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Microclimatic variability buffers butterfly populations against increased mortality caused by phenological asynchrony between larvae and their host plants Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Susu Rytteri; Mikko Kuussaari; Marjo Saastamoinen
Climate change affects insects in several ways, including phenological shifts that may cause asynchrony between herbivore insects and their host plants. Insect larvae typically have limited movement capacity and are consequently dependent on the microhabitat conditions of their immediate surroundings. Based on intensive field monitoring over two springs and on larger‐scale metapopulation‐level survey
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Extreme drought reduces climatic disequilibrium in dryland plant communities Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 María Á. Pérez‐Navarro; Josep M. Serra‐Diaz; Jens‐Christian Svenning; Miguel Ángel Esteve‐Selma; Joaquin Hernández‐Bastida; Francisco Lloret
High rates of climate change are currently exceeding many plant species' capacity to keep up with climate, leading to mismatches between climatic conditions and climatic preferences of the species present in a community. This disequilibrium between climate and community composition could diminish, however, when critical climate thresholds are exceeded, due to population declines or losses among the
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Retreat, detour or advance? Understanding the movements of birds confronting the Gulf of Mexico Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Theodore J. Zenzal; Michael P. Ward; Robert H. Diehl; Jeffrey J. Buler; Jaclyn Smolinsky; Jill L. Deppe; Rachel T. Bolus; Antonio Celis‐Murillo; Frank R. Moore
During migration, birds must locate stopover habitats that provide sufficient resources to rest and refuel while en route to the breeding or non‐breeding area. Long‐distance migrants invariably encounter inhospitable geographic features, the edges of which are often characterized by habitat limited in food and safety. In response, they often depart in directions inconsistent with reaching their destination
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Linked networks reveal dual roles of insect dispersal and species sorting for bacterial communities in flowers Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Ash T. Zemenick; Rachel L. Vanette; Jay A. Rosenheim
Due to the difficulty of tracking microbial dispersal, it is rarely possible to disentangle the relative importance of dispersal and species sorting for microbial community assembly. Here, we leverage a detailed multilevel network to examine drivers of bacterial community assembly within flowers. We observed flower visitors to 20 focal plant species in a coflowering community in the Sierra Nevada,
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Shifts from pulled to pushed range expansions caused by reduction of landscape connectivity Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Maxime Dahirel; Aline Bertin; Marjorie Haond; Aurélie Blin; Eric Lombaert; Vincent Calcagno; Simon Fellous; Ludovic Mailleret; Thibaut Malausa; Elodie Vercken
Range expansions are key processes shaping the distribution of species; their ecological and evolutionary dynamics have become especially relevant today, as human influence reshapes ecosystems worldwide. Many attempts to explain and predict range expansions assume, explicitly or implicitly, so‐called ‘pulled' expansion dynamics, in which the low‐density edge populations provide most of the ‘fuel' for
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Why time‐limited individuals can make populations more vulnerable to disturbance Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-12 Henk‐Jan van der Kolk; Bruno J. Ens; Magali Frauendorf; Eelke Jongejans; Kees Oosterbeek; Willem Bouten; Martijn van de Pol
Individual variation in disturbance vulnerability (i.e. the likelihood that disturbance negatively affects an individual's fitness) can affect how disturbance impacts animal populations, as even at low disturbance levels some individuals could be severely affected and die. Individual variation in vulnerability can arise due to different responses to disturbance. We propose a new hypothesis that even
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Species coexistence in resource‐limited patterned ecosystems is facilitated by the interplay of spatial self‐organisation and intraspecific competition Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-12 L. Eigentler
The exploration of mechanisms that enable species coexistence under competition for a sole limiting resource is widespread across ecology. Two examples of such facilitative processes are intraspecific competition and spatial self‐organisation. These processes determine the outcome of competitive dynamics in many resource‐limited patterned ecosystems, classical examples of which include dryland vegetation
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A conceptual guide to measuring species diversity Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-09 Michael Roswell; Jonathan Dushoff; Rachael Winfree
