alter savanna communities in complex ways, where impacts can vary with the intensity of invasion, the spatial scales examined, and by climate. However, our understanding of such impacts on Asian tropical savannas is limited. To address this knowledge gap, we examined how plant invasion impacted plant communities
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Causal attribution from retrospective data in Canada's woodland caribou system Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-05-01 Steven F. Wilson
Forecasting the benefits of management interventions intended to improve ecological conditions requires a causal understanding of the factors that lead to system change. The causal attribution of a factor is defined as the difference between the outcome observed in the presence of the factor and the outcome that would have been observed in the factor's absence, that is, the counterfactual condition
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Differential impacts of grazing on grassland plant diversity, biomass, soil C, and soil N across an elevation gradient Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-04-29 Ishrat Shaheen, Rayees A. Malik, Mahesh Sankaran, Manzoor A. Shah
Understanding how vegetation traits and soil characteristics respond to grazing in grasslands is fundamental to their restoration and management. Here, we investigated changes in species diversity, plant productivity, soil total nitrogen (STN), and soil organic carbon (SOC) storage following grazer exclusion at three grassland sites along an elevation gradient in the Kashmir Himalaya. Plant cover,
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Legume life history interacts with land use degradation of rhizobia: Implications for restoration success Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-04-24 Susan M. Magnoli, James D. Bever
Restoration of soil microbial communities, and microbial mutualists in particular, is increasingly recognized as critical for the successful restoration of grassland plant communities. Although the positive effects of restoring arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi during the restoration of these systems have been well documented, less is known about the potential importance of nitrogen‐fixing rhizobium bacteria
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Impacts of forest fragmentation on interactions between plants and their insect herbivores and fungal pathogens Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-04-23 Ashwin Viswanathan, Robert Bagchi, Jaboury Ghazoul, Ganesh Honwad, Owen T. Lewis
Natural enemies of plants, including fungal pathogens and insect herbivores, can maintain plant diversity if their harmful effects on seeds and seedlings are density‐dependent (the Janzen–Connell hypothesis). As insect and fungal communities can be modified by anthropogenic habitat fragmentation, we conducted a field experiment to understand how fragmentation might affect the ability of natural enemies
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Metapopulation distribution shapes year‐round overlap with fisheries for a circumpolar seabird Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-04-21 Kalinka Rexer‐Huber, Thomas A. Clay, Paulo Catry, Igor Debski, Graham Parker, Raül Ramos, Bruce C. Robertson, Peter G. Ryan, Paul M. Sagar, Andrew Stanworth, David R. Thompson, Geoffrey N. Tuck, Henri Weimerskirch, Richard A. Phillips
Although fisheries bycatch is the greatest threat to many migratory marine megafauna, it remains unclear how population exposure to bycatch varies across the global range of threatened species. Such assessments across multiple populations are crucial for understanding variation in impacts and for identifying the management bodies responsible for reducing bycatch. Here, we combine extensive biologging
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Going with the flow: Leveraging reef‐scale hydrodynamics for upscaling larval‐based restoration Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-04-07 Marine Gouezo, Clothilde Langlais, Jack Beardsley, George Roff, Peter L. Harrison, Damian P. Thomson, Christopher Doropoulos
Anthropogenic pressures are impacting coastal marine ecosystems, necessitating large‐scale interventions to accelerate recovery. Propagule‐based restoration holds the potential for restoring shallow coastal systems at hectare scales by harnessing natural dispersal. However, predicting propagule dispersal remains challenging due to the complex hydrodynamic nature of coastal marine ecosystems and the
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Positive feedback between wind-eroded patch size, plant recruitment failure, and desertification in semiarid sandlands. Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-04-01 Shudong Zhang,Xuehua Ye,Guofang Liu,Zhenying Huang,J Hans C Cornelissen
Global climate changes and intensified land use have made desertification one of the most pressing threats to vegetation integrity and associated ecosystem services worldwide. Wind-eroded desertified patches (WEDP) in sandland vegetation communities threaten semiarid sandland ecosystems. Although the soil seed bank can be replenished by surrounding vegetation, the self-renewal of vegetation within
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Using dynamic foodscape models to assess bottom‐up constraints on population performance of herbivores Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-27 Sierra L. Robatcek, Lisa A. Shipley, Craig White, Ryan A. Long
