Understanding the mechanisms of spatial variation of biological invasions, across local-to-global scales, has been a major challenge. The importance of evolutionary history for invasion dynamics was noted by Darwin, and several studies have since considered how biodiversity of source and recipient regions can influence the probability of invasions. For over a century, the Panama Canal has connected

Dragonflies never cease surprising me. I thought the most astonishing observation was the apparent “death feigning” (tonic immobility) of females to avoid male harassment. I observed this behavior during my PhD studies in the Swiss Alps in the holarctic Moorland Hawker (Sedge Darner) Aeshna juncea (Linnaeus) (Khelifa 2017). Ever since then, I have wondered whether this behavior occurs in other closely

Ecological experiments usually infer long-term processes from short-term data, and the analysis of geographic range limits is a good example. Species’ geographic ranges may be limited by low fitness due to niche constraints, a hypothesis most directly tested by comparing the fitness of populations transplanted within and beyond the range. Such studies often fail to find beyond-range fitness declines

Trait variation can have important consequences for the outcomes of species interactions. Even though some traits vary as much within species as across related species, models and empirical studies typically do not consider the role of intraspecific trait variation for processes such as disease transmission. For example, many pollinator species are in decline due to a variety of stressors including

The hypothesis that biotic interactions strengthen toward lower latitudes provides a framework for linking community-scale processes with the macroecological scales that define our biosphere. Despite the importance of this hypothesis for understanding community assembly and ecosystem functioning, the extent to which interaction strength varies across latitude and the effects of this variation on natural

Probabilistic near-term forecasting facilitates evaluation of model predictions against observations and is of pressing need in ecology to inform environmental decision making and effect societal change. Despite this imperative, many ecologists are unfamiliar with the widely used tools for evaluating probabilistic forecasts developed in other fields. We address this gap by reviewing the literature

Many orb-weaving spiders build webs invested with curious flags, spirals, or zig-zagging ribbons of bright silk termed "decorations" or "stabilimenta". Web decorating arose some 150 million years ago in nine araneoid lineages, which have diversified into hundreds of species referable to about two dozen genera, with few reversions to non-decorating (Scharff and Coddington 1997; Garrison et al. 2016)

Home ranges provide a conceptual and quantitative representation of animal-habitat associations over time. Methods to estimate home ranges have swiftly progressed by dynamically accounting for various sources of bias. Across that period of growth, one potentially influential source of bias has yet to be robustly scrutinized. Animals inhabiting the terrestrial spatial domain make movement decisions

Interactions among plant species and their soil biota drive plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) that play a major role in the dynamics and diversity of plant communities. Among the different components of the soil community, pathogens are considered main drivers of negative PSFs. Despite this, the number of studies that have experimentally quantified the contribution of soil pathogens to PSFs remains considerably

Trait-based approaches have been extensively used in community ecology to provide a mechanistic understanding of the drivers of community assembly. However, a foundational assumption of the trait framework, traits relate to performance, has been mainly examined through univariate relationships that simplify the complex phenotypic integration of organisms. We evaluate a conceptual framework in which

Eutrophication is a persistent threat to aquatic ecosystems worldwide. Foundation species, namely those that play a central role in the structuring of communities and functioning of ecosystems, are likely important for the resilience of aquatic ecosystems in the face of disturbance. However, little is known about how interactions among such species influence ecosystem responses to nutrient perturbation

In aquatic detrital-based food webs, research suggests that autotroph-heterotroph microbial interactions exert bottom-up controls on energy and nutrient transfer. To address this emerging topic, we investigated microbial responses to nutrient and light treatments during Liriodendron tulipifera litter decomposition and fed litter to the caddisfly larvae Pycnopsyche sp. We measured litter-associated

Generalist species are the linchpins of networks, as they are important for maintaining network structure and function. Previous studies have shown that interactions between generalists tend to occur consistently across years and sites. However, the link between temporal and spatial interaction persistence across scales remains unclear. To address this gap, we collected data on plant–pollinator interactions

Identifying interspecific associations is very important for understanding the community assembly process. However, most methods provide only an average association and assume that the association strength does not vary along the environmental gradient or with time. The scale effects are generally ignored. We integrated the idea of wavelet and network topological analysis to provide a novel way to

Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) inputs are causing large changes in ecosystems worldwide. Many previous studies have examined the impact of N on terrestrial ecosystems; however, most have added N at rates that are much higher than predicted future deposition rates. Here, we present the results from a gradient of experimental N addition (0–10 g·N·m−2) in a temperate grassland. After a decade of N addition

The plastic responses of plants to abiotic and biotic environmental factors have generally been addressed separately; thus we have a poor understanding of how these factors interact. For example, little is known about the effects of plant–plant interactions on the plasticity of plants in response to water availability. Furthermore, few studies have compared the effects of intra- and interspecific interactions

Environmental stress can reshape trophic interactions by excluding predators or rendering prey vulnerable, depending on the relative sensitivity of species to the stressor. Classical models of food web responses to stress predict either complete predator exclusion from stressed areas or complete prey vulnerability if predators are stress tolerant. However, if the consumer response to the stress is

Insects are the most ubiquitous and diverse group of eukaryotic organisms on Earth, forming a crucial link in terrestrial and freshwater food webs. They have recently become the subject of headlines because of observations of dramatic declines in some places. Although there are hundreds of long-term insect monitoring programs, a global database for long-term data on insect assemblages has so far remained

With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled

Human isotopic ecology at its core aims to study humans as a part of their environments, as animals within an ecosystem. We are complex animals with complicated foodways and mobility patterns that are hard to address without large multifaceted data sets. As biomolecular data from archaeological remains proliferates scientists are now at the stage where we are able to collate large bodies of data and

Errata for Rockweit, J. T., A. B. Franklin, and P. C. Carlson. 2017. Differential impacts of wildfire on the population dynamics of an old-forest species. Ecology 98:1574–1582. doi: 10.1002/ecy.1805 In Rockweit et al. the authors stated “Our data was not confounded with salvage logging because post-fire salvage logging did not occur in our study area.” However, the authors report it has recently come

Climate change is expected to alter the distribution and abundance of tree species, impacting ecosystem structure and function. Yet, anticipating where this will occur is often hampered by a lack of understanding of how demographic rates, most notably recruitment, vary in response to climate and competition across a species range. Using large-scale monitoring data on two dry woodland tree species (Pinus

Estimates of age-specific survival probabilities are needed for age-structured population models and to inform conservation decisions. However, determining the age of individuals in wildlife populations is often problematic. We present a hidden Markov model for estimating age-specific survival from capture–recapture or capture–recapture–recovery data when age is unknown and indicators of age, such

Movement is a widespread behavior across organisms and is driven in part by interspecific interactions. Generally, negative interspecific interactions (such as competition and natural enemies) are more often studied in the context of movement than positive interactions (mutualism). Mutualistic relationships are incredibly common, yet only a subset are studied in the context of movement (transportation

In the summer of 2015 we began an intensive, long-term nighttime survey campaign in the Gulf of Eilat and Aqaba, Red Sea, to build a calendar of the reproduction of corals and other coral-reef dwellers (Shlesinger et al. 2016, 2017, Shlesinger and Loya 2018, 2019). By the end of 2019 we had spent 280 nights in the water, snorkeling, free diving, and frantically swimming, to witness and document every

Size-structured food webs form integrated trophic systems where energy is being channelled from small to large consumers. Empirical evidence suggests that size structure prevails in aquatic ecosystems while in terrestrial food webs trophic level is largely independent of body size. Compartmentalisation of energy channeling according to size classes of consumers was suggested as a mechanism that underpins

Emigration propensity (i.e., the tendency to leave undisturbed patches) is a key life-history trait of organisms in metapopulations with local extinctions and colonizations. Metapopulation models of dispersal evolution typically assume that patch disturbance kills all individuals within the patch, thus causing local extinction. However, individuals may instead be able to leave a patch when it is disturbed

The likelihood an individual becomes infected depends on the community in which it is embedded. For environmentally transmitted parasites, host community composition can alter host density, the density of parasites that hosts encounter in the environment, and the dose to which hosts are subsequently exposed. While some multi-host theory incorporates some of these factors (e.g., competition among hosts)

We study hybrids, in part, because they are broken. Not in the sense that they are literally broken—although in many cases they do have low fitness compared to parental species—but because the recombination that occurs with multiple generations of hybridization breaks up the genomes of two species and puts it back together in unpredictable ways. This genetic mixing allows researchers to associate regions

Global environmental change is challenging species with novel conditions, such that demographic and evolutionary trajectories of populations are often shaped by the exchange of organisms and alleles across landscapes. Current ecological theory predicts that random networks with dispersal shortcuts connecting distant sites can promote persistence when there is no capacity for evolution. Here, we show

