It is generally assumed that restoring biodiversity will enhance diversity and ecosystem functioning. However, to date, it has rarely been evaluated whether and how restoration efforts manage to rebuild biodiversity and multiple ecosystem functions (ecosystem multifunctionality) simultaneously. Here, we quantified how three restoration methods of increasing intervention intensity (harvest only < topsoil

Environmental injustice can be expressed through lack of access to resources, unequal exposure to toxins, and limited access to knowledge about the unsustainable environmental practices that impact communities (Bullard 2018). The ecological processes that contribute to the “perfect storm” of conditions that create environmental injustices are well documented in applied ecology scholarship; yet the

About 70% of the world's main crops depend on insect pollination. Climate change is already affecting the abundance and distribution of insects, which could cause geographical mismatches between crops and their pollinators. Crops that rely primarily on wild pollinators (e.g., crops that cannot be effectively pollinated by commercial colonies of honey bees) could be particularly in jeopardy. However

Woodland birds are a species assemblage of conservation concern, and their persistence in fragmented agricultural landscapes is dependent on both the preservation of existing woodland remnants and the implementation of restoration plantings. However, little is known about the habitat‐use and persistence of birds in fragmented agricultural landscapes. We present a detailed, population‐oriented study

Occupancy methods propelled the quantitative study of species distributions forward by separating the observation process, or the imperfect detectability of species, from the ecological processes of interest governing species distributions. Occupancy studies come at a cost, however: the collection of additional data to account for nondetections at sites where the species is present. The most common

Large, long‐lived species with slow life histories and protracted pre‐breeding stages are particularly susceptible to declines and extinction, often for unknown causes. Here, we show how demographic modelling of a medium‐sized raptor, the Red kite Milvus milvus, can aid to re‐focus conservation research and attention on the most likely mechanisms driving its decline. Red kites’ survival and reproduction

We surveyed ecologists and evolutionary biologists in American Universities to understand how they are coping with the COVID‐19 pandemic. Female respondents, assistant professors, and those who care for at least one child or teenager, were significantly more dissatisfied with their work‐life balance during this pandemic than others, and further expected these negative impacts to be long‐lived. Online

Postfire shifts in vegetation composition will have broad ecological impacts. However, information characterizing postfire recovery patterns and their drivers are lacking over large spatial extents. In this analysis, we used Landsat imagery collected when snow cover (SCS) was present, in combination with growing season (GS) imagery, to distinguish evergreen vegetation from deciduous vegetation. We

Increasing aridity is a challenge for forest managers and reducing stand density to minimize competition is a recognized strategy to mitigate drought impacts on growth. In many dry forests, the most widespread and common forest management programs currently being implemented focus on restoration of historical stand structures, primarily to minimize fire risk and enhance watershed function. The implications

Gridded historical climate products (GHCPs) are employed with increasing frequency when modeling ecological phenomena across large scales and predicting ecological responses to projected climate changes. Concurrently, there is an increasing acknowledgement of the need to account for uncertainty when employing climate projections from ensembles of global circulation models (GCMs) and emissions scenarios

Many important ecological phenomena occur on large spatial scales and/or are unplanned and thus do not easily fit within analytical frameworks which rely on randomization, replication, and interspersed a priori controls for statistical comparison. Analyses of such large‐sc, natural experiments are common in the health and econometrics literature, where techniques have been developed to derive insight

Coral bleaching is the single largest global threat to coral reefs worldwide. Integrating the diverse body of work on coral bleaching is critical to understanding and combating this global problem. Yet investigating the drivers, patterns, and processes of coral bleaching poses a major challenge. A recent review of published experiments revealed a wide range of experimental variables used across studies

Emerging diseases of wildlife origin are increasingly spilling over into humans and domestic animals. Surveillance and risk assessments for transmission between these populations are informed by a mechanistic understanding of the pathogens in wildlife reservoirs. For avian influenza viruses (AIV), much observational and experimental work in wildlife has been conducted at local scales, yet fully understanding

Optimization of spatial resource allocation is crucial for the successful control of invasive species under a limited budget but requires labor‐intensive surveys to estimate population parameters. In this study, we devised a novel framework for the spatially explicit optimization of capture effort allocation using state‐space population models from past capture records. We applied it to a control program

Reef‐building corals, like many long‐lived organisms, experience environmental change as a combination of separate but concurrent processes, some of which are gradual yet long‐lasting, while others are more acute but short‐lived. For corals, some chronic environmental stressors, such as rising temperature and ocean acidification, are thought to induce gradual changes in colonies' vital rates. Meanwhile

