EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-22DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70520
Ludwig Lettenmaier, Nico Eisenhauer, Simone Cesarz, Christian Ammer, Anna Bucharova, Sebastian Dittrich, Ronja Hausmann, Daniel Kraus, Angelika Kölbl, Soumen Mallick, Giorgi Mamadashvili, Atle Mysterud, Kerstin Pierick, Rike Schwarz, Jörg Müller, Christian Ristok
{"title":"Native earthworms and roe deer in temperate forests: Friends in the sun, foes in the shade","authors":"Ludwig Lettenmaier, Nico Eisenhauer, Simone Cesarz, Christian Ammer, Anna Bucharova, Sebastian Dittrich, Ronja Hausmann, Daniel Kraus, Angelika Kölbl, Soumen Mallick, Giorgi Mamadashvili, Atle Mysterud, Kerstin Pierick, Rike Schwarz, Jörg Müller, Christian Ristok","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70520","url":null,"abstract":"Given increasing deer populations and rising canopy openness through tree mortality in European forests, understanding how these changes affect above‐belowground communities and ecosystem functioning is becoming more important. Earthworms comprise the largest animal biomass in European forest soils and play a central role in decomposition, carbon and nutrient cycling, and soil formation. However, their responses to canopy openness and deer browsing have been studied almost exclusively in northern North America, where interactions involve white‐tailed deer ( <jats:styled-content style=\"fixed-case\"> <jats:italic>Odocoileus virginianus</jats:italic> </jats:styled-content> ) and mainly non‐native and invasive earthworms. Here, we examine how roe deer ( <jats:styled-content style=\"fixed-case\"> <jats:italic>Capreolus capreolus</jats:italic> </jats:styled-content> ) and canopy openness interactively affect native earthworm communities in a temperate European forest across 75 experimental patches: 54 closed‐canopy and 21 experimentally created canopy‐gap patches. Five years after gap establishment, we sampled earthworms and associated environmental variables from two plots per patch: exclosure (fenced) and control (unfenced) plots. We found that roe deer and canopy gaps interactively influenced earthworm communities. Under closed canopy, roe deer reduced earthworm biomass and density. If roe deer were absent, canopy gaps had no effect on earthworms, but if roe deer were present, canopy gaps increased biomass and density through vegetation‐mediated pathways and enhanced soil water content. The magnitude of these effects differed among earthworm ecological groups (anecic species, i.e., earthworms that create deep, permanent burrows and connect surface litter with deeper soil layers, vs. endogeic species, i.e., earthworms that live and feed entirely within the soil) and life stages (juveniles vs. adults). Indirect effects of roe deer were particularly beneficial for juveniles. These results contrast with patterns reported for white‐tailed deer and non‐native earthworms in northern North American forests, where white‐tailed deer presence typically promotes earthworms. Our results on the direct and indirect effects of roe deer on belowground earthworms shed new light on the complex interactions of deer populations and canopy structure on forest soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149020004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-22DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70486
Lotte Korell, Martin Andrzejak, Jonathan M. Chase, W. Stanley Harpole, Tiffany M. Knight
{"title":"Synthesis of scale‐dependent plant biodiversity change in climate warming experiments","authors":"Lotte Korell, Martin Andrzejak, Jonathan M. Chase, W. Stanley Harpole, Tiffany M. Knight","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70486","url":null,"abstract":"Climate warming is one of the most pressing environmental challenges for plant populations, communities, and ecosystems on earth. Warming experiments are an important tool for establishing causal relationships between climate change and plant diversity responses. However, results from such experiments vary in direction and magnitude. We hypothesize that such variation arises from context‐dependent factors, such as the magnitude of the temperature manipulation, the study duration, the spatial grain of the analysis, the background climate in which the study was conducted, and the biodiversity metrics used. Here, we present a comprehensive synthesis of primary data from 42 warming experiments, mostly from tundra and grassland ecosystems. We examined how warming influenced composition and how responses of plant diversity varied at the alpha (= plot), beta (= plot‐to‐plot), and gamma (= site) scales. Context‐dependent factors explained some of the variation observed in responses across studies. Higher magnitudes of warming led to stronger declines in species richness at the alpha scale. Experimental warming led to stronger declines in species richness in plant communities with warmer background summer temperature (e.g., desert grasslands) compared to those in communities exposed to colder background summer temperatures (e.g., tundra communities). Warming decreased evenness at the local (alpha) scale, but increased evenness at the beta scale, indicating that replicate warming plots diverged in their abundance distribution over time. Warming changed the composition of plant communities, particularly through species turnover rather than in the nestedness component, suggesting that warming leads to novel species assemblages. Our study highlights that responses of terrestrial plant communities to warming depend on experimental methodology, environmental context, and the spatial grain of investigation.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149019889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-22DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70494
