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Exploring the dimensions of metapopulation persistence: a comparison of structural and temporal measures Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2021-01-08 Tad A Dallas, Marjo Saastamoinen, Otso Ovaskainen
The spatial arrangement of habitat patches in a metapopulation and the dispersal connections among them influence metapopulation persistence. Metapopulation persistence emerges from a dynamic process, namely the serial extinctions and recolonizations of local habitat patches, while measures of persistence are typically based solely on structural properties of the spatial network (e.g., spatial distance
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Viewing communities as coupled oscillators: elementary forms from Lotka and Volterra to Kuramoto Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Zachary Hajian-Forooshani, John Vandermeer
Ecosystems and their embedded ecological communities are almost always by definition collections of oscillating populations. This is apparent given the qualitative reality that oscillations emerge from consumer-resource interactions, which are the elementary building blocks for ecological communities. It is also likely always the case that oscillatory consumer-resource pairs will be connected to one
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Individual heterogeneity affects the outcome of small mammal pest eradication Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Giorgia Vattiato, Michael J. Plank, Alex James, Rachelle N. Binny
1. The eradication of invasive small mammal pests is a challenging undertaking, but is needed in many areas of the world to preserve biodiversity. Trapping and poisonous baits are some of the most widespread tools for pest control. Most of the models used to make predictions and to design effective trapping protocols assume that pest populations are behaviourally homogeneous and, in particular, that
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Evolution of infection avoidance in populations affected by sexually transmitted infections Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Michal Theuer, Luděk Berec
Infectious diseases affect many populations and it should be natural to avoid contacts with infected individuals to prevent contagion. Recognizability of infected individuals is essential for infection avoidance. In the case of sexually transmitted infections, such avoidance is accomplished by choosing a healthy mating partner. We find that different mating strategies arise as a consequence of evolution
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Correction to: Higher order interactions and species coexistence Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-12-16 Pragya Singh, Gaurav Baruah
The original version of this article unfortunately contains a mistake.
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Spread rates of a juvenile-adult population in constant and temporally variable environments Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-25 Qihua Huang, Yuxiang Zhang
The question of how growth, dispersal, and environmental factors affect the persistence and spread of an invasive species is of great importance in spatial ecology. Motivated by the fact that in a species, different development stages may have different vital rates and dispersal characteristics, we propose and study a reaction-diffusion juvenile-adult model, which is a natural extension of the classical
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Indirect facilitation drives species composition and stability in drylands Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-20 Alain Danet, Florian Dirk Schneider, Fabien Anthelme, Sonia Kéfi
Dryland ecosystems are likely to respond discontinuously to gradual changes in environmental conditions. Direct facilitation between plants, whereby plants improve the local environmental conditions for others, has been shown to be a mechanism contributing to these discontinuous ecosystem transitions. Theoretical models describing dryland vegetation dynamics often consider a single plant species and
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Competition and pollen wars: simulations reveal the dynamics of competition mediated through heterospecific pollen transfer by non-flower constant insects Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-19 Alan Dorin, Tim Taylor, Martin Burd, Julian Garcia, Mani Shrestha, Adrian G. Dyer
Heterospecific pollen transfer by insect pollinators has the potential to drive inter-species competition between flowering plants. This phenomenon may newly arise in a region if insect pollinator or flowering plant populations change. An agent-based simulation is presented to assess the potential impact of heterospecific pollen transfer by insects on two co-flowering plant species within an environment
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Inferring species interactions using Granger causality and convergent cross mapping Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-16 Frédéric Barraquand, Coralie Picoche, Matteo Detto, Florian Hartig
Identifying directed interactions between species from time series of their population densities has many uses in ecology. This key statistical task is equivalent to causal time series inference, which connects to the Granger causality (GC) concept: x causes y if x improves the prediction of y in a dynamic model. However, the entangled nature of nonlinear ecological systems has led to question the
