In Southeast Asia, biodiversity‐rich forests are being extensively logged and converted to oil palm monocultures. Although the impacts of these changes on biodiversity are largely well documented, we know little about how these large‐scale impacts affect freshwater trophic ecology. We used stable isotope analyses (SIA) to determine the impacts of land‐use changes on the relative contribution of allochthonous

Where inter‐specific facilitation favors the establishment of high densities of a beneficiary species, strong intra‐specific competition may subsequently impede beneficiary performance. Consequently, the negative influence of intra‐specific competition between beneficiary individuals could potentially outweigh the positive influence of inter‐specific facilitation when, for example, higher densities

Pulsed fluxes of organisms across ecosystem boundaries can exert top‐down and bottom‐up effects in recipient food webs, through both direct effects on the subsidized trophic levels and indirect effects on other components of the system. While previous theoretical and empirical studies demonstrate the influence of allochthonous subsidies on bottom‐up and top‐down processes, understanding how these forces

In tropical forests, insect herbivores exert significant pressure on plant populations. Adaptation to such pressure is hypothesized to be a driver of high tropical diversity, but direct evidence for local adaptation to herbivory in tropical forests is sparse. At the same time, herbivore pressure has been hypothesized to increase with rainfall in the tropics, which could lead to differences among sites

Climate models project higher growing‐season temperatures and a decline in the depth and duration of winter snowpack throughout many north temperate ecosystems over the next century. A smaller snowpack is projected to induce more frequent soil freeze/thaw cycles in winter in northern hardwood forests of the northeastern United States. We measured the combined effects of warmer growing‐season soil temperatures

Whole‐leaf decomposition rates are the sum of the decomposition rates of each chemical fraction (water‐soluble, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin), but the decomposition rates of each fraction show complicated patterns of covariation. What explains these patterns of covariation? After measuring the k‐values of each fraction in 42 different mixtures of tree leaf litters from five species, we tested three

Wildlife are faced with numerous threats to survival, none more pressing than that of climate change. Understanding how species will respond behaviorally, physiologically, and demographically to a changing climate is a cornerstone of many contemporary ecological studies, especially for organisms, such as amphibians, whose persistence is closely tied to abiotic conditions. Activity is a useful parameter

Two key knowledge gaps currently limit the development of more predictive and general models of pathogen transmission: (1) the physiological basis of heterogeneity in host contribution to pathogen transmission (reservoir potential) remains poorly understood and (2) a general means of integrating the ecological dynamics of host communities has yet to emerge. If the traits responsible for differences

Understanding the drivers of geographical variation in species distributions, and the resulting community structure, constitutes one of the grandest challenges in ecology. Geographical patterns of species richness and composition have been relatively well studied. Less is known about how the entire set of trophic and non‐trophic ecological interactions, and the complex networks that they create by

Subalpine forests that historically burned every 100‐300 years are expected to burn more frequently as climate warms, perhaps before trees reach reproductive maturity or produce a serotinous seedbank. Tree regeneration after short‐interval (< 30‐yr) high‐severity fire will increasingly rely on seed dispersal from unburned trees, but how dispersal varies with age and structure of surrounding forest

Climate change will increase the likelihood and severity of droughts into the future. While diversity may buffer plant communities against the negative effects of drought, the mechanisms underlying this pattern remain unclear. Higher diversity plant communities may have a higher likelihood of including more drought resistant species that can compensate for drought‐sensitive species (“insurance effects”)

Understanding the role of species interactions within communities is a central focus of ecology. A key challenge is to understand variation in species interactions along environmental gradients. The stress gradient hypothesis posits that positive interactions increase and competitive interactions decrease with increasing consumer pressure or environmental stress. This hypothesis has received extensive

Herbivory has potential to modify vegetation responses to climatic changes. However, climate and herbivory also affect each other, and rarely work in isolation from other ecological factors, such as plant–plant competition. Thus, it is challenging to predict the extent to which herbivory can counteract, amplify, or interact with climate impacts on ecosystems. Here, we investigate how moose modify climatic

In ecological meta‐analyses, non‐independence among observed effect sizes from the same source paper is common. If not accounted for, non‐independence can seriously undermine inferences. We compared the performance of four meta‐analysis methods that attempt to address such non‐independence and the standard random‐effect model that ignores non‐independence. We simulated data with various types of within‐paper

Sixty year ago, Charles Elton posed that species‐rich communities should be more resistant to biological invasion. However, still little is known about which processes could drive the diversity‐invasibility relationship. Here we examined whether soil‐microbes‐mediated apparent competition on alien invaders is more negative when the soil originates from multiple native species. We trained soils with

