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Impacts of host availability and temperature on mosquito‐borne parasite transmission Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Kyle J.‐M. Dahlin, Suzanne M. O'Regan, Barbara A. Han, John Paul Schmidt, John M. Drake
Global climate change is predicted to cause range shifts in the mosquito species that transmit pathogens to humans and wildlife. Recent modeling studies have sought to improve our understanding of the relationship between temperature and the transmission potential of mosquito‐borne pathogens. However, the role of the vertebrate host population, including the importance of host behavioral defenses on
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Novel analytic methods for predicting extinctions in ecological networks Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Chris Jones, Damaris Zurell, Karoline Wiesner
Ecological networks describe the interactions between different species, informing us how they rely on one another for food, pollination, and survival. If a species in an ecosystem is under threat of extinction, it can affect other species in the system and possibly result in their secondary extinction as well. Understanding how (primary) extinctions cause secondary extinctions on ecological networks
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Social foraging and the associated benefits of group‐living in Cliff Swallows decrease over 40 years Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-11 Charles R. Brown, Mary B. Brown, Stacey L. Hannebaum, Gigi S. Wagnon, Olivia M. Pletcher, Catherine E. Page, Amy C. West, Valerie A. O'Brien
Animals that feed socially can sometimes better locate prey, often by transferring information about food that is patchy, dense, and temporally and spatially unpredictable. Information transfer is a potential benefit of living in breeding colonies where unsuccessful foragers can more readily locate successful ones and thereby improve feeding efficiency. Most studies on social foraging have been short
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A general, resource‐based explanation for density dependence in populations of large herbivores Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 N. Thompson Hobbs
The discipline of ecology seeks to understand how ecosystems, communities, and populations are regulated. A ubiquitous mechanism of population regulation of consumers is that capturing energy and nutrients in sufficient quantities for survival and reproduction becomes more difficult as population density increases. Extensive evidence has revealed that populations of large herbivores are often regulated
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Environmental variation structures reproduction and recruitment in long-lived mega-herbivores: Galapagos giant tortoises Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Stephen Blake, Freddy Cabrera, Sebastian Cruz, Diego Ellis-Soto, Charles B. Yackulic, Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau, Martin Wikelski, Franz Kuemmeth, James P. Gibbs, Sharon L. Deem
Migratory, long-lived animals are an important focus for life-history theory because they manifest extreme trade-offs in life-history traits: delayed maturity, low fecundity, variable recruitment rates, long generation times, and vital rates that respond to variation across environments. Galapagos tortoises are an iconic example: they are long-lived, migrate seasonally, face multiple anthropogenic
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Does restoring apex predators to food webs restore ecosystems? Large carnivores in Yellowstone as a model system Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 N. Thompson Hobbs, Danielle B. Johnston, Kristin N. Marshall, Evan C. Wolf, David J. Cooper
Modification of food webs is a frequent cause of shifts in ecosystem states that resist reversal when the food web is restored to its original condition. We used the restoration of the large carnivore guild including gray wolves (Canis lupis), cougars (Felis concolor), and grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) to the northern range of Yellowstone National Park as a model system to understand how
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Limits to species distributions on tropical mountains shift from high temperature to competition as elevation increases Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Jinlin Chen, Owen T. Lewis
Species turnover with elevation is a widespread phenomenon and provides valuable information on why and how ecological communities might reorganize as the climate warms. It is commonly assumed that species interactions are more likely to set warm range limits, while physiological tolerances determine cold range limits. However, most studies are from temperate systems and rely on correlations between
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Phylogeography and climate shape the quantitative genetic landscape and range-wide plasticity of a prevalent conifer Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-11-17 Jordi Voltas, Ramon Amigó, Tatiana A. Shestakova, Giovanni di Matteo, Raquel Díaz, Rafael Zas
The contribution of genetic adaptation and plasticity to intraspecific phenotypic variability remains insufficiently studied in long-lived plants, as well as the relevance of neutral versus adaptive processes determining such divergence. We examined the importance of phylogeographic structure and climate in modulating genetic and plastic changes and their interdependence in fitness-related traits of