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The role of host phenology for parasite transmission Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Hannelore MacDonald, Erol Akçay, Dustin Brisson
Phenology is a fundamental determinant of species distributions, abundances, and interactions. In host–parasite interactions, host phenology can affect parasite fitness due to the temporal constraints it imposes on host contact rates. However, it remains unclear how parasite transmission is shaped by the wide range of phenological patterns observed in nature. We develop a mathematical model of the
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Impact of herbivore preference on the benefit of plant trait variability Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-11 Tatjana Thiel, Sarah Gaschler, Karsten Mody, Nico Blüthgen, Barbara Drossel
We explore the hypothesis that intraspecific trait variability can be per se beneficial for the plant when the curvature of the herbivore response to this trait is concave downwards. This hypothesis is based on a mathematical relation for nonlinear averaging (Jensen’s inequality), leading to reduced herbivory when the trait distribution becomes broader. Our study introduces and investigates a model
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How intra-stage and inter-stage competition affect overcompensation in density and hydra effects in single-species, stage-structured models Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-11-07 Darian K. Sorenson , Michael H. Cortez
Understanding and predicting responses to increased mortality is important for conservation biology and population management strategies. In stage-structured populations, increased mortality of a particular stage can have the counterintuitive effect of causing increased abundance in one or more stages (called stage-specific overcompensation in density) or the whole population (called a hydra effect)
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The role of between-patch dynamics in a metapopulation: a discrete-time modelling approach Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-10-15 Nathan G. Marculis, Jorge Arroyo-Esquivel, Alan Hastings
We present a single-species metapopulation model structured by population size that is discrete in time. The novel formulation of our model allows for explicit incorporation of both the local, in space, dynamics and new details of the dispersal process. To study the impact of between-patch dynamics in the model, we construct various functions to describe density-dependent dispersal, recolonization
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Simulating the relative effects of movement and sociality on the distribution of animal-transported subsidies Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-09-30 Daniel K. Bampoh, Julia E. Earl, Patrick A. Zollner
Animal sociality (i.e., conspecific attraction or avoidance) can influence how animals move (i.e., sinuous to straight) across landscapes. Active subsidies are animal-transported resources (e.g., nutrients, detritus, prey) or consumers (e.g., predators, parasites, pathogens) across ecosystem boundaries and can affect ecosystem function. Animal movement has been shown to affect the spatial distributions
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Endogenous spatial heterogeneity in a multi-patch predator-prey system: insights from a field-parameterized model Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-09-21 David Brown, Andrea Bruder, Miroslav Kummel
The causes and consequences of spatial heterogeneity in population dynamics are of both theoretical and practical interest. Previously, we described (Kummel et al., Oikos 122:896–906, 2013) a field system in which predation by ladybugs drives the development of strong spatial heterogeneity among aphid populations living on nearby plants. In this paper, we investigate the detailed mechanisms responsible
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Higher order interactions and species coexistence Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-09-09 Pragya Singh, Gaurav Baruah
Higher order interactions (HOIs) have been suggested to stabilize diverse ecological communities. However, their role in maintaining species coexistence from the perspective of modern coexistence theory is not known. Here, using generalized Lotka-Volterra model, we derive a general rule for species coexistence modulated by HOIs. We show that where pairwise species interactions fail to promote species
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Harvesting a remote renewable resource Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-08-26 Thorsten Upmann, Stefan Behringer
In standard models of spatial harvesting, a resource is distributed over a continuous domain with an agent who may harvest everywhere all the time. For some cases though (e.g., fruits, mushrooms, algae), it is more realistic to assume that the resource is located at a fixed point within that domain so that an agent has to travel in order to be able to harvest. This creates a combined travelling–and–harvesting
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Density regulation of co-occurring herbivores via two indirect effects mediated by biomass and non-specific induced plant defenses Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-08-26 Atsushi Yamauchi, Yusuke Ikegawa, Takayuki Ohgushi, Toshiyuki Namba