The broadening in species’ thermal tolerance limits and breadth from tropical to temperate latitudes is proposed to reflect spatial gradients in temperature seasonality, but the importance of seasonal shifts in thermal tolerances within and across locations is much less appreciated. We performed thermal assays to examine the maximum and minimum critical temperatures (CTmax and CTmin, respectively)

The arrival of novel predators can trigger trophic cascades driven by shifts in prey numbers. Predators also elicit behavioral change in prey populations, via phenotypic plasticity and/or rapid evolution, and such changes may also contribute to trophic cascades. Here, we document rapid demographic and behavioral changes in populations of a prey species (grassland melomys Melomys burtoni, a granivorous

Parasites can harm hosts and influence populations, communities, and ecosystems. However, parasites are reciprocally affected by population- and community-level dynamics. Understanding feedbacks between infection dynamics and larger-scale epidemiological and ecological processes could improve predictions and reveal novel control methods. We evaluated how exploitative resource competition among hosts

Camera trap surveys are useful to understand animal species population trends, distribution, habitat preference, behavior, community dynamics, periods of activity, and species associations with environmental conditions. This information is ecologically important, because many species play important roles in local ecosystems as predators, herbivores, seed dispersers, and disease vectors. Additionally

Top-down cascade effects are among the most important mechanisms underlying community structure and abundance dynamics in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. A current challenge is understanding the factors controlling trophic cascade strength under global environmental changes. Here, we synthesized 161 global sites to analyze how multiple factors influence consumer-resource interactions

How microbial species performance indicators, such as growth rate and carbon assimilation rate, respond to environmental changes is a challenging question, especially for complex communities. This limits our ability to understand how species performance responses to environmental changes (that is, species environmental responses) of microbes could be linked to genomic traits and nutrient availability

While top-down control plays an important role in shaping both natural and agricultural food webs, we lack insights into how top-down control effects vary across spatial scales. We used a multi-scale survey of top-down control of coffee pests and diseases by arboreal ants to examine if colony location creates a small-scale mosaic in top-down control around trees and if the strength of that control

Spatial synchrony is the tendency of spatially separated populations to display similar temporal fluctuations. Synchrony affects regional ecosystem functioning, but it remains difficult to disentangle its underlying mechanisms. We leveraged regression on distance matrices and geography of synchrony to understand the processes driving synchrony of European beech masting over the European continent.

Errata for Bruckerhoff et al. 2020. Harmony on the prairie? Grassland plant and animal community responses to variation in climate across land-use gradients. Ecology Volume 101, Article e02986. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2986 The final submission of this paper listed a co-author name incorrectly. The authors apologize for this oversight. Co-author name Alice W. Boyle is incorrect; this should be W

Investigation of communities in extreme environments with unique conditions has the potential to broaden or challenge existing theory as to how biological communities assemble and change through succession. Deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems have strong, parallel gradients of nutrients and environmental stress, and present unusual conditions in early succession, in that both nutrient availability

Understanding how the biological invasion is driven by environmental factors will improve model prediction and advance early detection, especially in the context of accelerating anthropogenic ecological changes. Although a large body of studies has examined how favorable environments promote biological invasions, a more comprehensive and mechanistic understanding of invasive species response to unfavorable/stressful

Forests are a significant CO2 sink. However, CO2 sequestration in forests is radiatively offset by emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas, from forest soils. Reforestation, an important strategy for mitigating climate change, has focused on maximizing CO2 sequestration in plant biomass without integrating N2O emissions from soils. Although nitrogen (N)-fixing trees are often recommended

Nitrogen-fixing trees are an important nitrogen source to terrestrial ecosystems. While they can fuel primary production and drive carbon dioxide sequestration, they can also potentially stimulate soil emissions of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. However, studies on the influence of nitrogen-fixing trees on soil nitrous oxide emissions have not been quantitatively synthesised. Here, we show

Specialization in nectarivory is an uncommon condition among bats, and it is restricted to two subfamilies of neotropical phyllostomids (Glossophaginae and Lonchophyllinae) which encompass dozens of bats with striking morpho-physiological adaptations to exploit floral nectar (Muchhala and Tschapka 2020). Such bats commonly start the search for flowers before the sun goes down, when the flowers are