Resource heterogeneity governs a multitude of ecological processes, but the mechanisms by which heterogeneity influences population performance are not fully resolved. Because optimizing behavior is challenging in heterogeneous landscapes, individual variation in foraging and movement strategies is common, and understanding the consequences of that variation is one of the most pressing challenges in
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Deciduous forests hold conservation value for birds within South Andaman Island, India Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-20 Arpitha Jayanth, Zankhna Patel, Mohammed Mubeen, Karthikayan M., Rohit Naniwadekar
Greater diversity of habitats on islands is often correlated with higher species richness (including endemic and threatened taxa), implying the need to understand species–habitat associations. Such habitat associations could also point toward the role of abiotic filtering and competition in structuring species communities, necessitating the examination of the role of species traits and phylogenetic
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Novel associations among insect herbivores and trees: Patterns of occurrence and damage on pines and eucalypts Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-12 Leonel Stazione, Juan C. Corley, Jeremy D. Allison, Brett P. Hurley, Simon A. Lawson, M. Victoria Lantschner
Globalization has led to a significant increase in the establishment of forest plantations with exotic species and to the accidental introduction of forest insects worldwide. Cumulatively, these factors contribute to the increased occurrence of novel associations between phytophagous insects and trees, leading to new interactions between species that have not historically co‐occurred. Here, we reviewed
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Methane and nitrous oxide fluxes from reference, restored, and disturbed estuarine wetlands in Pacific Northwest, USA Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-12 Trevor Williams, Christopher N. Janousek, Maggie A. McKeon, Heida L. Diefenderfer, Craig E. Cornu, Amy B. Borde, Jude Apple, Laura S. Brophy, Matthew Norwood, Matthew A. Schultz, Scott D. Bridgham
There is substantial interest in restoring tidal wetlands because of their high rates of long‐term soil carbon sequestration and other valued ecosystem services. However, these wetlands are sometimes net sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) that may offset their climate cooling potential. GHG fluxes vary widely within and across tidal wetlands, so it is essential to better understand how key environmental
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Fall and rise of a threatened raptor: Unraveling long‐term population dynamics with spatially explicit integrated models Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-12 Jaume A. Badia‐Boher, Antonio Hernández‐Matías, Santi Mañosa, Francesc Parés, Josep Maria Bas, Diego J. Arévalo‐Ayala, Joan Real
Population dynamics are governed by the so‐called four BIDE processes: birth, immigration, death, and emigration. However, most population models fail to explicitly consider all four processes, which may hinder a comprehensive understanding of how and why populations change over time. The advent of Integrated Population Models (IPMs) and recent developments in spatial mark–recapture models have enabled
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Restored streams recover food web properties but with different scaling relationships when compared with natural streams Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-12 Minyoung Lee, Yongeun Kim, Dougu Nam, Kijong Cho
Despite extensive studies revealing differences in the composition of aquatic assemblages between restored streams and natural or pre‐restoration states, understanding the ecological consequences and trajectories of stream restoration remains challenging. Food webs are an important way of mapping biodiversity to ecosystem functioning by describing feeding linkages and energy transfer pathways. Describing
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Carbon cycling across ecosystem succession in a north temperate forest: Controls and management implications Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-12 Lucas E. Nave, Christopher M. Gough, Cameron Clay, Fernanda Santos, Jeff W. Atkins, Sonja E. Benjamins‐Carey, Gil Bohrer, Buck T. Castillo, Robert T. Fahey, Brady S. Hardiman, Kathryn L. Hofmeister, Valeriy Y. Ivanov, Jennifer Kalejs, Ashley M. Matheny, Angela C. Menna, Knute J. Nadelhoffer, Brooke E. Propson, Adam T. Schubel, Jason M. Tallant
Despite decades of progress, much remains unknown about successional trajectories of carbon (C) cycling in north temperate forests. Drivers and mechanisms of these changes, including the role of different types of disturbances, are particularly elusive. To address this gap, we synthesized decades of data from experimental chronosequences and long‐term monitoring at a well‐studied, regionally representative
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Landscape composition drives winter bird assemblages in agriculture–savanna mosaics of western India Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-11 Tejas Bhagwat, Philippe Rufin, Tobias Kuemmerle, Johannes Kamp