Three metrics of species diversity – species richness, the Shannon index and the Simpson index – are still widely used in ecology, despite decades of valid critiques leveled against them. Developing a robust diversity metric has been challenging because, unlike many variables ecologists measure, the diversity of a community often cannot be estimated in an unbiased way based on a random sample from
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Nectar robbing and plant reproduction: an interplay of positive and negative effects Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-02-03 Sandra V. Rojas‐Nossa; José María Sánchez; Luis Navarro
Nectar robbers are animals that extract nectar through holes made in floral tissues. This behaviour has a wide spectrum of consequences for the plant that range from negative, to neutral, to positive according to life history traits of the interacting organisms and the ecological mechanisms involved. Lonicera etrusca has long tubular flowers producing large quantities of nectar and undergoing high
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Tracking unstable states: ecosystem dynamics in a changing world Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-21 Ramesh Arumugam; Frithjof Lutscher; Frédéric Guichard
Ecological systems can show complex and sometimes abrupt responses to environmental change, with important implications for their resilience. Theories of alternate stable states have been used to predict regime shifts of ecosystems as equilibrium responses to sufficiently slow environmental change. The actual rate of environmental change is a key factor affecting the response, yet we are still lacking
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A trait‐based approach predicting community assembly and dominance of microbial invasive species Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-21 Carla Kruk; Claudia Piccini; Melina Devercelli; Lucía Nogueira; Victoria Accattatis; Lía Sampognaro; Angel M. Segura
Understanding the mechanisms underlying community assembly helps to define success and susceptibility to biological invasions. Here, we explored phytoplankton community assembly following niche and neutral paradigms and using a trait‐based approach. Under the hypothesis that the morphology‐based functional groups (MBFG) clusters species with similar niche, we analysed how trait‐related differences
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Untangling the mechanisms of cryptic species coexistence in a nematode community through individual‐based modelling Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-21 Aisling J. Daly; Nele De Meester; Jan M. Baetens; Tom Moens; Bernard De Baets
Cryptic species are morphologically identical but genetically distinct, and are prominent across numerous phyla. The coexistence of such closely related species on local scales would seem to run counter to traditional coexistence and competition theory; it has been hypothesized as a consequence of differences in their resource use or tolerances to environmental conditions. We developed an individual‐based
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Aerobic bacteria and archaea tend to have larger and more versatile genomes Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-21 Daniel A. Nielsen; Noah Fierer; Jemma L. Geoghegan; Michael R. Gillings; Vadim Gumerov; Joshua S. Madin; Lisa Moore; Ian T. Paulsen; T. B. K. Reddy; Sasha G. Tetu; Mark Westoby
A recent compilation of traits across culturable species of bacteria and archaea allows relationships to be quantified between genome size and other traits and habitat. Cell morphology, size, motility, sporulation and doubling time were not strongly correlated with genome size. Aerobic species averaged ca 35% larger genomes than anaerobic, adjusted for growth temperature. Aerobes had a similar mix
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Simple discrete‐time metapopulation models of patch occupancy Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-29 Nathan G. Marculis; Alan Hastings
Simple models in theoretical ecology have a long‐standing history of being used to understand how specific processes influence population dynamics as well as providing a foundation for future endeavors. The Levins model is the seminal example of this for continuous‐time metapopulation dynamics. However, many natural populations have a distinct separation between processes and data is not collected
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Precipitation regime controls bryosphere carbon cycling similarly across contrasting ecosystems Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Roger Grau‐Andrés; David A. Wardle; Marie‐Charlotte Nilsson; Paul Kardol
In arctic and boreal ecosystems, ground bryophytes play an important role in regulating carbon (C) exchange between vast belowground C stores and the atmosphere. Climate is changing particularly fast in these high‐latitude regions, but it is unclear how altered precipitation regimes will affect C dynamics in the bryosphere (i.e. the ground moss layer including senesced moss, litter and associated biota)
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Directionality and community‐level selection Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Guy Bunin
Many ecological community dynamics display some degree of directionality, known as succession patterns. But complex interaction networks frequently tend to non‐directional dynamics such as chaos, unless additional structures or mechanisms impose some form of, often fragile or shot‐lived, directionality. We exhibit here a novel property of emergent long‐lasting directionality in competitive communities