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Higher metabolic plasticity in temperate compared to tropical lizards suggests increased resilience to climate change: Comment Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Keith Christian, Gavin Bedford, Chava L. Weitzman
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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Novel genomic offset metrics integrate local adaptation into habitat suitability forecasts and inform assisted migration Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-03 Susanne Lachmuth, Thibaut Capblancq, Anoob Prakash, Stephen R. Keller, Matthew C. Fitzpatrick
Genomic data are increasingly being integrated into macroecological forecasting, offering an evolutionary perspective that has been largely missing from global change biogeography. Genomic offset, which quantifies the disruption of genotype–environment associations under environmental change, allows for the incorporation of intraspecific climate-associated genomic differentiation into forecasts of
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Numerical response of predator to prey: Dynamic interactions and population cycles in Eurasian lynx and roe deer Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-03 Henrik Andrén, Olof Liberg
The dynamic interactions between predators and their prey have two fundamental processes: numerical and functional responses. Numerical response is defined as predator growth rate as a function of prey density or both prey and predator densities [dP/dt = f(N, P)]. Functional response is defined as the kill rate by an individual predator being a function of prey density or prey and predator densities
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Environmental context, parameter sensitivity, and structural sensitivity impact predictions of annual-plant coexistence Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Alba Cervantes-Loreto, Abigail I. Pastore, Christopher R. P. Brown, Michelle L. Marraffini, Clement Aldebert, Margaret M. Mayfield, Daniel B. Stouffer
Predicting the outcome of interactions between species is central to our current understanding of diversity maintenance. However, we have limited information about the robustness of many model-based predictions of species coexistence. This limitation is partly because several sources of uncertainty are often ignored when making predictions. Here, we introduce a framework to simultaneously explore how
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Connecting local and regional scales with stochastic metacommunity models: Competition, ecological drift, and dispersal Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Brian A. Lerch, Akshata Rudrapatna, Nasser Rabi, Jonas Wickman, Thomas Koffel, Christopher A. Klausmeier
Despite the well known scale-dependency of ecological interactions, relatively little attention has been paid to understanding the dynamic interplay between various spatial scales. This is especially notable in metacommunity theory, where births and deaths dominate dynamics within patches (the local scale), and dispersal and environmental stochasticity dominate dynamics between patches (the regional
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A sequence of multiyear wet and dry periods provides opportunities for grass recovery and state change reversals Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Debra P. C. Peters, Heather M. Savoy
Multiyear periods (≥4 years) of extreme rainfall are increasing in frequency as climate continues to change, yet there is little understanding of how rainfall amount and heterogeneity in biophysical properties affect state changes in a sequence of wet and dry periods. Our objective was to examine the importance of rainfall periods, their legacies, and vegetation and soil properties to either the persistence
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Ecological dynamic regimes: Identification, characterization, and comparison Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Martina Sánchez-Pinillos, Sonia Kéfi, Miquel De Cáceres, Vasilis Dakos
Understanding ecological dynamics has been a central topic in ecology since its origins. Yet, identifying dynamic regimes remains a research frontier for modern ecology. The concept of ecological dynamic regime (EDR) emerged to emphasize the dynamic property of steady states in nature and refers to the fluctuations of ecosystems around some trend or average. Identifying and characterizing EDRs is of
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Cover Image Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-01
COVER PHOTO: The cover image shows colonization of sessile taxa on coral rubble at Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. In their study in this issue, Wolfe et al. (Article e1586; doi:10.1002/ecm.1586) use hierarchical structuring theory to characterize hidden biodiversity on coral reefs from seascape to microhabitat perspectives. Through an in-depth assessment of community structure in
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Rarefaction and extrapolation with beta diversity under a framework of Hill numbers: The iNEXT.beta3D standardization Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-07-20 Anne Chao, Simon Thorn, Chun-Huo Chiu, Faye Moyes, Kai-Hsiang Hu, Robin L. Chazdon, Jessie Wu, Luiz Fernando S. Magnago, Maria Dornelas, David Zelený, Robert K. Colwell, Anne E. Magurran