Avian biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is declining globally. In Europe and America, agricultural homogenization and the decline of smallholder farming are key drivers of bird population declines. In South Asia, large expanses of compositionally diverse agricultural landscapes still exist. Yet, how resident and migratory avian populations respond to landscape composition and configuration on
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How to model a new invader? US‐invaded range models outperform global or combined range models after 100 occurrences Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-11 Nicholas E. Young, Demetra A. Williams, Keana S. Shadwell, Ian S. Pearse, Catherine S. Jarnevich
Invasive species are an economic and ecological burden, and efforts to limit their impact are greatly improved with reliable maps based on species distribution models (SDMs). However, the potential distribution of new invaders is difficult to anticipate because they are still spreading with few observations in their invaded habitat. Therefore, an accepted practice in predicting the distribution of
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Developing spatially explicit critical loads for herbaceous species across the United States using convex hulls Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-11 Christopher M. Clark, Gray D. Martin, Jennifer N. Phelan, Michael D. Bell, Jason A. Lynch
Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and sulfur, after land use change, is one of the most impactful stressors to terrestrial biodiversity. Deposition effects on ecosystems are pervasive, impacting species distributions and disrupting natural communities and associated ecosystem services. Decision makers in particular areas have in the past been limited to using critical loads from faraway research sites
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Successful recovery of native plants post‐invasive removal in forest understories is driven by native community features Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-03-11 Laís Petri, Inés Ibáñez
Temperate forest understories hold the majority of the plant diversity present in these ecosystems and play an essential role in the recruitment and establishment of native trees. However, the long‐term persistence of diverse and functional forest understories is threatened by the impacts of invasive plants. As a result, a common practice is the removal of the agent of invasion. Despite this, we know
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Urban landscapes with more natural greenspace support higher pollinator diversity Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-20 Jens Ulrich, Risa D. Sargent
As cities around the world expand, we urgently need to better understand the drivers of urban biodiversity, especially for functionally important groups such as insect pollinators. In this study, we gathered hoverfly and bumble bee pollinator observations from natural history collections and community science initiatives from 462 urban landscapes across 85 US metropolitan areas. We tested whether urban
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Spatiotemporal land use dynamics filter life history strategies to shape urban spontaneous plant assemblages Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-19 Jun‐Long Huang, Shen‐Hua Qian, Marie‐Josée Fortin
Spontaneous plants, such as weeds, are a key component of urban flora that can provide significant ecological benefits like nutrient cycling and soil pollutant removal. Our ability to fully harness these species in urban restoration efforts is hindered, however, due to a lack of understanding of their functional ecology under urban stressors. Here, we analyzed the effects of spatiotemporal urban land
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Demographic effects of sanitary policies on European vulture population dynamics: A retrospective modeling approach Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-19 MªÀngels Colomer, Antoni Margalida
The prediction of population responses to environmental changes, including the effects of different management scenarios, is a useful tool and a necessary contributor to improving conservation decisions. Empirical datasets based on long‐term monitoring studies are essential to assess the robustness of retrospective modeling predictions on biodiversity. These allow checks on the performance of modeling
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Drivers of spatiotemporal variability in a marine foundation species Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-17 Anita Giraldo‐Ospina, Tom Bell, Mark H. Carr, Jennifer E. Caselle
Marine foundation species are critical for the structure and functioning of ecosystems and constitute the pillar of trophic chains while also providing a variety of ecosystem services. In recent decades, many foundation species have declined in abundance, sometimes threatening their current geographical distribution. Kelps (Laminariales) are the primary foundation species in temperate coastal systems
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Microbes in reconstructive restoration: Divergence in constructed and natural tree island soil fungi affects tree growth Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-14 Kasey N. Kiesewetter, Amanda H. Rawstern, Eric Cline, Gina R. Ortiz, Fabiola Santamaria, Carlos Coronado‐Molina, Fred H. Sklar, Michelle E. Afkhami