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Grazing and the vanishing complexity of plant association networks in grasslands Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Alexandre Génin; Thierry Dutoit; Alain Danet; Alice le Priol; Sonia Kéfi
Interactions are key drivers of the functioning and fate of plant communities. A traditional way to measure them is to use pairwise experiments, but such experiments do not scale up to species‐rich communities. For those, using association networks based on spatial patterns may provide a more realistic approach. While this method has been successful in abiotically‐stressed environments (alpine and
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Ontogenetic development underlies population response to mortality Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-27 Benjamin J. Toscano; Alexandra S. Figel; Volker H. W. Rudolf
Understanding demographic responses to mortality is crucial to predictive ecology. While classic ecological theory posits reductions in population biomass in response to extrinsic mortality, models containing realistic developmental change predict the potential for counterintuitive increase in stage‐specific biomass, i.e. biomass overcompensation. Patterns of biomass overcompensation should be predictable
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Mycorrhizal suppression and phosphorus addition influence the stability of plant community composition and function in a temperate steppe Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Gaowen Yang; Yingjun Zhang; Xin Yang; Nan Liu; Matthias C. Rillig; Stavros D. Veresoglou; Cameron Wagg
Nutrient enrichment can reduce ecosystem stability, typically measured as temporal stability of a single function, e.g. plant productivity. Moreover, nutrient enrichment can alter plant–soil interactions (e.g. mycorrhizal symbiosis) that determine plant community composition and productivity. Thus, it is likely that nutrient enrichment and interactions between plants and their soil communities co‐determine
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Population responses to observed climate variability across multiple organismal groups Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-19 Le Coeur Christie; Storkey Jonathan; Ramula Satu
A major challenge in ecology is to understand how populations are affected by increased climate variability. Here, we assessed the effects of observed climate variability on different organismal groups (amphibians, insects, mammals, herbaceous plants and reptiles) by estimating the extent to which interannual variation in the annual population growth rates (CVλ) and the absolute value of the long‐term
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Catastrophes, connectivity and Allee effects in the design of marine reserve networks Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Easton R. White; Marissa L. Baskett; Alan Hastings
Catastrophic events, like oil spills and hurricanes, occur in many marine systems. One potential role of marine reserves is buffering populations against disturbances, including the potential for disturbance‐driven population collapses under Allee effects. This buffering capacity depends on reserves in a network providing rescue effects, setting up a tradeoff where reserves need to be connected to
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Rewiring of peatland plant–microbe networks outpaces species turnover Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2021-01-19 Bjorn J. M. Robroek; Magalí Martí; Bo H. Svensson; Marc G. Dumont; Annelies J. Veraart; Vincent E. J. Jassey
Enviro‐climatic changes are thought to be causing alterations in ecosystem processes through shifts in plant and microbial communities; however, how links between plant and microbial communities change with enviro–climatic change is likely to be less straightforward but may be fundamental for many ecological processes. To address this, we assessed the composition of the plant community and the prokaryotic
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Interplay between the paradox of enrichment and nutrient cycling in food webs Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-05 Pierre Quévreux; Sébastien Barot; Élisa Thébault
Nutrient cycling is fundamental to ecosystem functioning. Despite recent major advances in the understanding of complex food web dynamics, food web models have so far generally ignored nutrient cycling. However, nutrient cycling is expected to strongly impact food web stability and functioning. To make up for this gap, we built an allometric and size structured food web model including nutrient cycling
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Below‐ and aboveground traits explain local abundance, and regional, continental and global occurrence frequencies of grassland plants Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-10 Tom Lachaise; Joana Bergmann; Matthias C. Rillig; Mark van Kleunen
Plants vary widely in how common or rare they are, but whether commonness of species is associated with functional traits is still debated. This might partly be because commonness can be measured at different spatial scales, and because most studies focus solely on aboveground functional traits.
