The effects of a single trait on more than one ecological function is called ecological pleiotropy. Traits that exhibit ecological pleiotropy are relevant to eco-evolutionary dynamics because the structure of interaction between the trait and its ecological functions alters how eco-evolutionary feedback loops emerge. Density-dependent selection (DDS) assumes that a single trait affects both density-independent

Modeling energy content and gain of individuals is of increasing importance in ecosystem modeling, especially in aquaculture and fisheries. Traditional models for estimating the content and gain are either imprecise or expensive, in part because of intensive data requirements. Here we show how routine biometric data (length and wet weight or condition index) can be used to estimate total energy content

Phytoplankton primary production (PP) in turbid estuaries is often limited by light-availability. Two important factors altering light-climate are solar irradiance at the water surface and exponential light-extinction coefficient within the water column. Additionally, the depth of the water body changes the light-climate and corresponding PP by altering the ratio of the euphotic and mixing depth in

We describe a dynamic energy budget (DEB) model for tadpoles over the course of metamorphosis. The model accounts for details in the tadpoles feeding behavior, as feeding and indirectly respiration are reduced in the late developmental stages preceding metamorphosis to an immature froglet. We propose two versions of our DEB model, one where the energy reserves of the organism are accounted for explicitly

Among the models used to describe insect pest populations, the Distributed Delay Model has been applied in several case studies in recent years. Its success is due mainly to its simplicity, and its versatility to be easily included in software to calculate numerical solutions. In its original formulation, the Distributed Delay Model provides, as a solution, the distribution of the insects’ maturation

Managing the spread of parasite populations is a ubiquitous challenge for managers of natural and farmed systems. A specific current example are “sea lice”, parasitic marine organisms that live on both wild and farmed Salmon sp., posing a persistent challenge to aquaculture operations in high latitude countries. Lice reproduce with pelagic larvae that spread in the water column, meaning that fish farm

Evidence is accumulating to show that changes in host diversity can affect disease risk, yet the relationship between them is still disputed. Understanding what factors influence this relationship will help to reconcile this debate. In this paper, through spatially-explicit simulations, we investigated the effects of host spatial distribution patterns, the scale of host interactions (i.e. local vs

It is critical to have long-term carbon dioxide (CO2) flux observations in forest ecosystems to understand how changing climate can affect forest carbon (C) stocks and CO2 exchange between forests and the atmosphere. In this study, fifteen years (2002–2016) of continuous eddy-covariance flux and climate measurements in an intermediate-aged Douglas-fir stand on the east coast of Vancouver Island, Canada

Natural resource management has long recognised that the multi-objective nature of management is important, but has struggled to operationalise this into quantitative, measurable objectives for functional use in management. Operationalising broader ecological and social objectives has been particularly problematic. In fisheries management, the focus has mainly been on target species sustainability

Despite their critical role as the main energy pathway between phytoplankton and fish, the functional complexity of zooplankton is typically poorly resolved in marine ecosystem models. Trait-based approaches—where zooplankton are represented with functional traits such as body size—could help improve the resolution of zooplankton in marine ecosystem models and their role in trophic transfer and carbon

The study of carbon sequestration capacity under intensive management (IM)1 measures (such as cutting, thinning, plowing, and fertilization) has become a major issue of carbon budgets in the context of global climate change. Bamboo forest, also known as “the second largest forest in the world,” plays an important role in the carbon cycle. Due to its high economic value, IM practices have been widely

Livestock production is one of the main contributors to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The tools provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to estimate GHG emissions (Tier 1 and Tier 2) cannot be used as a tool for advising farmers or national policy on how to minimize GHG emissions because these estimates are not explicitly related to any metabolic properties. For that, we need

Understanding the mechanisms driving community dynamics helps us to make reliable predictions about communities’ response to environmental change. Studying desert plant communities is particularly challenging because of strong intra- and interannual fluctuations in precipitation. Models rise to this challenge by providing an arena for systematic evaluation of the parameter space in virtual experiments

The noble pen shell Pinna nobilis L. is the largest, endemic, critically endangered, and protected bivalve of the Mediterranean Sea. Effective conservation and management strategies for this species highly depend on understanding how environmental change and anthropogenic pressures impact its physiology and thereby ecological function, population persistence, and survival. Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB)

The Strait of Messina (Sicily, Italy) attracts the interest of marine ecologists for the presence of a large variety of habitat and mutually-interacting communities. Among them, beachrock formations, despite their wide geographic distribution, which also includes the Mediterranean area, have been poorly investigated from the biotic viewpoint. In this paper, the spatial and seasonal variability of benthic

Atmospheric CO2 increased in the 20th century and is expected to continue to do so in the 21st century, with resultant warming. Even so, the effects of these changes on the ecological systems, such as carbon sequestration in grassland ecosystems, are still poorly understood. To improve our understanding of the carbon balance, we developed a two-layer soil hydrology model for Terrestrial Ecosystem Model-Hydro