Over the past two decades, liana density and basal area have been increasing in many tropical forests, which has profound consequences for forest diversity and functioning. One hypothesis to explain increasing lianas is elevated nutrient deposition in tropical forests resulting from fossil fuels, agricultural fertilizer, and biomass burning. We tested this hypothesis by surveying all lianas ≥ 1 cm

Changes in species diversity often result from species losses and gains. The dynamic nature of beta diversity (spatial variation in species composition) that derives from such temporal species turnover, however, has received relatively little attention. Here, we disentangled extinction and colonization components of beta diversity by using the sets of species that went locally extinct and that newly

Species extinction has reached unprecedented rates globally, and can cause unexpected ecological cascades. Since Europeans arrived in Australia, many endemic mammals have declined or become extinct, but their ecological roles and outcomes of their reintroduction for ecosystems are poorly understood. Using surveys and novel long‐term exclusion and disturbance experiments, we tested how digging mammal

Deciphering the ecological roles of plant secondary metabolites requires integrative studies that assess both the allocation patterns of compounds and their bioactivity in ecological interactions. Secondary metabolites have been primarily studied in leaves, but many are unique to fruits and can have numerous potential roles in interactions with both mutualists (seed dispersers) and antagonists (pathogens

The dynamics of ecological communities depend partly on species interactions within and among trophic levels. Experimental work has demonstrated the impact of species interactions on the species involved, but it remains unclear whether these effects can also be detected in long‐term time series across heterogeneous landscapes. We analysed a 19‐year time series of patch occupancy by the Glanville Fritillary

What happens in meadows after populations of natural grazers rebound following centuries of low abundance? Many seagrass ecosystems are now experiencing this phenomenon with the recovery of green turtles (Chelonia mydas), large‐bodied marine herbivores that feed on seagrasses. These seagrass ecosystems provide a rare opportunity to study ecosystem‐wide shifts that result from a recovery of herbivores

Coexistence in spatially varying environments is theorised to be promoted by a variety of mechanisms including the spatial storage effect. The spatial storage effect promotes coexistence when: (i) species have unique vital rate responses to their spatial environment and, when abundant, (ii) experience stronger competition in the environmental patches where they perform better. In a naturally occurring

Predators and prey interact at small spatial scales, but during their lifetime disperse at much larger spatial scales. Trophic metacommunity theory proposes that dispersal is a critical processes that determines food webs structure at small and large scales. The application of metacommunity theory to empirical systems remains elusive because key parameters such as dispersal and interaction strengths

A core goal of ecology is to understand the abiotic and biotic variables that regulate species distributions and community composition. A major obstacle is that the rules governing species distributions can change with spatial scale. Here, we illustrate this point using data from a spatially nested metacommunity of parasites infecting a metapopulation of threespine stickleback fish from 34 lakes on

Madagascar is regarded by some as one of the most degraded landscapes on Earth, with estimates suggesting that 90% of forests have been lost to indigenous Tavy farming. However, the extent of this degradation has been challenged: paleoecological data, phylogeographic analysis, and species richness indicate that pyrogenic savannas in Central Madagascar pre‐date human arrival, even though rainfall is

The addition of non‐native species and loss of native species has modified the composition of communities globally. Although changes in β‐diversity have been well documented, there is a need for studies incorporating multiple time periods, more than one dimension of biodiversity, and inclusion of nestedness and turnover components to understand the underlying mechanisms structuring community composition

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is often assessed through trait diversity. However, the relationship between traits and functions is typically assumed but seldom tested. We analyze the relationship between dung beetle traits and three ecological functions: dung removal, dung burial, and seedling emergence. We set up a laboratory experiment using nine Scarabaeidae species

Changes in thermal regimes that disparately affect hosts and parasitoids could release hosts from biological control. When multiple natural enemy species share a host, shifts in host–parasitoid dynamics could depend on whether natural enemies interact antagonistically vs. synergistically. We investigated how biotic and abiotic factors influence the population ecology of larch casebearer (Coleophora

Understanding the movement of species’ ranges is a classic ecological problem that takes on urgency in this era of global change. Historically treated as a purely ecological process, range expansion is now understood to involve eco‐evolutionary feedbacks due to spatial genetic structure that emerges as populations spread. We synthesize empirical and theoretical work on the eco‐evolutionary dynamics

Population density is the most basic ecological parameter for understanding population dynamics and biological conservation. Distance‐based methods (or plotless methods) are considered as a more efficient but less robust approach than quadrat‐based counting methods in estimating plant population density. The low robustness of distance‐based methods mainly arises from the oversimplistic assumption of