Two herbivorous species that share a single plant can interact indirectly with one another, even without direct interaction. One type of indirect interaction is exploitative resource competition, which results from a reduction in plant biomass; another type is that caused by changes in plant traits. These are referred to as indirect effects, mediated, respectively, by biomass and plant traits. The
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Differences among species in seed dispersal and conspecific neighbor effects can interact to influence coexistence Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-08-12 Simon Maccracken Stump, Liza S. Comita
Seed dispersal is a critical mechanism for escaping specialist natural enemies. Despite this, mean dispersal distances can vary by an order of magnitude among plant species in the same community. Here, we develop a theoretical model to explore how interspecific differences in seed dispersal alter the impact of specialist natural enemies, both on their own and though a trade-off between seed dispersal
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Ecological management of stochastic systems with long transients Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-08-07 Carl Boettiger
Long transients may be common in ecological dynamics, but the implications such dynamics have for ecological management have not been fully explored. Long transient periods can easily be mistaken for stable state dynamics, but may require dramatically different management policies. Here, I explore the optimal management of stochastic ecological systems that may contain either a tipping point or a ghost
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Mapping the distinct origins of bimodality in a classic model with alternative stable states Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-08-03 Karen C. Abbott, Vasilis Dakos
Stochastic ecological dynamics result from both transient and asymptotic features of the underlying system, yet explanations for observed patterns often emphasize asymptotics. For example, an ecological state (e.g., a particular population size or community composition) that occurs frequently and/or persists for a meaningful duration might be assumed to be a stable equilibrium, even though transients
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Colonization limitation of specialized enemies reduces species richness Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-30 Philip Greenspoon, Kiran Wadhawan
The densities of a species and its specialist enemies are expected to covary, giving rare species an advantage that may promote species coexistence. This hypothesis has been particularly applied to tree species coexistence, and theoretical work has investigated how the spatial scale of dispersal and degree of enemy specialization influence coexistence outcomes. A simplifying assumption of this modeling
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Local control of resource allocation is sufficient to model optimal dynamics in syntrophic systems Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-27 Glenn Ledder, Sabrina E. Russo, Erik B. Muller, Angela Peace, Roger M. Nisbet
Syntrophic systems are common in nature and include forms of obligate mutualisms in which each participating organism or component of an organism obtains from the other an essential nutrient or metabolic product that it cannot provide for itself. Models of how these complementary resources are allocated between partners often assume optimal behavior, but whether mechanisms enabling global control exist
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Cohort splitting from plastic bet-hedging: insights from empirical and theoretical investigations in a wolf spider Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-25 Zoltán Rádai
Bet-hedging strategies help organisms to decrease variance in their fitness in unpredictably changing environments, by which way lineage fitness can be maximized in the given environment. As one strategy, diversified bet-hedging helps to achieve that by increasing phenotypic variation in fitness-related traits. For example, in diversified tracking, parents may divide the developmental phenotypes of
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Consequences of barriers and changing seasonality on population dynamics and harvest of migratory ungulates Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-25 Bram Van Moorter, Steinar Engen, John M. Fryxell, Manuela Panzacchi, Erlend B. Nilsen, Atle Mysterud
Many animal populations providing ecosystem services, including harvest, live in seasonal environments and migrate between seasonally distinct ranges. Unfortunately, two major sources of human-induced global change threaten these populations: climate change and anthropogenic barriers. Anthropogenic infrastructure developments present a global threat to animal migrations through increased migration
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Persistence and extinction dynamics driven by the rate of environmental change in a predator–prey metacommunity Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-17 Ramesh Arumugam, Frédéric Guichard, Frithjof Lutscher