The COVID‐19 pandemic and its global response have resulted in unprecedented and rapid changes to most people’s day‐to‐day lives. To slow the spread of the virus, governments have implemented the practice of physical distancing (“social distancing”), which includes isolation within the home with limited time spent outdoors. During this extraordinary time, nature around the home may play a key role

While invasive plant distributions are relatively well known in the eastern United States, temporal changes in species distributions and interactions among species have received little attention. Managers are therefore left to make management decisions without knowing which species pose the greatest threats based on their ability to spread, persist and outcompete other invasive species. To fill this

Spatial aspects of connectivity have received considerable attention from ecologists and conservationists, yet temporal connectivity – the periodic linking of habitats – plays an equally important, but largely overlooked role. Different biological and biophysical attributes of ecosystems underpin temporal connectivity, but here we focus on resource continuity, the uninterrupted availability of foraging

Integrated population models (IPMs) are widely used to combine disparate data sets in joint analysis to better understand population dynamics and provide guidance for conservation activities. An often‐cited assumption of IPMs is independence among component data sets within the combined likelihood. Dependency among data sets should lead to underestimation of variance and bias because individuals contribute

Most parasites and pathogens infect multiple hosts, but a great deal of variation exists in the role of those hosts in persistence of infection. Understanding which hosts are most important in maintaining parasites can provide a clearer target for infection control. Recently developed empirical and theoretical approaches provide a way to quantify the relative contribution of hosts within a community

Effective management strategies are needed to control expansion of invasive alien plant species and attenuate economic and ecological impacts. While previous theoretical studies have assessed optimal control strategies that balance economic costs and ecological benefits, less attention has been paid to the ways in which the spatial characteristics of individual patches may mediate the effectiveness

Urban forested natural areas are valuable ecological and social resources, but long‐term sustainability of these habitats is challenged by environmental and social factors associated with urban ecosystems. Advances in city‐scale assessments of urban forests have increased the resolution of forest community types and conditions, allowing for improved understanding of ecological function, such as natural

Ecological niche models (ENMs) have classically operated under the simplifying assumptions that there are no barriers to gene flow, species are genetically homogeneous (i.e., no population‐specific local adaptation), and all individuals share the same niche. Yet, these assumptions are violated for most broadly distributed species. Here we incorporate genetic data from the widespread riparian tree species

Plant functional diversity is strongly connected to photosynthetic carbon assimilation in terrestrial ecosystems. However, many of the plant functional traits that regulate photosynthetic capacity, including foliar nitrogen concentration and leaf mass per area, vary significantly between and within plant functional types and vertically through forest canopies, resulting in considerable landscape‐scale

Plastic pollution is ubiquitous with increasing recognition of its direct effects on species’ fitness. Little is known, however, about its more subtle effects, including the influence of plastic pollution on the morphological, functional and behavioral traits of organisms that are central to their ability to withstand disturbances. Among the least obvious but most pernicious forms of plastic‐associated

As geographic range estimates for the IUCN Red List guide conservation actions, accuracy and ecological realism are crucial. IUCN’s extent of occurrence (EOO) is the general region including the species’ range, while area of occupancy (AOO) is the subset of EOO occupied by the species. Data‐poor species with incomplete sampling present particular difficulties, but species distribution models (SDMs)

Pathogenic fungi are increasingly associated with epidemics in wildlife populations. Snake fungal disease (SFD) is an emerging threat to snakes, taxa that are elusive and difficult to sample. Thus, assessments of the impacts of SFD on populations have rarely occurred. We used a field technique to enhance detection, Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) telemetry, and a multistate capture‐mark‐recapture

Understanding how biodiversity responds to urbanization is challenging, due in part to the single‐city focus of most urban ecological research. Here, we delineate continent‐scale patterns in urban species assemblages by leveraging data from a multi‐city camera trap survey and quantify how differences in greenspace availability and average housing density among ten North American cities relate to the

A primary goal of restoration ecology is to understand the factors that generate variability in species diversity and composition among restorations. Plant communities may assemble deterministically towards a common community type, or they may assemble stochastically, ending differently because of weather conditions during establishment, soil legacy effects, or exotic species propagule pressure. To

Community occupancy models estimate species‐specific parameters while sharing information across species by treating parameters as sampled from a common distribution. When communities consist of discrete groups, shrinkage of estimates towards the community mean can mask differences among groups. Infinite mixture models using a Dirichlet process (DP) distribution, in which the number of latent groups

Pest species control operations are most effective if every individual in a population is targeted. Yet, individual personality drives variation in animal responses to devices such as traps and baits. Failing to account for differences in behavior during control operations may drive a selective removal, resulting in residual animals with biased expressions of personality. If these biased traits are