Based on sampling data, we propose a rigorous standardization method to measure and compare beta diversity across datasets. Here beta diversity, which quantifies the extent of among-assemblage differentiation, relies on Whittaker's original multiplicative decomposition scheme, but we use Hill numbers for any diversity order q ≥ 0. Richness-based beta diversity (q = 0) quantifies the extent of species
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Drivers of contrasting boreal understory vegetation in coniferous and broadleaf deciduous alternative states Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Juanita C. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Nicole J. Fenton, Steven W. Kembel, Evick Mestre, Mélanie Jean, Yves Bergeron
Alternative states defined by tree-canopy dominance result in different ecosystem functioning and shape habitat conditions for the understory vegetation. One example in the boreal forest is the alternation between broadleaf deciduous and coniferous forests. Disturbances related to natural fires and human land uses have produced changes in tree-canopy dominance in the boreal region where coniferous
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Hierarchical drivers of cryptic biodiversity on coral reefs Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-10 Kennedy Wolfe, Tania M. Kenyon, Amelia Desbiens, Kimberley de la Motte, Peter J. Mumby
Declines in habitat structural complexity have marked ecological outcomes, as currently observed in many of the world's ecosystems. Coral reefs have provided a model for such changes in marine ecosystems; still our understanding has been centered on corals and fishes at broad spatial scales when metazoan diversity on coral reefs is dominated by small cryptic taxa (herein: “cryptofauna”). Given the
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Reexamining the storage effect: Why temporal variation in abiotic factors seems unlikely to cause coexistence Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Simon Maccracken Stump, David A. Vasseur
The temporal storage effect—that species coexist by partitioning abiotic niches that vary in time—is thought to be an important explanation for how species coexist. However, empirical studies that measure multiple mechanisms often find the storage effect is weak. We believe this mismatch is because of a shortcoming of theoretical models used to study the storage effect: that while the storage effect
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Assessing risk for butterflies in the context of climate change, demographic uncertainty, and heterogeneous data sources Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-19 Matthew L. Forister, Eliza M. Grames, Christopher A. Halsch, Kevin J. Burls, Cas F. Carroll, Katherine L. Bell, Joshua P. Jahner, Taylor A. Bradford, Jing Zhang, Qian Cong, Nick V. Grishin, Jeffrey Glassberg, Arthur M. Shapiro, Thomas V. Riecke
Ongoing declines in insect populations have led to substantial concern and calls for conservation action. However, even for relatively well studied groups, like butterflies, information relevant to species-specific status and risk is scattered across field guides, the scientific literature, and agency reports. Consequently, attention and resources have been spent on a minuscule fraction of insect diversity
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Editorial Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-26 Jean-Philippe Lessard, Mar Sobral, Matthias Schleuning, Mariano A. Rodriguez-Cabal
Ecological Monographs is going through some important changes, and 2023 will be a transformative year with the creation of a brand-new board of editors. We have recently welcomed Mar Sobral as our new Associate Editor-in-Chief, Matthias Schleuning as our new Editor of Concepts & Synthesis, and Mariano Rodriguez-Cabal as a Subject-matter Editor who will also coordinate our Diversity and Mentorship Support
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Demography and dispersal at a grass-shrub ecotone: A spatial integral projection model for woody plant encroachment Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Trevor Drees, Brad M. Ochocki, Scott L. Collins, Tom E. X. Miller
The encroachment of woody plants into grasslands is a global phenomenon with implications for biodiversity and ecosystem function. Understanding and predicting the pace of expansion and the underlying processes that control it are key challenges in the study and management of woody encroachment. Theory from spatial population biology predicts that the occurrence and speed of expansion should depend
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Using mechanistic insights to predict the climate-induced expansion of a key aquatic predator Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-16 Mark C. Urban, Christopher P. Nadeau, Sean T. Giery
Ameliorating the impacts of climate change on communities requires understanding the mechanisms of change and applying them to predict future responses. One way to prioritize efforts is to identify biotic multipliers, which are species that are sensitive to climate change and disproportionately alter communities. We first evaluate the mechanisms underlying the occupancy dynamics of marbled salamanders
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Off-host survival of blacklegged ticks in eastern North America: A multistage, multiyear, multisite study Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Jesse L. Brunner, Shannon L. LaDeau, Mary Killilea, Elizabeth Valentine, Megan Schierer, Richard S. Ostfeld