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Do positive interactions between marine invaders increase likelihood of invasion into natural and artificial habitats? Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-24 Louise B. Firth; Lois Duff; Paul E. Gribben; Antony M. Knights
Positive species interactions such as facilitation are important for enabling species to persist, especially in stressful conditions, and the nature and strength of facilitation varies along physical and biological gradients. Expansion of coastal infrastructure is creating hotspots of invasive species which can spillover into natural habitats, but the role of positive species interactions associated
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Host spatial structure and disperser activity determine mistletoe infection patterns Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Yamila Sasal; Guillermo C. Amico; Juan M. Morales
What processes and factors are responsible for species distribution are long‐standing questions in ecology and a key element for conservation and management. Mistletoes provide the opportunity to study a forest species whose occurrence is expected to be constrained by multiple factors as a consequence of their life form. We studied the mistletoe Tristerix corymbosus (Loranthaceae) on its most common
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Large‐scale multi‐trophic co‐response models and environmental control of pelagic food webs in Québec lakes Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Zofia E. Taranu; Bernadette Pinel‐Alloul; Pierre Legendre
Environmental heterogeneity plays a fundamental role in driving species distributions by, for one, fostering niche dimensionality. Within lake ecosystems, species distributions and concordance patterns are driven by both local and regional heterogeneity, though their relative importance across trophic levels has rarely been explored. We developed a statistical framework to compare responses of taxa
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With a little help from my friends: physiological integration facilitates invasion of wetland grass Elymus athericus into flooded soils Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Peter Mueller; Hai T. Do; Christian Smit; Christoph Reisdorff; Kai Jensen; Stefanie Nolte
Tidal wetlands worldwide are undergoing rapid invasions by tall‐growing clonal grasses. Prominent examples are invasions by species of the genera Spartina, Phragmites and Elymus. The responsible physiological and ecological drivers of these invasions are poorly understood. Physiological integration (PI) is a key trait of clonal plants, which enables the exchange of resources among ramets. We investigated
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Unifying ecosystem responses to disturbance into a single statistical framework Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Nathan P. Lemoine
Natural ecosystems are currently experiencing unprecedented rates of anthropogenic disturbance. Given the potential ramifications of more frequent disturbances, it is imperative that we accurately quantify ecosystem responses to severe disturbance. Specifically, ecologists and managers need estimates of resistance and recovery from disturbance that are free of observation error, not biased by temporal
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Elevational gradients in constitutive and induced oak defences based on individual traits and their correlated expression patterns Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Andrea Galmán; Luis Abdala‐Roberts; Pola Wartalska; Felisa Covelo; Gregory Röder; Mark A. Szenteczki; Xoaquín Moreira; Sergio Rasmann
Elevational gradients are useful ecological settings for revealing the biotic and abiotic drivers of plant trait variation and plant–insect interactions. However, most work focusing on plant defences has looked at individual traits and few studies have assessed multiple traits simultaneously, their correlated expression patterns, and abiotic factors associated with such patterns across elevations.