Dynamic energy budget individual-based models (DEB-IBMs) provide a well-tested framework for modelling the acquisition and use of energy throughout the life cycle of organisms. These models are often developed using species-specific data to link behaviour and physiology and predict how individuals and populations perform in changing environments. Novel bio-logging technology, applied to free-ranging

Globally, species ranges are shifting in response to climate change. For black mangrove (Avicennia germinans), fewer severe freeze events in a warming climate facilitate poleward range expansion into temperate coastal salt marshes, however propagules that disperse into marshes encounter biotic interactions (e.g., predation) that affect their survival and subsequent forest development. To better understand

Studying adverse effects of chemical pressure on aquatic ecosystems needs a comprehensive knowledge of bioaccumulation mechanisms of pollutants in biota to predict internal concentrations, especially for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). However, the large variability of responses in measured POP concentrations requires explicit consideration of both individual variability and environmental influences

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska on the remote North Slope but has limited data on fish distributions on which to base leasing and management decisions. To address this, we used environmental DNA, traditional sampling, watershed landscape characterizations, and maximum entropy modeling to develop species distribution models (SDMs) for 19 fish species

Relationships between the functional traits of phytoplankton and environmental factors remain insufficiently explored. However, these dependencies could be very useful for trait-based ecological modelling of phytoplankton communities. The purpose of this study is to estimate possible connections between nutrient utilization traits of marine phytoplankton, cell volume, temperature of the experiment

Jellyfish behavior and physiology significantly influence spatial distribution and aggregations in the marine environment. However, current models used to study these transport patterns have a limited incorporation of these physiological and behavioral variables. In this paper, the life cycle and movement of the mauve stinger, Pelagia noctiluca, is simulated from fertilized egg up to the adult stage

In his paper on net primary productivity of terrestrial communities predicted from climatological data, Rosenzweig (1968) argued that variability in productivity is well accounted for by (evapo)-transpiration, and that water from transpiration is, on global scales, the most variable component in the photosynthesis reaction. The goal of this paper is to investigate whether variability in plant growth

Consideration of scale is essential when examining structural relationships in forests. In this study, we present a parameterization of the FORMIND individual-based forest model for old growth Atlantic lowland rainforest in La Selva, Costa Rica. Results show that the simulated forest reproduces the structural complexity of Costa Rican rainforest within 2.3% of aboveground biomass values, based on comparisons

Hyperallometric reproduction, whereby large females contribute relatively more to the renewal of the population than small females, is purported to be widespread in wild populations, especially in fish species. Bioenergetic models derived from a sufficiently general metabolic theory should be able to capture such a relationship but it was recently stated that no existing models adequately capture hyperallometric

Understanding the drivers of movement, migration and distribution of individuals is important for insight into how species will respond to changing environmental conditions. Both abiotic and biotic factors are thought to influence migratory behavior, but their relative roles are difficult to disentangle. For migratory marine predators, both temperature and prey availability have been shown to be significant

Traditionally, marine carbon monoxide (CO) models assume that the microbial oxidation of CO is only dependent on the concentration of CO in the water column. However, CO oxidation rates in the ocean have been reported to vary up to two orders of magnitude both spatially and temporally. Here, we developed a new model assuming that CO microbial oxidation is dependent on bacterial carbon biomass other

In the environmental risk assessment of chemicals, ecological modelling can facilitate the quantification of specific protection goals, for instance by the extrapolation of untested situations from toxicity test results. In particular, individual-based models (IBMs) are gaining resonance in the regulatory community as a mean to predict how populations perform under environmental perturbation. In this

Mathematical models represent essential tools allowing a quantitative analysis of an epidemic system with the consequent identification of possible strategies to control a disease outbreak or even to prevent it. However, to be used in decision-making, they must be carefully parametrized and validated with epidemiological data as well as biological information on the relevant players. Here, benefitting

This study involves the initiation of a novel data driven habitat suitability hierarchical approach used for the identification and prediction of suitable regions for Larus relictus a signature waterbird specie of Erdos Larus relictus National Nature Reserve (ELRNNR). This approach was proposed using GIS to incorporate a readily available environmental parameters (NDVI, NDWI, Slope, DEM, Land use,

Turbidity is one of the important indicators in water quality management of reservoir. There are many factors affecting turbidity, and its time series is non-linear, making prediction difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out research on reservoir turbidity prediction methods. In this study, the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network was identified, validated and tested for the computation

Auxiliary information in the form of species abundance is frequently available as part of data collected for ecological investigations, yet when modeling distributions of species over large regions, species presence (and sometimes absence) are typically used. Incorporating abundances into species distribution models may greatly improve model predictive accuracy in practice. Boosted regression trees

Net absorption of CO2 by vegetated coastal ecosystems has been revealed as a key mechanism to capture and store carbon via the renewal of epigeal stem and rhizome biomass. Submerged aquatic ecosystems, such as seagrass meadows, have been termed “blue carbon” ecosystems because they absorb CO2 for their underwater growth. Irradiance and water temperature are significant factors controlling net ecological