Persistence of ecological systems under climate change depends on how fast the environment is changing and on how species respond to that change. The rate of environmental change is a key factor affecting the responses. Adaptation, migration to more favorable habitats, and extinction are fundamental responses that species exhibit to climate change, but extinction is the most extreme one when species
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Species dynamics and interactions via metabolically informed consumer-resource models Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-04 Mario E. Muscarella, James P. O’Dwyer
Quantifying the strength, sign, and origin of species interactions, along with their dependence on environmental context, is at the heart of prediction and understanding in ecological communities. Pairwise interaction models like Lotka-Volterra provide an important and flexible foundation, but notably absent is an explicit mechanism mediating interactions. Consumer-resource models incorporate mechanism
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The role of increased gonotrophic cycles in the establishment of Wolbachia in Anopheles populations Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Lauren M. Childs; Ryan Hughes; Julie C. Blackwood
Wolbachia, a bacterium that infects insect populations, has been examined extensively in Drosophila populations and, in recent years, has garnered significant attention for its potential to reduce the spread of dengue in the Aedes mosquito population. Similar applications to Anopheles mosquitoes for the reduction of malaria have not been as thoroughly studied, as Anopheles were previously thought to
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Small-scale spatial structure affects predator-prey dynamics and coexistence Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-29 Anudeep Surendran, Michael J. Plank, Matthew J. Simpson
Small-scale spatial variability can affect community dynamics in many ecological and biological processes, such as predator-prey dynamics and immune responses. Spatial variability includes short-range neighbour-dependent interactions and small-scale spatial structure, such as clustering where individuals aggregate together, and segregation where individuals are spaced apart from one another. Yet, a
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Optimal navigation and behavioural traits in oceanic migrations Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-27 Jérôme Pinti, Antonio Celani, Uffe H. Thygesen, Patrizio Mariani
Many organisms perform regular migrations over long distances. These movements are often related to feeding and reproductive periods and regulated by oceanographic conditions as well as physiological and behavioural traits. Different individual traits and their associated evolutionary constraints will ultimately shape the migratory strategy (and route) of individuals. Optimality theory can provide
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Species-abundance distributions and Taylor’s power law of fluctuation scaling Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-24 Joel E. Cohen
Two widely investigated areas of theory in ecology over the past half century are species-abundance distributions (SADs) and Taylor’s power law of fluctuation scaling (TL). This paper connects TL with a classic SAD, MacArthur’s broken-stick model. Each of these models is more than 60 years old, but apparently the connection has not been observed previously. For large numbers of species, the broken-stick
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Patch centrality affects metapopulation dynamics in small freshwater ponds Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-24 Christopher J. Holmes; Zoi Rapti; Jelena H. Pantel; Kimberly L. Schulz; Carla E. Cáceres
Despite advances in metapopulation theory, recent studies have emphasized the difficulty in understanding and accurately predicting dynamics in nature. We address this knowledge gap by coupling 4 years of population data for the freshwater zooplankter Daphnia pulex, inhabiting 38 newly established ponds in Upstate New York, with (i) a spatially explicit stochastic model and (ii) a deterministic model
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Threshold harvesting as a conservation or exploitation strategy in population management Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-20 Frank M. Hilker, Eduardo Liz
Threshold harvesting removes the surplus of a population above a set threshold and takes no harvest below the threshold. This harvesting strategy is known to prevent overexploitation while obtaining higher yields than other harvesting strategies. However, the harvest taken can vary over time, including seasons of no harvest at all. While this is undesirable in fisheries or other exploitation activities
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Non-king elimination, intransitive triad interactions, and species coexistence in ecological competition networks Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-18 Nathan Muyinda; Bernard De Baets; Shodhan Rao
Ecological communities are characterized by the interactions among the species living within a given habitat and can be conveniently represented as networks of interactions. Variation in the way the interactions are organized in the network determines whether the ecological community is able to support coexistence and resist collapse. Analyzing network properties can thus provide insights as to why