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Do pastoralist cattle fear African lions? Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-12-02 Jacalyn M. Beck; Remington J. Moll; Bernard M. Kissui; Robert A. Montgomery
Fear of predators fundamentally shapes the ecology of prey species and drives both inter‐ and intra‐specific interactions. Extensive research has examined the consequences of predation risk from large carnivores on the behavior of wild ungulate prey species. However, many large carnivores not only hunt wild prey but also depredate domestic livestock, especially in pastoralist systems where livestock
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A latent process model approach to improve the utility of indicator species Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-08 Jill Fleming; Chris Sutherland; Sean C. Sterrett; Evan H. Campbell Grant
The state of an ecosystem is governed by dynamic biotic and abiotic processes, which can only be partially observed. Costs associated with measuring each component limit the feasibility of comprehensive assessments of target ecosystems. Instead, indicator species are recommended as a surrogate index. While this is an attractive concept, indicator species have rarely proven to be an effective tool for
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Stochastic predation exposes prey to predator pits and local extinction Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-18 T. J. Clark; Jon S. Horne; Mark Hebblewhite; Angela D. Luis
Understanding how predators affect prey populations is a fundamental goal for ecologists and wildlife managers. A well‐known example of regulation by predators is the predator pit, where two alternative stable states exist and prey can be held at a low density equilibrium by predation if they are unable to pass the threshold needed to attain a high density equilibrium. While empirical evidence for
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First measurements of field metabolic rate in wild juvenile fishes show strong thermal sensitivity but variations between sympatric ecotypes Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-18 Ming‐Tsung Chung; Kris‐Emil Mose Jørgensen; Clive N. Trueman; Halvor Knutsen; Per Erik Jorde; Peter Grønkjær
The relationship between physiology and temperature has a large influence on population‐level responses to climate change. In natural settings, direct thermal effects on metabolism may be exaggerated or offset by behavioural responses influencing individual energy balance. Drawing on a newly developed proxy, we provide the first estimates of the thermal performance curve of field metabolism in a wild
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Seasonal time constraints shape life history, physiology and behaviour independently, and decouple a behavioural syndrome in a damselfly Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-12 Nedim Tüzün; Beste Başak Savaşçı; Robby Stoks
The integration of traits into ‘syndromes' has been suggested as a useful framework to advance insights in trait responses to environmental stressors. Yet, how stressors shape the consistency (‘repeatability') of traits and their covariation at the individual level remains debated. We studied how seasonal time constraints shape trait repeatability and integration of life‐history, behavioural and physiological
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How competitive intransitivity and niche overlap affect spatial coexistence Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-12 Yinghui Yang; Cang Hui
Competitive intransitivity is mostly considered outside the main body of coexistence theories that rely primarily on the role of niche overlap and differentiation. How the interplay of competitive intransitivity and niche overlap jointly affects species coexistence has received little attention. Here, we consider a rock–paper–scissors competition system where interactions between species can represent
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Environmental controls on African herbivore responses to landscapes of fear Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-12 Andrew B. Davies; Joris P. G. M. Cromsigt; Craig J. Tambling; Elizabeth le Roux; Nicholas Vaughn; Dave J. Druce; David G. Marneweck; Gregory P. Asner
Herbivores balance forage acquisition with the need to avoid predation, often leading to tradeoffs between forgoing resources to avoid areas of high predation risk, or tolerating increased risk in exchange for improved forage. The outcome of these decisions is likely to change with varying resource levels, with herbivores altering their response to predation risk across heterogeneous landscapes. Such
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Plant–plant facilitation increases with reduced phylogenetic relatedness along an elevation gradient Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-11-03 Milen Duarte; Miguel Verdú; Lohengrin A. Cavieres; Ramiro O. Bustamante
Environmental conditions can modify the intensity and sign of ecological interactions. The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) predicts that facilitation becomes more important than competition under stressful conditions. To properly test this hypothesis, it is necessary to account for all (not a subset of) interactions occurring in the communities and consider that species do not interact at random but