Matilda Arnell, Alistair G. Auffret, Kristoffer Hylander
{"title":"Historical distribution maps of vascular plants in Northern Europe","authors":"Matilda Arnell, Alistair G. Auffret, Kristoffer Hylander","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70494","url":null,"abstract":"Historical distribution maps are important as baseline data when assessing biodiversity change. Here, we provide a database with digitized distribution maps originally published in <jats:italic>Atlas of the distribution of vascular plants in northwestern Europe</jats:italic> (1971) by Professor Eric Hultén. The database contains georeferenced and digitized distribution maps for 1909 vascular plant species in 616 genera and 119 families. In his work, Eric Hultén compiled spatially explicit data from a vast body of knowledge that had been acquired by professional and amateur botanists. Data were collated from scientific publications, local and regional floras and plant lists, species surveys, and herbarium records. The distribution maps cover the Scandinavian peninsula, including the whole extent of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. The Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are covered in part, as well as parts of Russia and a small part of northern Germany. Given the scale of the original maps, the effective resolution of the range data is 16 × 16 km. The data on which the original ranges were based varied within the area covered, with comparatively less data available for Russia and the Baltic countries. In order to make this important information compatible with modern analyses, we developed an automated method combined with manual data cleaning to georeference and extract distribution data from the printed maps. The digitized distribution maps are available as spatial polygon features (GeoJSON), which can be converted into gridded or regional occupancy data for each species using the code provided. The digitized polygon range maps in the dataset can be used to illustrate historical distributions of specific species, and when converted to occupancy data, they can be used as baseline distributions in any type of niche or distribution model. In combination with current occurrence records, the historical data can also be used to assess distribution change for the entire assemblage of vascular plants, generating important insights on the drivers of biodiversity change. If, in addition to its scientific and practical value, it can also contribute to keeping the study of »scientia amabilis»—the lovable science, as Eric Hultén himself phrased it—alive, then its purpose has been achieved. The data and code are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"89 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149020005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-21DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70510
Afonso Barrocal, Luís Miguel Rosalino, Miguel Clavero
{"title":"Historical occurrences of lynx ( Lynx spp.) in Iberia","authors":"Afonso Barrocal, Luís Miguel Rosalino, Miguel Clavero","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70510","url":null,"abstract":"Long‐term biodiversity data are essential for understanding historical range dynamics, extinction processes, and the impacts of global changes on species distributions. However, the relevant species records pre‐dating systematic surveys are often dispersed across heterogeneous sources and rarely consolidated into standardized datasets suitable for ecological analysis. Here, we present a curated dataset of historical occurrence records of the Eurasian lynx ( <jats:italic>Lynx lynx</jats:italic> ) and the Iberian lynx ( <jats:italic>Lynx pardinus</jats:italic> ) in the Iberian Peninsula, which integrates information from written historical sources, fossil evidence, and museum specimens. The dataset comprises 637 unique lynx occurrence records, with approximately 60% attributed to <jats:italic>L. pardinus</jats:italic> and 38% to <jats:italic>L. lynx</jats:italic> . The remaining records could not be assigned to species‐level with sufficient confidence and were retained without species attribution. Our occurrence records span six centuries, with dated records from the 15th century onward. However, the temporal representation is uneven, reflecting historical documentation