Telomere shortening has been used as an indicator of aging and is believed to accelerate under harsh environmental conditions. This can be attributed to the fact that telomere shortening has often been regarded as non-reversible and negatively impacting fitness. However, studies of laboratory mice indicate that they may be able to repair telomere loss to recover from environmental harshness, as indicated

Barriers preventing species from dispersing to a location can have a major influence on how communities assemble. Dispersal success may also depend on whether dispersers have to colonise an established community or a largely depauperate location. In freshwater systems, dams and weirs have fragmented rivers, potentially limiting dispersal of biota along rivers. Decommissioning aqueducts on two weirs

Climate change-related increases in temperature will influence the interactions between organisms, including the infection dynamics of parasites in ecosystems. The distribution and transmission of parasites are expected to increase with warmer temperature, but to what extent this will affect closely related parasite taxa living in sympatry is currently impossible to predict, due to our extremely limited

Myrmecochory is a widespread mutualism in which plants benefit from seed dispersal services by ants. Ants might also be providing seeds with an additional byproduct benefit via reduced plant pathogen loads in the ant nest environment through their antimicrobial glandular secretions. We investigate this byproduct benefit by identifying fungal communities in ant nests and surrounding environments and

Osmoderma eremita is a species of beetle that inhabits hollows in ancient trees, which is a habitat that has decreased significantly during the last century. In southeastern Sweden, we studied the metapopulation dynamics of this beetle over a 25 year period, using capture-mark-recapture. The metapopulation size had been rather stable over time, but in most of the individual trees there had been a positive

Foraging is risky and involves balancing the benefits of resource acquisition with costs of predation. Optimal foraging theory predicts where, when and how long to forage in a given spatiotemporal distribution of risks and resources. However, significant variation in foraging behaviour and resource exploitation remain unexplained. Using single foragers in artificial landscapes of perceived risks and

The impacts of invasive species on biodiversity may be mitigated or exacerbated by abiotic environmental changes. Invasive plants can restructure soil fungal communities with important implications for native biodiversity and nutrient cycling, yet fungal responses to invasion may depend on numerous anthropogenic stressors. In this study, we experimentally invaded a long-term soil warming and simulated

Parasites can negatively affect the reproductive success of hosts. Placental species may be particularly susceptible, because parasite-induced stress during pregnancy could potentially influence embryo development. Here, we examine the consequences of a trematode infestation (black spot disease, BSD) for fetal development and adult behavior in 19 natural populations of the placental live-bearing fish

Understanding how global change drivers (GCDs) affect aboveground net primary production (ANPP) through time is essential to predicting the reliability and maintenance of ecosystem function and services in the future. While GCDs, such as drought, warming and elevated nutrients, are known to affect mean ANPP, less is known about how they affect inter-annual variability in ANPP. We examined 27 global

Current strategies for conservation reportedly suffer from an inadequate awareness of the drivers affecting lichen diversity, pointing to the need to fully develop a functional approach to lichen ecology. This study is an attempt to detect the drivers affecting functional diversity in the lichen flora of a volcanic Mediterranean area. Data on epiphytic lichen distribution were correlated with information

Empirical studies of phenotypic plasticity often use an experimental design in which the subjects in experimental treatments are exposed to cues, while the subjects in control treatments are maintained in the absence of those cues. However, researchers have virtually ignored the question of what, if any, information might be provided to subjects by the absence of the cues in control treatments. We

Many bee species are dietary specialists and restrict their pollen foraging to a subset of the available flowers. However, the reasons for specialization—and the reasons certain plant taxa support numerous specialists—are often unclear. Many bees specialize on the plant family Asteraceae, despite evidence its pollen is a poor food for non-specialists. Here, we studied six mason bee (Osmia) species

Understanding factors affecting the distribution of vector-borne diseases in space and across species is of prime importance to conservation ecologists. Identifying the underlying patterns of disease requires a perspective encompassing large spatial scales. However, few studies have investigated disease ecology from a macroecological perspective. Hence, we use a global disease database to uncover worldwide

Temporal heterogeneity in nutrient availability is known to increase phytoplankton diversity by allowing more species to coexist under different resource niches. Spatial heterogeneity has also been positively correlated with species diversity. Here we investigated how temporal and spatial differences in nutrient addition together impact biodiversity in metacommunities varying in the degree of connectivity

Vertebrate cellular immunity displays substantial variation among taxa and environments. Hematological parameters such as white blood-cell counts have emerged as a valuable tool to understand this variation by assessing the immunological status of individuals. These tools have long revealed that vertebrate cellular immune systems are highly plastic and respond to injury and infection. However, cellular