Climatic conditions are widely thought to govern the distribution and abundance of ectoparasites, such as the blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis), vector of the agents of Lyme disease and other emerging human pathogens. However, translating physiological tolerances to distributional limits or mortality is challenging. Ticks may be able to avoid or tolerate unsuitable conditions, and what is lethal
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Seasonality of pollinators in montane habitats: Cool-blooded bees for early-blooming plants Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Carlos M. Herrera, Alejandro Núñez, Luis O. Aguado, Conchita Alonso
Understanding the factors that drive community-wide assembly of plant-pollinator systems along environmental gradients has considerable evolutionary, ecological, and applied significance. Variation in thermal environments combined with intrinsic differences among pollinators in thermal biology have been proposed as drivers of community-wide pollinator gradients, but this suggestion remains largely
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Reduction of invertebrate herbivory by land use is only partly explained by changes in plant and insect characteristics Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Felix Neff, Daniel Prati, Rafael Achury, Didem Ambarlı, Ralph Bolliger, Martin Brändle, Martin Freitag, Norbert Hölzel, Till Kleinebecker, Arturo Knecht, Deborah Schäfer, Peter Schall, Sebastian Seibold, Michael Staab, Wolfgang W. Weisser, Loïc Pellissier, Martin M. Gossner
Invertebrate herbivory is a crucial process contributing to the cycling of nutrients and energy in terrestrial ecosystems. While the function of herbivory can decrease with land-use intensification, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We hypothesize that land-use intensification impacts invertebrate leaf herbivory rates mainly through changes in characteristics of plants and insect herbivores
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Metapopulation regulation acts at multiple spatial scales: Insights from a century of seabird colony census data Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Jana W. E. Jeglinski, Sarah Wanless, Stuart Murray, Robert T. Barrett, Arnthor Gardarsson, Mike P. Harris, Jochen Dierschke, Hallvard Strøm, Svein-Håkon Lorentsen, Jason Matthiopoulos
Density-dependent feedback is recognized as important regulatory mechanisms of population size. Considering the spatial scales over which such feedback operates has advanced our theoretical understanding of metapopulation dynamics. Yet, metapopulation models are rarely fit to time-series data and tend to omit details of the natural history and behavior of long-lived, highly mobile species such as colonial
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Erratum Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-27
Erratum for Stephens, R. B., A. P. Ouimette, E. A. Hobbie, and R. J. Rowe. 2022. “Reevaluating trophic discrimination factors (Δδ13C and Δδ15N) for diet reconstruction.” Ecological Monographs 92(3): e1525. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1525. It has come to our attention that a portion of a sentence was mistakenly removed from this paper during the production process. The fourth sentence in the Introduction
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Scale-dependent diversity–biomass relationships can be driven by tree mycorrhizal association and soil fertility Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Zikun Mao, Fons van der Plas, Adriana Corrales, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Norman A. Bourg, Chengjin Chu, Zhanqing Hao, Guangze Jin, Juyu Lian, Fei Lin, Buhang Li, Wenqi Luo, William J. McShea, Jonathan A. Myers, Guochun Shen, Xihua Wang, En-Rong Yan, Ji Ye, Wanhui Ye, Zuoqiang Yuan, Xugao Wang
Diversity–biomass relationships (DBRs) often vary with spatial scale in terrestrial ecosystems, but the mechanisms driving these scale-dependent patterns remain unclear, especially for highly heterogeneous forest ecosystems. This study explores how mutualistic associations between trees and different mycorrhizal fungi, i.e., arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) vs. ectomycorrhizal (EM) association, modulate
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Underlying geology and climate interactively shape climate change refugia in mountain streams Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-16 Nobuo Ishiyama, Masanao Sueyoshi, Jorge García Molinos, Kenta Iwasaki, Junjiro N. Negishi, Itsuro Koizumi, Shigeya Nagayama, Akiko Nagasaka, Yu Nagasaka, Futoshi Nakamura
Identifying climate-change refugia is a key adaptation strategy for reducing global warming impacts. Knowledge of the effects of underlying geology on thermal regime along climate gradients and the ecological responses to the geology-controlled thermal regime is essential to plan appropriate climate adaptation strategies. In the present study, the dominance of volcanic rocks in the watershed is used
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Hydrodynamics structure plankton communities and interactions in a freshwater tidal estuary Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Adrianne P. Smits, Luke C. Loken, Erwin E. Van Nieuwenhuyse, Matthew J. Young, Paul R. Stumpner, Leah E. K. Lenoch, Jon R. Burau, Randy A. Dahlgren, Tiffany Brown, Steven Sadro