As ecosystems face unprecedented change and habitat loss, pursuing comprehensive and resilient habitat restoration will be integral to protecting and maintaining natural areas and the services they provide. Microbiomes offer an important avenue for improving restoration efforts as they are integral to ecosystem health and functioning. Despite microbiomes' importance, unresolved knowledge gaps hinder
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The national Fire and Fire Surrogate study: Effects of fuel treatments in the Western and Eastern United States after 20 years Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-12 Alexis A. Bernal, Scott L. Stephens, Mac A. Callaham, Brandon M. Collins, Justin S. Crotteau, Matthew B. Dickinson, Donald L. Hagan, Rachelle Hedges, Sharon M. Hood, Todd F. Hutchinson, Melanie K. Taylor, T. Adam Coates
The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States. Since then, 4 of the original 12 sites remain active in managing and monitoring the original FFS study which provides a unique opportunity to look at the long‐term effects
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What can we learn from 100,000 freshwater forecasts? A synthesis from the NEON Ecological Forecasting Challenge Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-12 Freya Olsson, Cayelan C. Carey, Carl Boettiger, Gregory Harrison, Robert Ladwig, Marcus F. Lapeyrolerie, Abigail S. L. Lewis, Mary E. Lofton, Felipe Montealegre‐Mora, Joseph S. Rabaey, Caleb J. Robbins, Xiao Yang, R. Quinn Thomas
Near‐term, iterative ecological forecasts can be used to help understand and proactively manage ecosystems. To date, more forecasts have been developed for aquatic ecosystems than other ecosystems worldwide, likely motivated by the pressing need to conserve these essential and threatened ecosystems and increasing the availability of high‐frequency data. Forecasters have implemented many different modeling
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Migration matters in conservation and management: Exploring the 10% rule for demographic independence via simulation Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-12 Ingrid Spies, Paul D. Spencer, André E. Punt
Delineating a threshold migration rate for demographic independence important for understanding connectivity among fragmented populations and defining management units for conservation and harvest regulation. In turn, defining management units is an essential step in sustainable management to avoid unintentional depletion of resources managed for conservation or harvest. The 10% rule of demographic
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Quantifying large carnivore predation relative to human harvest on moose in an intensively managed boreal ecosystem Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-11 Håkan Sand, Barbara Zimmermann, Petter Wabakken, Ane Eriksen, Camilla Wikenros
The return of large carnivores to areas with strong anthropogenic impact often results in conflicts among different interest groups. One cause of conflict is that large carnivores compete with humans for wild game species. In Scandinavia, the recolonization of wolves (Canis lupus) and brown bears (Ursus arctos) has important ramifications for the harvest of an ungulate species with high economic and
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Dominant species drove the balance between biodiversity and productivity in mown grasslands under nitrogen fertilization Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-02-11 Xiaojing Zhang, Guojiao Yang, Yu Ning, Liangchao Jiang, Xingguo Han, Xiao‐Tao Lü
Annual mowing, a main management strategy of grasslands, would reduce primary productivity, though might increase plant diversity. Nitrogen (N) fertilization is widely used to raise productivity in global pastures, but always results in biodiversity losses. It is thus a challenge to balance the divergent impacts of mowing and N fertilization on biodiversity and productivity. Here, we examine 9‐year
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Replacing native grazers with livestock influences arthropods to have implications for ecosystem functions and disease Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-31 Pronoy Baidya, Shamik Roy, Jalmesh Karapurkar, Sumanta Bagchi
Grazing by large mammalian herbivores influences ecosystem structure and functions through its impacts on vegetation and soil, as well as by the influence on other animals such as arthropods. As livestock progressively replace native grazers around the world, it is pertinent to ask whether they have comparable influence over arthropods, or not. We use a replicated landscape‐level, long‐term grazer‐exclusion
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Predicting the impact of targeted fence removal on connectivity in a migratory ecosystem Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-27 Imogen A. Schwandner, Thomas A. Morrison, J. Grant C. Hopcraft, Jake Wall, Lacey Hughey, Randall B. Boone, Joseph O. Ogutu, Andrew F. Jakes, Shem C. Kifugo, Campaign Limo, Stephen Ndambuki Mwiu, Vasco Nyaga, Han Olff, Gordon O. Ojwang, Wilson Sairowua, Jackson Sasine, Jully S. Senteu, Daniel Sopia, Jeffrey Worden, Jared A. Stabach
Fencing is one of the most widely utilized tools for reducing human‐wildlife conflict in agricultural landscapes. However, the increasing global footprint of fencing exceeds millions of kilometers and has unintended consequences for wildlife, including habitat fragmentation, movement restriction, entanglement, and mortality. Here, we present a novel and quantitative approach to prioritize fence removal