Biotic and abiotic stressors commonly co-occur in plant communities and influence interactions between plants. However, their combined effects on plant interactions have not been widely studied and are still unclear. Here, we assessed the balance of interactions between neighboring plants along a grazing gradient and under two water regimes. We conducted a three-year-field experiment in semi-arid central

In plant communities, some mechanisms maintain differences in species' abundances, while other mechanisms promote coexistence. Asymmetry in conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) and/or habitat preference is hypothesized to shape relative species abundance, whereas community compensatory trends (CCTs) induced by community-level CNDD and heterospecific facilitation are hypothesized to promote

Coexistence theory predicts that, in general, increases in the number of limiting resources shared among competitors should facilitate coexistence. Heterotrophic sessile marine invertebrate communities are extremely diverse but traditionally, space was viewed as the sole limiting resource. Recently planktonic food was recognized as an additional limiting resource, but the degree to which planktonic

Megaherbivores have been of particular interest to scientists because of the physiological and ecological challenges associated with their extreme body size. Yet, one question that has seldom been explored is how browsing megaherbivores cope with plant secondary metabolites (PSMs), such as tannins, found in their food. It is possible that the sheer body size of these megaherbivores allows them to ingest

Urban green spaces such as gardens often consist of native and exotic plant species, which provide pollen and nectar for flower-visiting insects. Although some exotic plants are readily visited by pollinators, it is unknown if and at which time of the season exotic garden plants may supplement or substitute for flower resources provided by native plants. To investigate if seasonal changes in flower

Above- and below-ground herbivory are key ecosystem processes that can be substantially altered by environmental changes. However, direct comparisons of the coupled variations of above- and below-ground herbivore communities along elevation gradients remain sparse. Here, we studied the variation in assemblages of two dominant groups of herbivores, namely, aboveground orthoptera and belowground nematodes

Under environmental change, the relationship between phenotype and fitness can change rapidly, leaving populations vulnerable. Plasticity within and between generations could provide the fastest mitigation to environmental change. However, plasticity may depend on interactions among parental environment, offspring environment and offspring sex, and we know little of how these interactions manifest

Sacoglossan sea slugs can ‘steal’ chloroplasts from their algal food and use them for photosynthesis (kleptoplasty). Although it has been shown that light has positive effects on survival and body size retention of some sacoglossans likely through photosynthesis, it is unknown whether light affects their fitness components such as number of offspring or offspring size. Moreover, whether the effects

Population persistence is informed by the ability of individuals to cope with local abiotic conditions, which is commonly mediated by physiological traits. Among biphasic amphibians, juveniles—which are infrequently studied but play a key role in amphibian population dynamics—are the first life stage to experience terrestrial conditions following the aquatic larval stage. To illuminate phenotypic variation

Despite low species diversity and primary production, trophic structure (e.g., top predator species, predator size) is surprisingly variable among Arctic lakes. We investigated trophic structure in lakes of arctic Alaska containing arctic char Salvelinus alpinus using stomach contents and stable isotope ratios in two geographically-close but hydrologically-distinct lake clusters to investigate how

The authors would like to correct the error in table 4 which was incorrectly published in original version. Correct version of Table 4 is updated here.

Plants link interactions between aboveground and belowground organisms. Herbivore-induced changes in plant chemistry are hypothesized to impact entire food webs by changing the strength of trophic cascades. Yet, few studies have explored how belowground herbivores affect the behaviors of generalist predators, nor how such changes may act through diverse changes to the plant metabolome. Using a factorial

Investigating the factors that determine whether interactions are competitive or facilitative is essential to understanding community structure and trait evolution. Co-flowering plants interact indirectly through shared pollinators, and meta-analyses suggest that phylogenetic relatedness and floral trait similarity may predict the outcome of these interactions. In a comparative approach, we manipulated

Life history theory suggests a trade-off between costly activities such as breeding and migration and somatic self-maintenance. However, how the short-term cost of parental effort is expressed in species with a slow pace-of-life is not well understood. Also, investigating carry-over effects of migration is most meaningful when comparing migratory strategies within the same population, but this has

A major goal of metacommunity ecology is to infer the local- and regional-scale processes that underlie community assembly. In dendritic ecological networks, branching patterns and directional flow can alter the balance between local and regional factors during assembly. Vertical habitat structure may further affect community assembly in dendritic metacommunities. In this study, we analyzed the bacterial