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Limits to compensatory responses to altered phenology in amphibian larvae Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-23 Pablo Burraco; Anssi Laurila; Germán Orizaola
Changes in phenology are among the most pervasive effects of current climate change. Modifications in the timing of life‐cycle events can affect the behavior, physiology and life‐history of wildlife. However, organisms can develop compensatory strategies in order to reduce the costs of phenological alterations. Here, we examine the extent and limits of compensatory developmental responses in amphibian
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Exploring intraspecific variation in migratory destinations to investigate the drivers of migration Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-23 Anne‐Sophie Bonnet‐Lebrun; Marius Somveille; Ana S. L. Rodrigues; Andrea Manica
Various benefits (e.g. tracking of resources and of climate niche) and costs (e.g. distance travelled) are hypothesized to drive seasonal animal migrations. Until now, these potential factors have been investigated together at the species level, but migratory movements are made at the individual level, leading to intraspecific variability. Here, we use ringing/recovery data from 1308 individuals belonging
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Positive indirect effects of top‐predators on the behaviour and survival of juvenile fishes Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-23 Maria del Mar Palacios; Mark I. McCormick
Top‐predators can suppress mesopredator behaviour through risk effects. However, there is limited understanding of whether such behavioural suppression can dampen the lethal and sub‐lethal effects of mesopredators on bottom level prey. Here, we document a field experiment that examines whether the presence of top‐predator cues (visual and chemical stimuli from a coral trout) can cascade to indirectly
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Antipredator tactics: a kin‐selection benefit for defensive spines in coral catfish? Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-23 Richard Shine; Vinay Udyawer; Claire Goiran
Morphological features that impair a predator's ability to consume a prey item may benefit individual prey; but what of features that prolong prey‐handling but do not enhance prey survival? For example, a striped eel catfish Plotosus lineatus will be fatally envenomated if struck by its specialist predator, the greater sea snake Hydrophis major. Nonetheless, the catfish typically erects long, toxic
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Ecological and evolutionary responses of an arctic plant to variation in microclimate and soil Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-14 Niklas J. Wickander; Pil U. Rasmussen; Bryndís Marteinsdóttir; Johan Ehrlén; Ayco J. M. Tack
The arctic and alpine regions are predicted to experience some of the highest rates of climate change, and the arctic vegetation is expected to be especially sensitive to such changes. Understanding the ecological and evolutionary responses of arctic plant species to changes in climate is therefore a key objective. Geothermal areas, where natural temperature gradients occur over small spatial scales
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Robustness of a meta‐network to alternative habitat loss scenarios Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-05 Micaela Santos; Luciano Cagnolo; Tomas Roslin; Emmanuel F. Ruperto; María Laura Bernaschini; Diego P. Vázquez
Studying how habitat loss affects the tolerance of ecological networks to species extinction (i.e. their robustness) is key for our understanding of the influence of human activities on natural ecosystems. With networks typically occurring as local interaction networks interconnected in space (a meta‐network), we may ask how the loss of specific habitat fragments affects the overall robustness of the
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Competition as a demolition derby: why tolerating competitors is more important than suppressing them Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-05 Daniel Z. Atwater; Ragan M. Callaway; Sa Xiao
Tolerance and suppression are distinct components of competition among plants, and recognizing how they affect competitive outcomes is important for understanding the mechanisms and consequences of competition. We used simulations informed by experimental trials to ask whether tolerance or suppression of competitors was more important for the survival of native plants experiencing competition with
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Small invertebrate consumers produce consistent size spectra across reef habitats and climatic zones Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-10-05 K. M. Fraser; R. D. Stuart‐Smith; S. D. Ling; G. J. Edgar