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Impact of plant defense level variability on specialist and generalist herbivores Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-06-05 Tatjana Thiel; Sarah Gaschler; Karsten Mody; Nico Blüthgen; Barbara Drossel
Most organisms are defended against others, and defenses such as secondary metabolites in plants vary across species, individuals, and subindividual organs. Plant leaves show an impressive variability in quantitative defense levels, even within the same individual. Such variation might mirror physiological constraints or represent an evolved trait. One important hypothesis for the prevalence of defense
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Resource-harvester cycles caused by delayed knowledge of the harvested population state can be dampened by harvester forecasting Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-05-16 Matthew W. Adamson; Frank M. Hilker
The monitoring of ecosystems and the spread of information concerning their state among human stakeholders is often a lengthy process. The importance of mutual feedbacks between socioeconomic and ecological dynamics is being increasingly recognised in recent studies, but it is generally assumed that the feedback from the environment is instantaneous, ignoring any delay in the spread of ecosystem knowledge
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The effects of intraspecific and interspecific diversity on food web stability Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-05-12 Akana E. Noto; Tarik C. Gouhier
Although the effects of species diversity on food web stability have long been recognized, relatively little is known about the influence of intraspecific diversity. Empirical work has found that intraspecific diversity can increase community resilience and resistance, but few theoretical studies have attempted to use modeling approaches to determine how intraspecific diversity will affect food web
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Mid-domain effect for food chain length in a colonization–extinction model Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-05-09 Kai von Prillwitz; Bernd Blasius
The mid-domain effect states that in a spatially bounded domain species richness tends to decrease from the center towards the boundary, thus producing a peak or plateau of species richness in the middle of the domain even in the absence of any environmental gradient. This effect has been frequently used to describe geographic richness gradients of trophically similar species, but how it scales across
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Ecotourism development and the heterogeneity of tourists Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-04-29 Joung Hun Lee; Yoh Iwasa
Ecotourism is potentially capable of making biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management economically feasible. Here, we propose a simple model for ecotourism development considering the heterogeneity of tourists, motivated by the case of Jeju Island, South Korea. We analyze the optimal investment in accommodation capacity (i.e., hotels, restaurants, and transportation) and in improving the quality
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Persistence and stability of interacting species in response to climate warming: the role of trophic structure Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-04-26 Taranjot Kaur; Partha Sharathi Dutta
Over the past century, the Earth has experienced roughly 0.4–0.8 ∘C rise in the average temperature and which is projected to increase between 1.4 and 5.8 ∘C by the year 2100. The increase in the Earth’s temperature directly influences physiological traits of individual species in ecosystems. However, the effect of these changes in community dynamics, so far, remains relatively unknown. Here, we show
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Towards better representations of carbon allocation in vegetation: a conceptual framework and mathematical tool Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-04-22 Verónika Ceballos-Núñez; Markus Müller; Carlos A. Sierra
The representation of carbon allocation (CA) in ecosystem differs tremendously among models, resulting in diverse responses of carbon cycling and storage to global change. Several studies have highlighted discrepancies between empirical observations and model predictions, attributing these differences to problems of model structure. We analyzed the mathematical representation of CA in models using
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Critical speeding up as an early warning signal of stochastic regime shifts Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-02-26 Mathew Titus, James Watson
Abstract The use of critical slowing down as an early warning indicator for regime switching in observations from noisy dynamical systems and models has been widely studied and implemented in recent years. Some systems, however, have been shown to avoid critical slowing down prior to a transition between equilibria (Ditlevsen and Johnsen 2010; Hastings and Wysham Ecology Letters 13(4):464–472 2010)
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Correction to: An eco-evolutionary system with naturally bounded traits Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-03-14 Roger Cropp, John Norbury
The original version of this article unfortunately contains an incorrect panel (b) in Fig. 1 introduced during the production process.