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Radio‐tracking urban breeding birds: The importance of native vegetation Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-23 Gábor Seress, Krisztina Sándor, Veronika Bókony, Boglárka Bukor, Katalin Hubai, András Liker
As urban areas continue to expand globally, a deeper understanding of the functioning of urban green spaces is crucial for maintaining habitats that effectively support wildlife within our cities. Cities typically harbor a wide variety of nonnative vegetation, providing limited support for insect populations. The resulting scarcity of arthropods has been increasingly linked to adverse effects at higher
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The effectiveness of harvest for limiting wildlife disease: Insights from 20 years of chronic wasting disease in Wyoming Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-21 Wynne E. Moss, Justin Binfet, L. Embere Hall, Samantha E. Allen, William H. Edwards, Jessica E. Jennings‐Gaines, Paul C. Cross
Effective, practical options for managing disease in wildlife populations are limited, especially after diseases become established. Removal strategies (e.g., hunting or culling) are used to control wildlife diseases across a wide range of systems, despite conflicting evidence of their effectiveness. This is especially true for chronic wasting disease (CWD), an untreatable, fatal prion disease threatening
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A probabilistic approach to estimating timber harvest location Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-21 Jakub Truszkowski, Roi Maor, Raquib Bin Yousuf, Subhodip Biswas, Caspar Chater, Peter Gasson, Scot McQueen, Marigold Norman, Jade Saunders, John Simeone, Naren Ramakrishnan, Alexandre Antonelli, Victor Deklerck
Determining the harvest location of timber is crucial to enforcing international regulations designed to protect natural resources and to tackle illegal logging and associated trade in forest products. Stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA) can be used to verify claims of timber harvest location by matching levels of naturally occurring stable isotopes within wood tissue to location‐specific ratios predicted
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Functional leaf and plant use by leafcutter bees: Implications for management and conservation Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-21 Palatty Allesh Sinu, Krishnan P. Abhiram, Ashly Baby, C. R. Akshatha, K. Aneha, Anjana P. Unni, Harita Nalamati, K. Manoj, A. R. Pooja
Wild solitary bees face a host of challenges from the simplification of landscapes and biodiversity loss to invasive species and urbanization. Pollinator researchers and restoration workers thus far gave much attention to increase flower cover to reduce the impact of these anthropogenic pressures. Over 30% of bee species need nonfloral resources such as leaves and resin for their survival and reproduction
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Root functional traits are important predictors for plant resource acquisition strategies in subtropical forests Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Guangcan Yu, Yufang Wang, Andi Li, Senhao Wang, Jing Chen, Jiangming Mo, Mianhai Zheng
Intercorrelated aboveground traits associated with costs and plant growth have been widely used to predict vegetation in response to environmental changes. However, whether underground traits exhibit consistent responses remains unclear, particularly in N‐rich subtropical forests. Responses of foliar and root morphological and physiological traits of tree and herb species after 8‐year N, P, and combined
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Using predictive models to identify kelp refuges in marine protected areas for management prioritization Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Mary A. Young, Kay Critchell, Michael A. Sams
Kelp forests serve as the foundation for shallow marine ecosystems in many temperate areas of the world but are under threat from various stressors, including climate change. To better manage these ecosystems now and into the future, understanding the impacts of climate change and identifying potential refuges will help to prioritize management actions. In this study, we use a long‐term dataset of
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Plant species, inundation, and sediment grain size control the development of sediment stability in tidal marshes Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Marte M. Stoorvogel, Jaco C. de Smit, Lauren E. Wiesebron, Jim van Belzen, Johan van de Koppel, Stijn Temmerman, Tjeerd J. Bouma
Tidal marshes can contribute to nature‐based shoreline protection by reducing the wave load onto the shore and reducing the erosion of the sediment bed. To implement such nature‐based shoreline erosion protection requires the ability to quickly restore or create highly stable and erosion‐resistant tidal marshes at places where they currently do not yet occur. Therefore, we aim to identify the drivers
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Social dominance influences individual susceptibility to an evolutionary trap in mosquitofish Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Lea Pollack, Michael Culshaw‐Maurer, Andrew Sih