Changes in invertebrate body size‐distributions that follow loss of habitat‐forming species can potentially affect a range of ecological processes, including predation and competition. In the marine environment, small crustaceans and other mobile invertebrates (‘epifauna') represent a basal component in reef food webs, with a pivotal secondary production role that is strongly influenced by their body
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Host–parasite dynamics set the ecological theatre for the evolution of state‐ and context‐dependent dispersal in hosts Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-26 Jhelam N. Deshpande; Oliver Kaltz; Emanuel A. Fronhofer
While host–parasite interactions are ubiquitous, the large‐scale consequences of parasite infections are mainly driven by the spatial context. One trait of pivotal importance for the eco‐evolutionary dynamics of such metapopulations is the spatial behaviour of hosts, that is, their dispersal. It is well established that dispersal is not a random process, rather dispersal is informed and may depend
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Ant foraging strategies vary along a natural resource gradient Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-15 Udi Segev; Katja Tielbörger; Yael Lubin; Jaime Kigel
Food selection by foragers is sensitive to the availability of resources, which may vary along geographical gradients. Hence, selectivity of food types by foragers is expected to track these resource gradients. Here we addressed this hypothesis and asked if foraging decisions of seed‐eating ants differ along a geographic gradient of habitat productivity. The study was carried out for two years at five
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Teaching and learning in ecology: a horizon scan of emerging challenges and solutions Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-15 Julia Cooke; Yoseph Araya; Karen L. Bacon; Joanna M. Bagniewska; Lesley C. Batty; Tom R. Bishop; Moya Burns; Magda Charalambous; David R. Daversa; Liam R. Dougherty; Miranda Dyson; Adam M. Fisher; Dan Forman; Cristina Garcia; Ewan Harney; Thomas Hesselberg; Elizabeth A. John; Robert J. Knell; Kadmiel Maseyk; Alice L. Mauchline; Julie Peacock; Angelo P. Pernetta; Jeremy Pritchard; William J. Sutherland;
We currently face significant, anthropogenic, global environmental challenges and the role of ecologists in mitigating these challenges is arguably more important than ever. Consequently there is an urgent need to recruit and train future generations of ecologists, both those whose main area is ecology, but also those involved in the geological, biological and environmental sciences.
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Mechanistic models can reveal infection pathways from prevalence data: the mysterious case of polar bears Ursus maritimus and Trichinella nativa Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-15 Stephanie R. Penk; Korryn Bodner; Juan S. Vargas Soto; Emily S. Chenery; Alexander Nascou; Péter K. Molnár
Parasites exhibit a diverse range of life history strategies. Transmission to a host is a key component of each life cycle but the difficulty of observing host–parasite contacts has often led to confusion surrounding transmission pathways. Given limited data on most host–parasite systems, flexible approaches are needed for disentangling the obscure transmission dynamics of these systems. Here, we develop
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Tracking dispersal across a patchy landscape reveals a dynamic interaction between genotype and habitat structure Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-15 Allan H. Edelsparre; Mark J. Fitzpatrick; Marco A. Rodríguez; Marla B. Sokolowski
Theoretical and empirical studies often show that within populations, individuals vary in their propensity to disperse. We aspired to understand how this behavioural variation is impacted by the distribution and pattern of food patches across a landscape. In a series of experiments we examined how inter‐patch distance and the distribution of food patches influenced dispersal in wild‐type strains of
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Wave energy alters biodiversity by shaping intraspecific traits of a habitat‐forming species Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-08 Maria L. Vozzo; Vivian R. Cumbo; Joseph R. Crosswell; Melanie J. Bishop
The role of habitat‐forming species in promoting biodiversity is widely acknowledged to vary across environmental gradients according to the extent to which they modify resources and environmental conditions. Population‐ and individual‐level traits of habitat‐forming species that influence species interactions may vary across gradients, but the importance of this indirect effect of environmental context
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Individual differences in risk‐taking affect foraging across different landscapes of fear Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-08 Philip O. M. Steinhoff; Bennet Warfen; Sissy Voigt; Gabriele Uhl; Melanie Dammhahn
One of the strongest determinants of behavioural variation is the tradeoff between resource gain and safety. Although classical theory predicts optimal foraging under risk, empirical studies report large unexplained variation in behaviour. Intrinsic individual differences in risk‐taking behaviour might contribute to this variation. By repeatedly exposing individuals of a small mesopredator to different