Forests in the western United States are being subject to more frequent and severe drought events as the climate warms. The 2012–2015 California drought is a recent example, whereby drought stress was exacerbated by a landscape-scale outbreak of western pine beetle (Dendroctonus brevicomis) and resulted in widespread mortality of dominant canopy species including ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). In

Successional processes can be observed for many organisms and resources, but most studies of succession have focused on plants. A general framework has been proposed, advocating that successional patterns in species turnover are predominantly driven by competition, dispersal or abiotic limitation, and that the patterning of species accumulation over time gives clues to which process is most influential

Behavioural plasticity during habitat selection plays a key role in determining whether organisms may thrive under human-induced rapid environmental changes. As organisms rely on environmental cues to make decisions, these behavioural responses may be maladaptive. We studied the European stonechat Saxicola torquatus as a model open-habitat bird species breeding in three structurally different land-use

In this study, we examined the inter- and intra-specific variation of hydraulic traits of three conifers of the Northern Rockies: Pinus ponderosa, Picea engelmannii, and Pseudotsuga menziesii to understand the mechanisms that allow different plant species to co-exist across a watershed. We quantified differences in plant xylem water potential (ψx), xylem tissue vulnerability to cavitation (P50, or

The effects of whole soil biotic communities on plants is a result of positive and negative interactions from a complex suite of mutualists and pathogens. However, few experiments have evaluated the composite effects of whole soil biotic communities on plant growth and disease resistance. We conducted a factorial greenhouse experiment with 14 Rhododendron species grown with and without live conspecific

Climate change causes species range expansions to higher latitudes and altitudes. It is expected that, due to differences in dispersal abilities between plants and soil biota, range-expanding plant species will become associated with a partly new belowground community in their expanded range. Theory on biological invasions predicts that outside their native range, range-expanding plant species may

Information on ecological systems often comes from diverse sources with varied levels of complexity, bias, and uncertainty. Accordingly, analytical techniques continue to evolve that address these challenges to reveal the characteristics of ecological systems and inform conservation actions. We applied multiple statistical learning algorithms (i.e., machine learning) with a range of information sources

A growing number of studies suggest that plant viruses manipulate host plant phenotypes to increase transmission-conducive behaviors by vectors. Studies on this phenomenon frequently omit examination of interactions that occur after vectors acquire virions, which provides an incomplete understanding of the ecology of plant virus manipulation. Here, by taking a full factorial approach that considered

The relationship between productivity and diversity is controversial because of disparity between unimodal and monotonic patterns, especially when occurring simultaneously at different scales. We used stream-side artificial channels to investigate how the availability of a major resource (leaf litter) affected stream invertebrate abundance and diversity at leaf-pack and whole-channel scales. At the

Although littermates in altricial mammals usually experience highly similar environmental conditions during early life, considerable differences in growth and health can emerge among them. In a study on subadults of a European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) population with low MHC polymorphism, we tested whether litter-sibling differences in endoparasitic coccidia load and body mass at the end of the

The resource budget model for mast seeding hypothesizes that soil nutrients proximately influence reproduction. Plants in high soil nutrient (particularly N) areas are predicted to have lower reproductive variability over time and higher mean reproduction. While often examined theoretically, there are relatively few empirical tests of this hypothesis. We quantified cone production of 110 individual

Intraspecific differences in the dispersal propensity of animals have been linked to interindividual variation in inherent tendencies (i.e., personality or behavioral type) that influence multiple aspects of an individual’s behavior. Studies linking dispersal propensity and personality often (1) focus on defining behavioral tendencies with a single behavioral trait rather than multiple, (2) do not

Deciduous and evergreen trees are usually considered the main coexisting functional groups in seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTF). We compared leaf and stem traits of 22 woody species in the Brazilian Caatinga to investigate whether deciduous (DC) and evergreen (EV) species have divergent water-use strategies. Our hypothesis was that DC trees compensate for their short leaf longevity by being less

Understanding how biological communities respond to climate change is a major challenge in ecology. The response of ectotherms to changes in temperature depends not only on their species-specific thermal tolerances but also on temperature-mediated interactions across different trophic levels. Warming is predicted to reinforce trophic cascades in linear aquatic food chains, but little is known about

The temperament of animals can vary among individuals and among populations, but it is often unclear whether spatial variation in temperament is the result of acclimation to local environmental conditions or genetic adaptation to spatial differences in natural selection. This study tested whether populations of a marine fish that experience different levels of mortality and fishing exhibited local