Interactions among co‐infecting pathogens are common across host taxa and can affect infectious disease dynamics. Host nutrition can mediate these among‐pathogen interactions, altering the establishment and growth of pathogens within hosts. It is unclear, however, how nutrition‐mediated among‐pathogen interactions affect transmission and the spread of disease through populations. We manipulated the

Ecological stoichiometry is concerned with the ratios of different elements, particularly carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Ratios by their nature do not respond symmetrically to changes in the numerator and denominator and do not follow normal distributions; however, researchers frequently fail to consider these properties in their analyses, which has biased reported results. Calculating means, variance

As a strategic cost‐saving alternative to constitutive resistance, induction of resistance against herbivores in plants can be especially beneficial when enemies are scarce or variable in abundance. Although probably describing the two ends of a continuum, constitutive and induced resistance strategies have long been observed to trade off within species. Examining these traits among populations along

The spatial habitat heterogeneity hypothesis posits that habitat complexity increases the abundance and diversity of species. In tropical forests, lianas add substantial habitat heterogeneity and complexity throughout the vertical forest profile, which may maintain animal abundance and diversity. The effects of lianas on tropical animal communities, however, remain poorly understood. We propose that

Many global changes take the form of resource enhancements that have potential to transform multiple aspects of ecosystems from slower to faster cycling, including a suite of both above‐ and belowground variables. We developed a novel analytic approach to measure integrated ecosystem responses to resource‐enhancing global changes, and how such whole ecosystem slow‐to‐fast transitions are linked to

Mammalian carnivores are considered a key group in maintaining ecological health and can indicate potential ecological integrity in landscapes where they occur. Carnivores also hold high conservation value and their habitat requirements can guide management and conservation plans. The order Carnivora has 84 species from 8 families in the Neotropical region: Canidae; Felidae; Mephitidae; Mustelidae;

Recent decades have seen increased research interest in the processes and mechanisms related to insect gall richness and host plants. The data set provided here includes 968 records of interactions between galling insects and host plants for the Cerrado biome. The data set comprises 505 species of 222 genera and 67 families of host plants. The botanical families most represented in the data set are

The longevity of trees is a major life‐history trait that could provide crucial information about ecological history, forest dynamics and the carbon cycle. Studying the longevity of trees in different environments in response to climate change is a research priority for both nature conservation and climate change mitigation strategies (Körner 2017, Lindenmayer and Laurance 2017). The full expression

Recent studies have found considerable trait variations within species. The effect of such intra‐specific trait variability (ITV) on the stability, coexistence and diversity of ecological communities received considerable attention and in many models it was shown to impede coexistence and decrease species diversity. Here we present a numerical study of the effect of genetically inherited ITV on species

Successful conservation management is often based on the principle that small or declining populations can recover if we identify and remove the factors that caused them to decline in the first place. But what form will that recovery take? Theory tells us that when a strong limiting factor is removed, a population should increase in size to where it becomes limited by some other factor. However, if

Understanding how to scale up effects of biological diversity on ecosystem functioning and services remains challenging. There is a general consensus that biodiversity loss alters ecosystem processes underpinning the goods and services upon which humanity depends. Yet, most of that consensus stems from experiments performed at small spatial‐scales for short time‐frames, which limits transferability

Predator‐prey games emerge when predators and prey dynamically respond to the behavior of one another, driving the outcomes of predator‐prey interactions. Predation success is a function of the combined probabilities of encountering and capturing prey, which are influenced by both prey behavior and environmental features. While the relative importance of encounter and capture probabilities have been

Plant reproductive phenology—the timing of reproduction—is shifting rapidly with global climate change. Many studies focus on flowering responses to climate, but few investigate how post‐flowering processes, such as how quickly plants develop from flowering to seed dispersal, respond to environmental factors. We examined the climatic drivers of post‐flowering phenology in 28 species of Western North

Parasite fitness depends on a successful journey from one host to another. For parasites that are transmitted environmentally, abiotic conditions might modulate the success of this journey. Here we evaluate how light, a key abiotic factor, influences spatiotemporal patterns of zooplankton disease where light varies seasonally, across lakes, and with depth in a lake. In an in situ experiment using those

Changes in plant communities can have large effects on ecosystem carbon (C) dynamics and long term C stocks. However, how these effects are mediated by environmental context or vary among ecosystems is not well understood. To study this, we used a long‐term plant removal experiment set up across 30 forested lake islands in northern Sweden which collectively represent a strong gradient of soil fertility