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Hormonal adjustments to future expectations impact growth and survival in juvenile fish Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-09-03 Camilla Håkonsrud Jensen; Jacqueline Weidner; Jarl Giske; Sergey Budaev; Christian Jørgensen; Sigrunn Eliassen
Evolutionary ecology often studies how environmental factors define optimal phenotypes without considering the bodily mechanisms involved in their regulation. Here we used a dynamic optimisation model to investigate optimally concerted hormonal control of the phenotype. We studied a semi‐realistic situation where hormonal control of appetite, metabolism and growth acts to prepare juvenile fish for
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Coordination in parental effort decreases with age in a long‐lived seabird Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Samantha C. Patrick; Alexandre Corbeau; Denis Réale; Henri Weimerskirch
Biparental care is widespread in avian species. Individuals may match the contribution of their partner, resulting in equal parental effort, or may exploit their partner, to minimise their own investment. These two hypotheses have received much theoretical and empirical attention in short‐lived species, that change mates between seasons. However, in species with persistent pair bonds, where divorce
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Shift from short‐term competition to facilitation with drought stress is due to a decrease in long‐term facilitation Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Ghassen Chaieb; Xiangtai Wang; Chedly Abdelly; Richard Michalet
Disentangling short‐ and long‐term neighbour effects, using both removal and observational methods within a single experiment, has strongly improved our understanding of the driving mechanisms of plant–plant interactions. However, there has been no attempt to assess two important underlying processes of their changes along gradients, either environmental‐severity (changes in target performance without
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Local and regional drivers influence how aquatic community diversity, resistance and resilience vary in response to drying Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Romain Sarremejane; Judy England; Catherine E. M. Sefton; Simon Parry; Michael Eastman; Rachel Stubbington
Disturbance events govern how the biodiversity of ecological communities varies in both space and time. In freshwater ecosystems, there is evidence that local and regional‐scale drivers interact to influence ecological responses to drying disturbances. However, most research provides temporal snapshots at the local scale, whereas few studies encompass a gradient of drying severity spanning multiple
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Positive tree diversity effect on fine root biomass: via density dependence rather than spatial root partitioning Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-08-28 Weixian Zeng; Wenhua Xiang; Bo Zhou; Shuai Ouyang; Yelin Zeng; Liang Chen; Grégoire T. Freschet; Oscar J. Valverde‐Barrantes; Alexandru Milcu
The importance of species richness to ecosystem functioning and services is a central tenet of biological conservation. However, most of our theory and mechanistic understanding is based on diversity found aboveground. Our study sought to better understand the relationship between diversity and belowground function by studying root biomass across a plant diversity gradient. We collected soil cores
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Effect of experimental DNA demethylation on phytohormones production and palatability of a clonal plant after induction via jasmonic acid Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-08-26 Vít Latzel; Zuzana Münzbergová; Jiří Skuhrovec; Ondřej Novák; Miroslav Strnad
Many plant species protect themselves against herbivores through mechanical or chemical so‐called inducible defences (ID). These are regulated via a hormonal cascade which may be under epigenetic control and in which jasmonic acid (JA) plays a prominent role. In this study, we indirectly tested the role of DNA methylation in the production of ID and the synthesis of hormones involved in the ID signalling
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Tropical cyclones and island area shape species abundance distributions of local tree communities Oikos (IF 3.37) Pub Date : 2020-08-20 Thomas Ibanez; Gunnar Keppel; Cláudia Baider; Chris Birkinshaw; F. B. Vincent Florens; Melinda Laidlaw; Christophe Menkes; Narayanaswamy Parthasarathy; Muthu Rajkumar; Fidy Ratovoson; Ladan Rasingam; Ludovic Reza; Shin‐ichiro Aiba; Edward L. Webb; Runguo Zang; Philippe Birnbaum
Species abundance distributions (SADs) characterise the distribution of individuals among species. SADs have rarely been explored on islands and the ecological processes shaping SADs are still not fully understood. Notably, the relative importance of disturbance regime in shaping plant SADs remains poorly known. We investigate the relative importance of disturbance regime and island geography on the
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