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The necessity of tailored control of irrupting pest populations driven by pulsed resources Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-03-13 Merlin C. Köhnke; Rachelle N. Binny; E. Penelope Holland; Alex James
Resource pulses are widespread phenomena in diverse ecosystems. Irruptions of generalist consumers and corresponding generalist predators often follow such resource pulses. This can have severe implications on the ecosystem and also on the spread of diseases or on regional famines. Suitable management strategies are necessary to deal with these systems. In this study, we develop a general model to
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Land use dynamics within the tallgrass prairie ecosystem: the case for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-03-12 Heidi Berger; Clinton K. Meyer; Anna Mummert; Lauren Tirado; Luis Saucedo; Hannah Bonello; Demetre Van Arsdale; Grace Williams
Tallgrass prairie has been reduced to a fraction of its original extent, due to rapid conversion to other land use types, especially agricultural and urban. Restoration is a relatively new process to convert agricultural land back to communities dominated by native vegetation. We used a differential equations compartmental model to quantify changes between land use types, incorporating the impact of
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Small-scale spatial structure influences large-scale invasion rates Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-02-26 Michael J. Plank; Matthew J. Simpson; Rachelle N. Binny
Local interactions among individual members of a population can generate intricate small-scale spatial structure, which can strongly influence population dynamics. The two-way interplay between local interactions and population dynamics is well understood in the relatively simple case where the population occupies a fixed domain with a uniform average density. However, the situation where the average
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Cooperation and stability for complex systems in resource-limited environments Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-01-30 Stacey Butler; James P. O’Dwyer
Resource-limited complex systems are ubiquitous in the natural world, as is the potential for instability in such systems. Classic models of interacting species have provided a basis for our understanding of stability in these systems, and suggest that stable coexistence requires weak, rare, and asymmetric interactions. But missing from these models is an explicit understanding of how resource exchange
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Moderate parasitoidism on pollinators contributes to population oscillations and increases species diversity in the fig-fig wasp community Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-01-21 Lin Wang; Li-Yuan Yang; Feng Zhang; Rui-Wu Wang
Whether species diversity contributes to the ecosystem stability has been one of the most heated arguments in community ecology. Potentially different contributions of different ecosystem species have not been explicitly taken into account. With fig species and their associated fig wasp community as model system, we bring community structure into the “diversity-stability” debate by establishing the
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Where and how do localized perturbations affect stream and coastal ocean populations with nonlinear growth dynamics? Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2020-01-11 Laura S. Storch; James M. Pringle
Chaotic systems are sensitive to small changes in parameters and initial conditions, but are spatially distributed chaotic populations sensitive to the location of perturbations within their domain? Here, we examine the transient responses to perturbation in a density-dependent population model with asymmetrical dispersal, where offspring are moved some distance downstream of the parent population
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Every variance function, including Taylor’s power law of fluctuation scaling, can be produced by any location-scale family of distributions with positive mean and variance Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-12-01 Joel E. Cohen
One of the most widely verified empirical regularities of ecology is Taylor’s power law of fluctuation scaling, or simply Taylor’s law (TL). TL says that the logarithm of the variances of a set of random variables or a set of random samples is (exactly or approximately) a linear function of logarithm of the means of the corresponding random variables or random samples: logvariance = log a + b log mean
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Fast and slow advances toward a deeper integration of theory and empiricism Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-11-16 Karen C. Abbott; Fang Ji; Christopher R. Stieha; Christopher M. Moore
In this article, we present a modern commentary on Ludwig, Jones, and Holling’s classic paper, “Qualitative analysis of insect outbreak systems: the spruce budworm and forest,” published in the Journal of Animal Ecology in 1978. In contrast to papers that become classics for advancing one big idea, Ludwig et al.’s contribution is striking for its breadth of impact. It has become a foundational reference
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Resource competition and species coexistence in a two-patch metaecosystem model Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-10-27 Ioannis Tsakalakis; Bernd Blasius; Alexey Ryabov