Mortality and shifts in species distributions are among the most obvious consequences of extreme climatic events. However, the sub‐lethal effects of an extreme event can have persistent impacts throughout an individual’s lifetime and into future generations via within and transgenerational phenotypic plasticity. These changes can either confer resilience or increase susceptibility to subsequent stressful

Predicting the response of biological communities to changes in the environment or management is a fundamental pursuit of community ecology. Meeting this challenge requires the integration of multiple processes: habitat filtering, niche differentiation, biotic interactions, competitive exclusion, and stochastic demographic events. Most approaches to this long‐standing problem focus either on the role

Alluvial aquifers are key components of river floodplains and biodiversity worldwide, but they contain extreme environmental conditions and have limited sources of carbon for sustaining food webs. Despite this, they support abundant populations of aquifer stoneflies that have large proportions of their biomass carbon derived from methane. Methane is typically produced in freshwater ecosystems in anoxic

We experimentally increased salinities in a tidal freshwater marsh on the Altamaha River (Georgia, USA) by exposing the organic rich soils to 3.5 yr of continuous (press) and episodic (pulse) treatments with dilute seawater to simulate the effects of climate change such as sea level rise (press) and drought (pulse). We quantified changes in root production and decomposition, soil elevation, and soil

Productivity and environmental stress are major drivers of multiple biodiversity facets and faunal community structure. Little is known on their interacting effects on early community assembly processes in the deep sea (>200 m), the largest environment on Earth. However, at hydrothermal vents productivity correlates, at least partially, with environmental stress. Here, we studied the colonization of

Climate warming and species traits interact to influence predator performance, including individual feeding and growth rates. However, the effects of an important trait—predator foraging strategy—are largely unknown. We investigated the interactions between predator foraging strategy and temperature on two ectotherm predators: an active predator, the backswimmer Notonecta undulata, and a sit‐and‐wait

Feedbacks between plants and soil microbial communities can play an important role in structuring plant communities. However, little is known about how soil legacies caused by environmental disturbances such as drought and extreme precipitation events may affect plant–soil feedback or whether plant–soil feedback operates within species as it does between species. If soil legacies alter plant–soil feedback

Why only a small proportion of exotic species become invasive is an unresolved question. Escape from the negative effects of soil biota in the native range can be important for the success of many invasives, but comparative effects of soil biota on less successful exotic species are poorly understood. Studies of other mechanisms suggest that such comparisons might be fruitful. Seeds of three closely

As the earth warms, populations will be faced with novel environments to which they may not be adapted. In the short term, populations can be buffered against the negative effects, or maximize the beneficial effects, of such environmental change via phenotypic plasticity and, in the longer term, via adaptive evolution. However, the extent and direction of these population‐level responses will be dependent

The roles mobile animals and abiotic processes play as vectors for resource transfers between ecosystems (“subsidies”) are well studied, but the idea that resources from animals with limited mobility may be transported across boundaries through intermediate taxa remains unexplored. Aquatic plants (“macrophytes”) are globally distributed and may mediate transfers of aquatic‐derived nutrients from aggregations

Our understanding on how organisms evolutionarily cope with simultaneously occurring, multiple threats over generations is still elusive. In a long‐term experimental study, we therefore exposed clones of a freshwater cladoceran, Daphnia magna, to threats from predation and ultraviolet radiation (UVR) during three consecutive parthenogenetic generations. We show that Daphnia can adapt to different sets

Species’ range edges are expanding to both warmer and cooler regions. Yet, no studies directly compared the changes in range‐limiting traits within the same species during both types of range expansions. To increase our mechanistic understanding of range expansions, it is crucial to disentangle the contributions of plastic and genetic changes in these traits. The aim of this study was to test for plastic

Population dynamics are shaped by species interactions with resources, competitors, enemies, and environmental fluctuations that alter the strength of these interactions. We used a food web approach to investigate the population dynamics of an abundant Arctic mosquito species, Aedes nigripes (Diptera: Culicidae). Specifically, we evaluated the importance of bottom‐up variation in aquatic biofilms (food)

Ongoing climate change is shifting the geographic distributions of some species, potentially imposing rapid changes in local community structure and ecosystem functioning. Besides changes in population‐level interspecific interactions, such range shifts may also cause changes in functional structure within the host assemblages, which can result in losses or gains in ecosystem functions. Because consumer‐resource

This data set describes the abundance of 50 invertebrate taxa found in intertidal mussel beds along the Atlantic Canadian coast. This information resulted from a regional‐scale study that investigated the effects of wave exposure on the richness and composition of invertebrate assemblages from intertidal mussel beds. Abundance data are provided for taxa representing the Annelida, Arthropoda, Bryozoa