Drivers of phytoplankton and zooplankton dynamics vary spatially and temporally in estuaries due to variation in hydrodynamic exchange and residence time, complicating efforts to understand controls on food web productivity. We conducted approximately monthly (2012–2019; n = 74) longitudinal sampling at 10 fixed stations along a freshwater tidal terminal channel in the San Francisco Estuary, California
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Using a demographic model to project the long-term effects of fire management on tree biomass in Australian savannas Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2023-01-24 Brett P. Murphy, Peter J. Whitehead, Jay Evans, Cameron P. Yates, Andrew C. Edwards, Harry J. MacDermott, Dominique C. Lynch, Jeremy Russell-Smith
Tropical savannas are characterized by high primary productivity and high fire frequency, such that much of the carbon captured by vegetation is rapidly returned to the atmosphere. Hence, there have been suggestions that management-driven reductions in savanna fire frequency and/or severity could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon in tree biomass. However, a key knowledge
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Abiotic and biotic drivers of tree trait effects on soil microbial biomass and soil carbon concentration Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Rémy Beugnon, Wensheng Bu, Helge Bruelheide, Andréa Davrinche, Jianqing Du, Sylvia Haider, Matthias Kunz, Goddert von Oheimb, Maria D. Perles-Garcia, Mariem Saadani, Thomas Scholten, Steffen Seitz, Bala Singavarapu, Stefan Trogisch, Yanfen Wang, Tesfaye Wubet, Kai Xue, Bo Yang, Simone Cesarz, Nico Eisenhauer
Forests are ecosystems critical to understanding the global carbon budget, due to their carbon sequestration potential in both aboveground and belowground compartments, especially in species-rich forests. Soil carbon sequestration is strongly linked to soil microbial communities, and this link is mediated by the tree community, likely due to modifications of microenvironmental conditions (i.e., biotic
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Tree symbioses sustain nitrogen fixation despite excess nitrogen supply Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Duncan N. L. Menge, Amelia A. Wolf, Jennifer L. Funk, Steven S. Perakis, Palani R. Akana, Rachel Arkebauer, Thomas A. Bytnerowicz, K. A. Carreras Pereira, Alexandra M. Huddell, Sian Kou-Giesbrecht, Sarah K. Ortiz
Symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) is a key ecological process whose impact depends on the strategy of SNF regulation—the degree to which rates of SNF change in response to limitation by N versus other resources. SNF that is obligate or exhibits incomplete downregulation can result in excess N fixation, whereas a facultative SNF strategy does not. We hypothesized that tree-based SNF strategies differed
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Interspecific differences in microhabitat use expose insects to contrasting thermal mortality Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-12-09 Maria Vives-Ingla, Javier Sala-Garcia, Constantí Stefanescu, Armand Casadó-Tortosa, Meritxell Garcia, Josep Peñuelas, Jofre Carnicer
Ecotones linking open and forested habitats contain multiple microhabitats with varying vegetal structures and microclimatic regimes. Ecotones host many insect species whose development is intimately linked to the microclimatic conditions where they grow (e.g., the leaves of their host plants and the surrounding air). Yet microclimatic heterogeneity at these fine scales and its effects on insects remain
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Partner fidelity and environmental filtering preserve stage-specific turtle ant gut symbioses for over 40 million years Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-12-07 Yi Hu, Catherine L. D'Amelio, Benoît Béchade, Christian S. Cabuslay, Piotr Łukasik, Jon G. Sanders, Shauna Price, Emily Fanwick, Scott Powell, Corrie S. Moreau, Jacob A. Russell
Sustaining beneficial gut symbioses presents a major challenge for animals, including holometabolous insects. Social insects may meet such challenges through partner fidelity, aided by behavioral symbiont transfer and transgenerational inheritance through colony founders. We address such potential through colony-wide explorations across 13 eusocial, holometabolous insect species in the ant genus Cephalotes
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The geographic footprint of mutualism: How mutualists influence species' range limits Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Joshua C. Fowler, Marion L. Donald, Judith L. Bronstein, Tom E. X. Miller
Understanding mechanisms that generate range limits is central to knowing why species are found where they are and how they will respond to environmental change. There is growing awareness that biotic interactions play an important role in generating range limits. However, current theory and data overwhelmingly focus on abiotic drivers and antagonistic interactions. Here we explore the effect that
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Climate-mediated population dynamics of a migratory songbird differ between the trailing edge and range core Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-11-18 William B. Lewis, Robert J. Cooper, Richard B. Chandler, Ryan W. Chitwood, Mason H. Cline, Michael T. Hallworth, Joanna L. Hatt, Jeff Hepinstall-Cymerman, Sara A. Kaiser, Nicholas L. Rodenhouse, T. Scott Sillett, Kirk W. Stodola, Michael S. Webster, Richard T. Holmes