The amount of potentially toxic chemicals in a fish depends on various environmental factors, such as temperature and feeding ecology, which can be affected by Global Changes (GC). The main objective of the present work was to study the relative influence of temperature, food quality and food availability on the growth and contamination of juveniles of common sole (Solea solea), a marine flatfish species

Understanding the height growth of trees is a fundamental component for scientific knowledge and management of forest ecosystems. The height of dominant trees at a reference-age, commonly known as the site-index, is the most widely used forest productivity indicator globally. Yet, it has been criticized for its restricted applicability to monospecific and even-aged forests, making it unreliable for

Significant inter-country transfers of ecological footprint are embodied in foreign trade. Previous research on these transfers mainly focused on historical characteristics of the flows based on historical data. However, the transfers of ecological footprints in foreign trade are dynamic and are influenced by environmental tax policies, whose future impacts have seldom been considered. In the present

Apis mellifera plays a crucial role as pollinator of the majority of crops linked to food production and thus its presence is currently fundamental to our health and survival. The composition and configuration of the landscape in which Apis mellifera lives will likely determine the well-being of the hives and the pollination service that their members can provide to the crops. Here we present a spatially

Environmental conditions experienced by animals constrain their energy acquisition and its subsequent allocation to growth and reproduction, which ultimately contributes to population dynamics. Understanding how environmental conditions affect these physiological processes is therefore important for predicting how threatened species will respond to altered food and temperature conditions. Here we use

Ecological invasion is a common phenomenon and a critical driver of species’ coexistence in nature. We establish a pair approximation model to explore the possible invasive results of an exploitative competition food web formed by ecological invasion. Global and local hunting strategies of predators are considered. The influence of initial densities and the initial spatial structure of both native

Suppression of the whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) and the thrips Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande) by the predatory mite Amblyseius swirskii Athias-Henriot on greenhouse cucumbers can be considerably affected by cooler conditions in winter. In this study, this well known mite was tested simultaneously with a more recent predatory mite Transeius montdorensis (Schicha), to find out which of

Animal movement study often relies on individual tracking. The data scale (in time and space) varies according to the species, the environment where individuals live, or the exogenous processes that drive movement. To explore freshwater fish movement in rivers, fine-scale data are needed. Also, in rivers, recorded telemetry frequently shows missing data and location errors. The irregular time-steps

As the largest carbon emission country, China is struggling with the carbon outsourcing problem at inter-provincial and international scale. Identifying the role of each provincial region is helpful for mitigation adaptation policy by local government. Based on the Multi-Scale Input-Output model (MSIO), the characteristics of subnational carbon flow pattern embodied in domestic and international trade

The CAMPUS-S model was developed to simulate ground-layer vegetation populations in forest ecosystems and their contribution to carbon and nitrogen dynamics. The model uses several modeling techniques: matrix, l-systems and cellular automata modeling. The genetic species-specific features are defined for each ontogenetic stage (L-systems), while their implementation for certain individuals in the course

One of the most applied tools to create ecosystem models to support management decisions in the light of ecosystem-based fisheries management is Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE). Recently, its spatial routine Ecospace has evolved due to the addition of the Habitat Foraging Capacity Model (HFCM), a spatial-temporal dynamic niche model to drive the foraging capacity to distribute biomass over model grid cells

This paper investigates the impacts from natural gas development, hunting, and cattle grazing on a typical Western U.S. rangeland ecosystem using a general equilibrium model that describes ecosystem dynamics. The study area is located in the region surrounding the Atlantic Rim Natural Gas project in southern-central Wyoming and analyzes the population densities of various species, net hunting benefits

In this paper, we analyze the impact of data gaps in the context of ecotoxicology when parameterizing a species using a widely recognized theory, the Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) theory. DEB-based models are used in many ecological domains, and have been recognized as particularly useful in ecotoxicology. However, available datasets are often insufficient to accurately estimate all model parameters

Species distribution models can be affected by overprediction when dispersal movement is not incorporated into the modelling process. We compared the efficiency of seven methods that take into account spatial constraints to reduce overprediction when using four algorithms for species distribution models. By using a virtual ecologist approach, we were able to measure the accuracy of each model in predicting

We investigated the establishment success of introduced populations from multiple introductions using an individual-based predator-prey ecosystem simulation called EcoSim. The experiment was a simulated reciprocal transplant over two environments (one with homogeneous and abundant resources, one with heterogeneous and fewer resources) with five levels of genetic diversity for inocula, ranging from

A model framework for national greenhouse gas emission and removal estimation for Canadian peatlands (CaMP v2.0) was developed and tested. It provides a module that can work alongside the upland forest Generic Carbon Budget Model (GCBM) developed to eventually replace the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3) as the core model in Canada's National Forest Carbon Monitoring, Accounting

Dynamic energy budget (DEB) theory provides a framework for quantifying metabolic processes and biological rates. DEB models have been widely applied to aquaculture species, but this type of model has great potential for application to fisheries for stock assessment and enhancement. The shrimp Fenneropenaeus chinensis, widely distributed along the coast of China and Korea, is the most important fisheries