Plastic pollution threatens almost every ecosystem in the world. Critically, many animals consume plastic, in part because plastic particles often look or smell like food. Plastic ingestion is thus an evolutionary trap, a phenomenon that occurs when cues are decoupled from their previously associated high fitness outcomes. Theory predicts that dominance hierarchies could dictate individual responses
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Unfriendly neighbors: When facilitation does not contribute to restoration success in tidal marsh Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Karen E. Tanner, Ingrid M. Parker, Monique C. Fountain, Alexandra S. Thomsen, Kerstin Wasson
Large‐scale restoration projects are an exciting and often untapped opportunity to use an experimental approach to inform ecosystem management and test ecological theory. In our $10M tidal marsh restoration project, we installed over 17,000 high marsh plants to increase cover and diversity, using these plantings in a large‐scale experiment to test the benefits of clustering and soil amendments across
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Relative effects of seed mix design, consumer pressure, and edge proximity on community structure in restored prairies Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Riley B. Pizza, Nash E. Turley, Lars A. Brudvig
A central goal of ecosystem restoration is to promote diverse, native‐dominated plant communities. However, restoration outcomes can be highly variable. One cause of this variation may be the decisions made during the seed mix design process, such as choosing the number of species to include (sown diversity) or the number of locations each species should be sourced from (source diversity, manipulated
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Species‐habitat networks reveal conservation implications that other community analyses do not detect Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-20 Zhaoke Dong, Andrew J. Bladon, Coline C. Jaworski, Richard F. Pywell, Ben A. Woodcock, William R. Meek, Peter Nuttall, Lynn V. Dicks
Grassland restoration is an important conservation intervention supporting declining insect pollinators in threatened calcareous grassland landscapes. While the success of restoration is often quantified using simple measures of diversity or similarity to target communities, these measures do not capture all fundamental aspects of community reconstruction. Here, we develop species–habitat networks
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Differential recruitment drives pathogen‐mediated competition between species in an amphibian chytridiomycosis system Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Madelyn J. Mangan, Hamish I. McCallum, Matt West, Ben C. Scheele, Graeme R. Gillespie, Laura F. Grogan
Pathogens that infect multiple host species have an increased capacity to cause extinctions through parasite‐mediated apparent competition. Given unprecedented and continuing losses of biodiversity due to Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), the causative fungus of the amphibian skin disease chytridiomycosis, a robust understanding of the mechanisms driving cross‐species infection dynamics is essential
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From subsidies to stressors: Positively skewed ecological gradients alter biological responses to nutrients in streams Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Stephen E. DeVilbiss, Jason M. Taylor, Matthew B. Hicks
Subsidy–stress gradients offer a useful framework for understanding ecological responses to perturbation and may help inform ecological metrics in highly modified systems. Historic, region‐wide shifts from bottomland hardwood forest to row crop agriculture can cause positively skewed impact gradients in alluvial plain ecoregions, resulting in tolerant organisms that typically exhibit a subsidy response
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Frequent, heterogenous fire supports a forest owl assemblage Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Kate McGinn, Benjamin Zuckerberg, Gavin M. Jones, Connor M. Wood, Stefan Kahl, Kevin G. Kelly, Sheila A. Whitmore, H. Anu Kramer, Josh M. Barry, Elizabeth Ng, M. Zachariah Peery
Fire shapes biodiversity in many forested ecosystems, but historical management practices and anthropogenic climate change have led to larger, more severe fires that threaten many animal species where such disturbances do not occur naturally. As predators, owls can play important ecological roles in biological communities, but how changing fire regimes affect individual species and species assemblages
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Breeding bird sensitivity to urban habitat quality is multi‐scale and strongly dependent on migratory behavior Ecol. Appl. (IF 4.3) Pub Date : 2025-01-17 Nathan W. Byer, Remington J. Moll, Timothy J. Krynak, Erik E. Shaffer, Jen L. Brumfield, John E. Reinier, Sarah R. Eysenbach, Jonathon D. Cepek, Constance E. Hausman
Human‐caused conversion of natural habitat areas to developed land cover represents a major driver of habitat loss and fragmentation, leading to reorganization of biological communities. Although protected areas and urban greenspaces can preserve natural systems in fragmented landscapes, their efficacy has been stymied by the complexity and scale‐dependency underlying biological communities. While