Understanding the demographic drivers of range contractions is important for predicting species' responses to climate change; however, few studies have examined the effects of climate change on survival and recruitment across species' ranges. We show that climate change can drive trailing edge range contractions through the effects on apparent survival, and potentially recruitment, in a migratory songbird
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Cross validation for model selection: A review with examples from ecology Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-11-13 Luke A. Yates, Zach Aandahl, Shane A. Richards, Barry W. Brook
Specifying, assessing, and selecting among candidate statistical models is fundamental to ecological research. Commonly used approaches to model selection are based on predictive scores and include information criteria such as Akaike's information criterion, and cross validation. Based on data splitting, cross validation is particularly versatile because it can be used even when it is not possible
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Scientists' warning on climate change and insects Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-11-07 Jeffrey A. Harvey, Kévin Tougeron, Rieta Gols, Robin Heinen, Mariana Abarca, Paul K. Abram, Yves Basset, Matty Berg, Carol Boggs, Jacques Brodeur, Pedro Cardoso, Jetske G. de Boer, Geert R. De Snoo, Charl Deacon, Jane E. Dell, Nicolas Desneux, Michael E. Dillon, Grant A. Duffy, Lee A. Dyer, Jacintha Ellers, Anahí Espíndola, James Fordyce, Matthew L. Forister, Caroline Fukushima, Matthew J. G. Gage
Climate warming is considered to be among the most serious of anthropogenic stresses to the environment, because it not only has direct effects on biodiversity, but it also exacerbates the harmful effects of other human-mediated threats. The associated consequences are potentially severe, particularly in terms of threats to species preservation, as well as in the preservation of an array of ecosystem
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Quantitative biogeography: Decreasing and more variable dynamics of critical species in an iconic meta-ecosystem Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-25 Bruce A. Menge, Jonathan W. Robinson, Brittany N. Poirson, Sarah A. Gravem
Ecosystem stability has intrigued ecologists for decades, and the realization that the global climate was changing has sharpened and focused this interest. One possible early warning signal of decreasing stability is increasing variability in ecosystems over time with increasing climate variability. Determining climate change effects on community stability, however, requires long-term studies of structure
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Intraspecific trait variability is a key feature underlying high Arctic plant community resistance to climate warming Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-09-30 Ingibjörg S. Jónsdóttir, Aud H. Halbritter, Casper T. Christiansen, Inge H. J. Althuizen, Siri V. Haugum, Jonathan J. Henn, Katrín Björnsdóttir, Brian Salvin Maitner, Yadvinder Malhi, Sean T. Michaletz, Ruben E. Roos, Kari Klanderud, Hanna Lee, Brian J. Enquist, Vigdis Vandvik
In the high Arctic, plant community species composition generally responds slowly to climate warming, whereas less is known about the community functional trait responses and consequences for ecosystem functioning. The slow species turnover and large distribution ranges of many Arctic plant species suggest a significant role of intraspecific trait variability in functional responses to climate change
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Applying the structural causal model framework for observational causal inference in ecology Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-09-22 Suchinta Arif, M. Aaron MacNeil
Ecologists are often interested in answering causal questions from observational data but generally lack the training to appropriately infer causation. When applying statistical analysis (e.g., generalized linear model) on observational data, common statistical adjustments can often lead to biased estimates between variables of interest due to processes such as confounding, overcontrol, and collider
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Temporal shifts in avian phenology across the circannual cycle in a rapidly changing climate: A global meta-analysis Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-09-04 Andrea Romano, László Zsolt Garamszegi, Diego Rubolini, Roberto Ambrosini
The alteration of the timing of biological events is one of the best documented effects of climate change, with overwhelming evidence across taxa. Many studies have investigated the phenology of consumers, especially birds. However, most of these studies have focused on specific phenophases, whereas a global analysis of avian phenological trends during recent climate change across different phases
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Stable pollination service in a generalist high Arctic community despite the warming climate Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-08-14 Alyssa R. Cirtwill, Riikka Kaartinen, Claus Rasmussen, Deanne Redr, Helena Wirta, Jens M. Olesen, Mikko Tiusanen, Gavin Ballantyne, Helen Cunnold, Graham N. Stone, Niels Martin Schmidt, Tomas Roslin
Insects provide key pollination services in most terrestrial biomes, but this service depends on a multistep interaction between insect and plant. An insect needs to visit a flower, receive pollen from the anthers, move to another conspecific flower, and finally deposit the pollen on a receptive stigma. Each of these steps may be affected by climate change, and focusing on only one of them (e.g., flower