Intraspecific plant diversity can significantly impact insect herbivore populations in natural systems. Yet, its role as an insect pest control strategy in agriculture has received less attention, and little is known about which crop traits are important to herbivores in different landscape contexts. Moreover, empirical economic analyses on the cost‐effectiveness of varietal mixtures is lacking. We

Marine ecosystems are prone to tipping points, particularly in coastal zones where dramatic changes are associated with interactions between cumulative stressors (e.g., shellfish harvesting, eutrophication and sediment inputs) and ecosystem functions. A common feature of many degraded estuaries is elevated turbidity that reduces incident light to the seafloor, resulting from multiple factors including

Many industries are required to monitor themselves in meeting regulatory policies intended to protect the environment. Self‐reporting of environmental performance can place the cost of monitoring on companies rather than taxpayers, but there are obvious risks of bias, often addressed through external audits or inspections. Surprisingly, there have been relatively few empirical analyses of bias in industry

Erratum for Jach‐Smith, L. C. and R. D. Jackson. 2020. Inorganic N addition replaces N supplied to switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Ecological Applications 30:e02047. The authors would like to include an addendum to the Acknowledgments section of their publication to reflect an additional funding source. Support for this research was also provided by the NSF Long‐term

Biodiversity patterns are shaped by the combination of dispersal, environment and stochasticity, but how the influence of these drivers changes in fragmented habitats remains poorly understood. We examined patterns and relationships among total (γ) and site‐level (α) diversity, and site‐to‐site variation in composition (β‐diversity) of tree communities in structurally contiguous and fragmented tropical

Spatial gradients in population growth, such as across latitudinal or elevational gradients, are often assumed to primarily be driven by variation in climate, and are frequently used to infer species’ responses to climate change. Here, we use a novel demographic, mixed model approach to dissect the contributions of climate variables vs. other latitudinal or local site effects on spatiotemporal variation

Many estuarine ecosystems and the fish communities that inhabit them have undergone substantial changes in the past several decades, largely due to multiple interacting stressors that are often of anthropogenic origin. Few are more impactful than droughts, which are predicted to increase in both frequency and severity with climate change. In this study, we examined over five decades of fish monitoring

Legumes are used in crop rotations by both large‐scale and smallholder farmers alike to increase soil fertility, especially before high‐nitrogen‐demanding crops such as corn (maize). Legume crop residues and green manures are rich in nitrogen due to mutualistic rhizobia, bacteria that live in their roots and convert atmospheric nitrogen into a biologically available form. Growers can obtain recommendations

Nutrient pollution is altering coastal ecosystems worldwide. On coral reefs, excess nutrients can favor the production of algae at the expense of reef‐building corals, yet the role of nutrients in driving community changes such as shifts from coral to macroalgae is not well understood. Here we investigate the potential role of anthropogenic nutrient loading in driving recent coral‐to‐macroalgae phase

Species distribution estimates are often used to understand the niche of a species; however, these are often based solely on climatic predictors. When the influences of biotic factors are ignored, erroneous inferences about range and niche may be made. We aimed to integrate climate data with a unique set of available land cover and land use data for the six cold‐adapted amphibians of North America

Coastal wetlands intercept significant amounts of nitrogen (N) from watersheds, especially when surrounding land cover is dominated by agriculture and urban development. Through plant uptake, soil immobilization, and denitrification wetlands can remove excess N from flow through water sources and mitigate eutrophication of connected aquatic ecosystems. Excess N can also change plant community composition

Although lowland tropical rainforests were once widely believed to be the archetype of stability, seasonal variation exists. In these environments, seasonality is defined by rainfall, leading to a predictable pattern of biotic and abiotic changes. Only the full annual cycle reveals niche breadth, yet most studies of tropical organisms ignore seasonality, thereby underestimating realized conditions

Springs ecosystems are globally abundant, geomorphologically diverse, and bio‐culturally productive, but are highly imperiled by anthropogenic activities. More than a century of scientific discussion about the wide array of ecohydrological factors influencing springs has been informative, but has yielded little agreement on their classification. This lack of agreement has contributed to the global

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are increasingly established globally as a spatial management tool to aid in conservation and fisheries management objectives. Assessing whether MPAs are having the desired effects on populations requires effective monitoring programs. A cornerstone of an effective monitoring program is an assessment of the statistical power of sampling designs to detect changes when they