The metaecosystem framework has been proposed to conceptualize the interactive effects of dispersal and resource flows on the structure and functioning of communities in a heterogeneous environment. Here, we model a two-patch metaecosystem where two species with a trade-off in resource requirements compete for two limiting resources—generalizing the so-called gradostat experimental setup. We study
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Nutrient retention by predators undermines predator coexistence on one prey Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-10-19 Toni Klauschies; Ursula Gaedke
Contemporary theory of predator coexistence through relative non-linearity in their functional responses strongly relies on the Rosenzweig and MacArthur (1963) equations in which the (autotrophic) prey exhibits logistic growth in the absence of the predators. This implies that the prey is limited by a resource such as light or space, which availability is independent of the predators. This assumption
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How optimal foragers should respond to habitat changes: on the consequences of habitat conversion Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-08-13 Vincent Calcagno; Frédéric Hamelin; Ludovic Mailleret; Frédéric Grognard
The marginal value theorem (MVT) provides a framework to predict how habitat modifications related to the distribution of resourcesover patches should impact the realized fitness of individuals and their optimal rate of movement (or patch residence times) across the habitat. The MVT theory has focused on the consequences of changing the shape of the gain functions in some patches, describing for instance
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Weak chaos, Allee points, and intermittency emerging from niche construction in population models Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-08-05 John Vandermeer
The idea of niche construction is regarded as an interesting, if not essential, element of population dynamics. Classical results from population biology emerge from such a formulation, such as chaotic behavior, the self-organized emergence of Allee points, critical transitions, and hysteresis. Relaxing the assumption of a descending limb in classic 1-D map representations of chaos, the application
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Resource spectrum engineering by specialist species can shift the specialist-generalist balance Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-07-24 Catherine G. Mills; Rosalind J. Allen; Richard A. Blythe
The mechanisms which influence coexistence of specialist and generalist species in the same environment are a key focus of ecological theory. We use an agent-based model of community assembly to show that the available resource spectrum (distribution of resources along a niche axis) can play an important role in determining the specialist-generalist balance, even in the absence of spatial structure
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Aedes aegypti and Wolbachia interaction: population persistence in an environment changing Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-06-21 C. P. Ferreira
Laboratory and field tests have been highlight the importance of choosing an optimal Wolbachia strain to ensure the success of colonization and persistence of the released Aedes aegypti infected mosquito. Thresholds for vertical infection transmission and male sterilization depend on bacterial density and its distribution in mosquitoes tissue, which also affects strongly mosquito fitness. Temperature
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Assessing functional diversity: the influence of the number of the functional traits Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-06-16 Gaëlle Legras; N. Loiseau; J-C. Gaertner; J-C. Poggiale; N. Gaertner-Mazouni
The impact of the variation of the number of functional traits on functional diversity assessment is still poorly known. Although the covariation between these two parameters may be desirable in some situations (e.g. if adding functional traits provides relevant new functional information), it may also result from mathematical artefacts and lead to misinterpretation of the results obtained. Here, we
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Improved foraging by switching between diffusion and advection: benefits from movement that depends on spatial context Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-06-15 William F. Fagan; Tyler Hoffman; Daisy Dahiya; Eliezer Gurarie; Robert Stephen Cantrell; Chris Cosner
Animals use different modes of movement at different times, in different locations, and on different scales. Incorporating such context dependence in mathematical models represents a substantial increase in complexity, but creates an opportunity to more fully integrate key biological features. Here, we consider the spatial dynamics of a population of foragers with two subunits. In one subunit, foragers
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Spatial scaling of species richness–productivity relationships for local communities: analytical results from a neutral model Theor. Ecol. (IF 1.099) Pub Date : 2019-05-20 Tak Fung; Sa Xiao; Ryan A. Chisholm
The relationship between species richness and productivity changes with spatial scale, but the way in which it changes and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We address this critical knowledge gap using a new mechanistic model of the spatial scaling of species richness–productivity (SP) relationships for a local community. Our model is neutral and hence assumes that species dynamics are driven
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