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Climate change expected to improve digestive rate and trigger range expansion in outbreaking locusts Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Jacob P. Youngblood, Arianne J. Cease, Stav Talal, Fernando Copa, Hector E. Medina, Julio E. Rojas, Eduardo V. Trumper, Michael J. Angilletta, Jon F. Harrison
Global climate change will probably exacerbate crop losses from insect pests, reducing agricultural production, and threatening food security. To predict where crop losses will occur, scientists have mainly used correlative models of species' distributions, but such models are unreliable when extrapolated to future environments. To minimize extrapolation, we developed mechanistic and hybrid models
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Do Nearctic hover flies (Diptera: Syrphidae) engage in long-distance migration? An assessment of evidence and mechanisms Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-19 C. Scott Clem, Keith A. Hobson, Alexandra N. Harmon-Threatt
Long-distance insect migration is poorly understood despite its tremendous ecological and economic importance. As a group, Nearctic hover flies (Diptera: Syrphidae: Syrphinae), which are crucial pollinators as adults and biological control agents as larvae, are almost entirely unrecognized as migratory despite examples of highly migratory behavior among several Palearctic species. Here, we examined
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Allometry of behavior and niche differentiation among congeneric African antelopes Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-14 Joshua H. Daskin, Justine A. Becker, Tyler R. Kartzinel, Arjun B. Potter, Reena H. Walker, Fredrik A. A. Eriksson, Courtney Buoncore, Alexander Getraer, Ryan A. Long, Robert M. Pringle
Size-structured differences in resource use stabilize species coexistence in animal communities, but what behavioral mechanisms underpin these niche differences? Behavior is constrained by morphological and physiological traits that scale allometrically with body size, yet the degree to which behaviors exhibit allometric scaling remains unclear; empirical datasets often encompass broad variation in
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Toward a “modern coexistence theory” for the discrete and spatial Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-10 Stephen P. Ellner, Robin E. Snyder, Peter B. Adler, Giles Hooker
The usual theoretical condition for coexistence is that each species in a community can increase when it is rare (mutual invasibility). Traditional coexistence theory implicitly assumes that the invading species is common enough that we can ignore demographic stochasticity but rare enough that it does not compete with itself, even after it has reached a stationary spatial distribution. However, short-distance
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Character displacement when natural selection pushes in only one direction Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-09 Mark A. McPeek, Sarah J. McPeek, Feng Fu
The usual conception of character displacement is of resource competitors differentiating to specialize on different prey in order to reduce competition. However, traits that underlie many predator–prey interactions, such as chase-evade speeds, gape limitation, and toxin concentrations, do not permit such specialization, but instead result in unidirectional evolutionary arms races. Here, we develop
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Herbivory mediates direct and indirect interactions in long-unburned chaparral Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-09 Laurel R. Fox, Stephen E. Potts
Community interaction webs describe both direct and indirect interactions among species. Changes in direct interactions often become noticeable soon after a perturbation, but time lags in the responses of many species may delay the appearance of indirect effects and lead to temporal or spatial variation in interaction webs. Accurately identifying these shifts in the field requires time-specific, spatially
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Defining, estimating, and understanding the fundamental niches of complex animals in heterogeneous environments Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-07-08 Jason Matthiopoulos
During the past century, the fundamental niche, the complete set of environments that allow an individual, population, or species to persist, has shaped ecological thinking. It is a crucial concept connecting population dynamics, spatial ecology, and evolutionary theory, and a prerequisite for predictive ecological models at a time of rapid environmental change. Yet, its properties have eluded quantification
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Editorial Ecol. Monogr. (IF 6.1) Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Jean-Philippe Lessard, Brian Inouye
We are pleased that submission rates at Ecological Monographs have been increasing for the last four years; they are up 7% from 2020 and 18% from 2019. Perhaps this partly reflects a pandemic bump in author productivity, but 2022 has also started with a high pace of submissions. We are receiving more varied and cross-cutting manuscripts than ever before and the quality of these manuscripts is reflected