In temperate climates, as a consequence of warming winters, an increasing number of ectothermic species are remaining active throughout winter months instead of diapausing, rendering them increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable cold events. One species displaying a shift in overwintering strategy is the parasitoid wasp and biological control agent Aphidius avenae. The current study aimed to better

Refugia within successional mosaics where localized conditions inhibit successional replacement may support large abundances of early colonizing species and their coexistence with strongly competitive late colonizers. Numerous habitats have been hypothesized as refugia from succession with important landscape-scale consequences from export of propagules, but their commonness among ecological systems

Land-use change can alter the energy dynamics in aquatic systems by changing the subsidies that form the nutrient base within them. However, experimental evaluations of subsidy change often fail to consider how effects, such as differences in individual growth and survival, may differ under varying ecological contexts experienced in the field. We used a mesocosm approach to investigate how litter (Native

Body size, trophic position (TP), and trophic niche width are important elements of food webs; however, there is still debate regarding their interrelationships. Most studies have tested these correlations using datasets restricted to carnivores and bivariate models that disregard potential indirect effects of other factors, their interactions, and phylogeny. We analyzed relationships among TP, consumer

The dynamic environmental conditions in highly seasonal systems likely have a strong influence on how species use the landscape. Animals must balance seasonal and daily changes to landscape risk with the underlying resources provided by that landscape. One way to balance the seasonal and daily changes in the costs and benefits of a landscape is through behaviorally-explicit resource selection and temporal

Sexual selection studies often focus on morphological traits that are important only in the later stages of mate acquisition. Comparatively little is known about traits that lead to mate acquisition, such as mate-searching activities. We experimentally manipulated body condition (i.e., the energy reserves) in male puff adders (Bitis arietans) prior to the mating season using supplemental feeding in

Changes in resource availability can alter plant growth, the influence of plants on soil characteristics, and, ultimately, plant–soil feedback (PSF). Previous studies often show that invasive plants can outperform native plants under high but not low resource conditions. However, it remains unclear whether under low resource conditions, invaders can outperform natives in the long term by generating

Ecologically dominant species can shape the assembly of ecological communities via altering competitive outcomes. Moreover, these effects may be amplified under limited niche differentiation. Nevertheless, the influences of ecological dominance and niche differentiation on assembly are rarely considered together. Here, we provide a novel examination of dominance in a diverse arboreal ant community

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) rely on annual sea ice as their primary habitat for hunting marine mammal prey. Given their long lifespan, wide geographic distribution, and position at the top of the Arctic marine food web, the diet composition of polar bears can provide insights into temporal and spatial ecosystem dynamics related to climate-mediated sea ice loss. Polar bears with the greatest ecological

Marine habitat formers such as seaweeds and corals are lynchpins of coastal ecosystems, but their functional diversity and how it varies with scale and context remains poorly studied. Here, we investigate the functional diversity of seaweed assemblages across the rocky intertidal stress gradient at large (zones) and small (quadrat) scales. We quantified complementary metrics of emergent group richness

The increasing intensity and frequency of droughts predicted for the Mediterranean basin with ongoing climate change will impact plant communities and ecosystem functioning. This study investigated the effect of severe recurrent droughts and the role of the neighbor plant identity on the growth and survival of three abundant and co-existing species of a typical Mediterranean shrubland. Two juvenile

Insect colours assist in body protection, signalling, and physiological adaptations. Colours also convey multiple channels of information. These channels are valuable for species identification, distinguishing individual quality, and revealing ecological or evolutionary aspects of animals’ life. During recent years, the emerging interest in colour research has been raised in social hymenopterans such

Parasites are ecologically ubiquitous and, by modifying the physiology and behavior of their host organisms, act as key regulators of the dynamics and stability of ecosystems. It is, however, as yet unclear how parasitic relationships will act to moderate or accelerate the ecological impacts of global climate change. Here, we explore experimentally how the effects of parasites on both the physiology

Environmental DNA (eDNA) detection is a valuable conservation tool that can be used to identify and monitor imperiled or invasive species and wildlife pathogens. Batrachochytrium pathogens are of global conservation concern because they are a leading cause of amphibian decline. While eDNA techniques have been used to detect Batrachochytrium DNA in the environment, a systematic comparison of extraction

Recent studies suggest that the assembly of trophic interaction networks is the result of both niche (deterministic and selective) and neutral (stochastic) processes, but we know little about their relative importance. Succession following disturbance offers a good opportunity to address this question. Studies of single-trophic guilds suggest that, shortly after a disturbance, such as a fire, neutral