Biotic resistance is often posited, but rarely known, to be the cause of invasion failure. Competition and predation are the most frequently identified processes that may prevent or limit the establishment of non-native species. Interactions between non-native and native species that involve intraguild predation (IGP) are very common in nature, although theory predicts most IGP systems should be unstable

Animals play an important and sometimes overlooked role in nutrient cycling. The role of animals in nutrient cycling is spatially and temporally variable, but few studies have evaluated the long-term importance of animal-mediated nutrient cycling in meeting nutrient demand by primary producers. We quantified the proportion of phytoplankton nutrient (phosphorus, P) demand met by excretion by gizzard

Local dynamics are influenced by regional processes. Meta‐ecology, or the study of spatial flows of energy, materials, and species between local systems, is becoming increasingly concerned with accurate depictions of species movements and the impacts of this movement on landscape‐level ecosystem function. Indeed, incorporating diverse types of movement is a major frontier in metacommunity theory. Here

Tropical forest regeneration after abandonment of former agricultural land depends critically on the input of tree seeds, yet seed dispersal is increasingly disrupted in contemporary human‐modified landscapes. Here, we introduce the concept of seed‐rain–successional feedbacks as a deterministic process in which seed rain is shaped by successional dynamics internal to a forest site and that acts to

Organismal locomotion mediates ecological interactions and shapes community dynamics. Locomotion is constrained by intrinsic and environmental factors and integrating these factors should clarify how locomotion affects ecology across scales. We extended general theory based on metabolic scaling and biomechanics to predict the scaling of five locomotor performance traits: routine speed, maximum speed

Acoustic signaling is key in mediating mate‐choice, which directly impacts individual fitness. Because background noise and habitat structure can impair signal transmission, the acoustic space of mixed‐species assemblages has long been hypothesized to reflect selective pressures against signal interference and degradation. However, other potential drivers that received far less attention can drive

Bees are a diverse group of insects that have tremendous importance as pollinators. In the last decades, there was a global decline in bee populations due to land‐use change, intensive agriculture, and climate change. Unfortunately, our knowledge of native bees' ecology is rather scarce, and such knowledge gaps are also a major threat to its conservation. In this sense, biological collections are a

In a recent paper, Schoolmaster, Zirbel, and Cronin (2020) (SZC) claim “Formal causal analysis show[s] that biodiversity–ecosystem function (BEF) correlations are non‐causal associations.” If this conclusion is accepted as true, it suggests a reconsideration of much of our current understanding of how biodiversity relates to the functioning of ecosystems. On the surface, it is easy to spot clear signs

It is well known that functional diversity strongly affects ecosystem functioning. However, even in rather simple model communities consisting of only two or, at best, three trophic levels, the relationship between multitrophic functional diversity and ecosystem functioning appears difficult to generalize, due to its high contex‐tuality. In this study, we considered several differently structured tritrophic

The ideal‐weed hypothesis predicts that invasive plants should be less dependent on mutualisms. However, evidence in favor of or against this hypothesis comes mainly from observational studies. Here, we experimentally tested this hypothesis using a two‐factor greenhouse experiment, comparing the seedling growth response of different Pinus species (varying in invasiveness) to ectomycorrhizal fungal

First‐order dynamic occupancy models (FODOMs) are a class of state‐space model in which the true state (occurrence) is observed imperfectly. An important assumption of FODOMs is that site dynamics only depend on the current state and that variations in dynamic processes are adequately captured with covariates or random effects. However, it is often difficult to understand and/or measure the covariates

Competitively dominant carnivore species can limit the population sizes and alter the behavior of inferior competitors. Established mechanisms that enable carnivore coexistence include spatial and temporal avoidance of dominant predator species by subordinates, and dietary niche separation. However, spatial heterogeneity across landscapes could provide inferior competitors with refuges in the form

Nutrient enrichment is widespread throughout grassland systems and expected to increase during the Anthropocene. Trophic interactions, like aboveground herbivory, have been shown to mitigate its effect on plant diversity. Belowground herbivory may also impact these habitats’ response to nutrient enrichment, but its influence is much less understood, and likely to depend on factors such as the herbivores’

A central principle in trait‐based ecology is that trait variation has an adaptive value. However, uncertainty over which plant traits influence individual performance across environmental gradients may limit our ability to use traits to infer ecological processes at larger scales. To better understand which traits are linked to performance under different precipitation regimes, we measured above‐