An influential paradigm in coral reef ecology is that fishing causes trophic cascades through reef fish assemblages, resulting in reduced herbivory and thus benthic phase shifts from coral to algal dominance. Few long‐term field tests exist of how fishing affects the trophic structure of coral reef fish assemblages, and how such changes affect the benthos. Alternatively, benthic change itself may drive

Human activities and land‐use drivers combine in complex ways to affect coral reef health and, in turn, the diversity and abundance of reef fauna. Here we examine the impacts of different marine protected area (MPA) types, and various human and habitat drivers, on resource fish functional groups (i.e., total fish, herbivore, grazer, scraper, and browser biomass) along the 180 km west coast of Hawaii

Erratum for Paz‐Kagan and Asner 2017. Drivers of woody canopy water content responses to drought in the Mediterranean‐type ecosystem. Ecological Applications 27:2220–2233. The corresponding editor was listed incorrectly in this article. The correct corresponding editor is Sassan Saatchi. The publisher regrets this error and apologizes to our readers. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.1603

Forage availability has been suggested as one driver of the observed decline in honey bees. However, little is known about the effects of its spatiotemporal variation on colony success. We present a modeling framework for assessing honey bee colony viability in cropping systems. Based on two real farmland structures, we developed a landscape generator to design cropping systems varying in crop species

Freshwater ecosystems face many simultaneous pressures due to human activities. Consequently, there has been a rapid loss of freshwater biodiversity and an increase in biomonitoring programs. Our study assessed the potential of benthic stream bacterial communities as indicators of multiple‐stressor impacts associated with urbanization and agricultural intensification. We conducted a fully crossed four‐factor

Forests are projected to undergo dramatic compositional and structural shifts prompted by global changes, such as climatic changes and intensifying natural disturbance regimes. Future uncertainty makes planning for forest management exceptionally difficult, demanding novel approaches to maintain or improve the ability of forest ecosystems to respond and rapidly reorganize after disturbance events.

Ecological restoration seeks to reestablish functioning ecosystems, but planning and evaluation often focus on taxonomic community structure and neglect consumers and their functional roles. The functional trait composition of insect assemblages, which make up the majority of animal diversity in many systems, can reveal how they are affected by restoration management and the consequences for ecosystem

Identification of species’ Biologically Important Areas (BIAs) is fundamental to conservation planning and species distribution models (SDMs) are a powerful tool commonly used to do this. Presence‐only data are increasingly being used to develop SDMs to aid the conservation decision‐making process. The application of presence‐only SDMs for marine species’ is particularly attractive due to often logistical

Ecosystem engineers physically modify their environment, thereby altering habitats for other organisms. Increasingly, “engineers” are recognized as an important focus for conservation and ecological restoration because their actions affect a range of ecosystem processes and thereby influence how ecosystems function. The Superb Lyrebird Menura novaehollandiae is proposed as an ecosystem engineer in

Warming climate and resulting declines in seasonal snowpack have been associated with drought stress and tree mortality in seasonally snow‐covered watersheds worldwide. Meanwhile, increasing forest density has further exacerbated drought stress due to intensified tree–tree competition. Using a uniquely detailed data set of population‐level forest growth (n = 2,495 sampled trees), we examined how inter‐annual

The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a pest and a conservation problem on many islands, where its heavy grazing pressure threatens many endemic plants with extinction. Previous studies in its native and introduced range have highlighted the high spatial variability of rabbit abundance at local and landscape scales, depending on many factors such as the existence of different habitats. Modeling

Beaver dams are gaining popularity as a low‐tech, low‐cost strategy to build climate resiliency at the landscape scale. They slow and store water that can be accessed by riparian vegetation during dry periods, effectively protecting riparian ecosystems from droughts. Whether or not this protection extends to wildfire has been discussed anecdotally but has not been examined in a scientific context.

Migration is common worldwide as species access spatiotemporally varying resources and avoid predators and parasites. However, long‐distance migrations are increasingly imperiled due to development and habitat fragmentation. Improved understanding of migratory behavior has implications for conservation and management of migratory species, allowing identification and protection of seasonal ranges and

Over the past two decades, there have been numerous calls to make ecology a more predictive science through direct empirical assessments of ecological models and predictions. While the widespread use of model selection using information criteria has pushed ecology toward placing a higher emphasis on prediction, few attempts have been made to validate the ability of information criteria to correctly

Forecasting rates of forest succession at landscape scales will aid global efforts to restore tree cover to millions of hectares of degraded land. While optical satellite remote sensing can detect regional land cover change, quantifying forest structural change is challenging. We developed a state‐space modeling framework that applies Landsat satellite data to estimate variability in rates of natural