practices rather than actual species abundance. The 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries are the most represented periods, with the 19th century alone accounting for approximately one‐third of all records. We chose to end our sampling in 1980, when the first systematic scientific studies on the Iberian lynx began to be published. Occurrences were compiled from three complementary evidence streams: written historical accounts, fossil remains, and museum specimens. The two fossil specimens were exclusively obtained from public paleontological collections, whereas museum specimens were sourced from both public and private collections. All physical specimens were identified to species using DNA sequencing, providing high‐confidence taxonomic assignments. Written records were extracted from geographical dictionaries, legal and administrative documents, hunting records, travel narratives, and early zoological works. Species differentiation within written sources followed a hierarchical and conservative protocol. When available, explicit morphological or behavioral descriptions were used for species assignment. When such information was absent or insufficient, species attribution followed framework which evaluates the diagnostic reliability of vernacular names while accounting for regional and temporal linguistic variation. Records lacking sufficient evidence for confident attribution were left unassigned. To further minimize misclassification, spatial outliers were individually examined, allowing the identification of inconsistencies caused by transcription errors or implausible species assignments. All records were standardized using contemporary geographic references and georeferenced with associated spatial uncertainty estimates. Each occurrence is accompanied by metadata describing source t","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"143 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149010116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-17DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70498
Benedikt Brunner, James G. Hagan, Jesper Hassellöv, Julia Mari Murata, Lara Colaço Martins, Pedro de La Patelliere, Elena Schrofner‐Brunner, Lars Gamfeldt
{"title":"From environmental heterogeneity to stability: Beta‐diversity stabilizes biomass across space","authors":"Benedikt Brunner, James G. Hagan, Jesper Hassellöv, Julia Mari Murata, Lara Colaço Martins, Pedro de La Patelliere, Elena Schrofner‐Brunner, Lars Gamfeldt","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70498","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding how biodiversity influences ecosystem stability across heterogeneous landscapes is a central challenge in ecology. The spatial insurance hypothesis proposes that turnover in species composition stabilizes ecosystem processes in heterogeneous environments if species dominate in the habitats to which they are best adapted. Yet, empirical evidence remains mixed, partly due to confounding factors and overlooked causal mechanisms. We combined metacommunity simulations and a field experiment with marine benthic communities to test how β‐diversity (species turnover) affects the spatial stability of biomass (its invariability among sites at a single point in time). The simulations, which varied the strength of selection via niche overlap, revealed that turnover enhanced spatial stability of biomass in scenarios with low to medium niche overlap, but only when environmental heterogeneity was statistically accounted for. This stabilizing effect weakened when species' niches were broader. In our field experiment, high turnover similarly mitigated the negative impact of environmental heterogeneity on spatial stability. Together, these results provide strong support for the spatial insurance hypothesis, demonstrating that species turnover can stabilize ecosystem functioning across heterogeneous landscapes. Crucially, failing to account for environmental heterogeneity can mask this effect, leading to the mistaken conclusion that turnover has a neutral or destabilizing effect. Our study highlights the importance of a causal framework that disentangles the effects of environmental heterogeneity and β‐diversity, helping to resolve previous inconsistencies and advance a mechanistic understanding of biodiversity–stability relationships at landscape scales.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-17DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70495
Christopher Fust, Patrick B. Finnerty, James Vandersteen, Stefanie Bonat, Emma E. Spencer, Mathew S. Crowther, Rhys J. Cairncross, Philip S. Barton, Thomas M. Newsome
{"title":"Tiny but mighty: Insects can drive carrion decomposition in the absence of facultative vertebrate scavengers","authors":"Christopher Fust, Patrick B. Finnerty, James Vandersteen, Stefanie Bonat, Emma E. Spencer, Mathew S. Crowther, Rhys J. Cairncross, Philip S. Barton, Thomas M. Newsome","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70495","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70495","url":null,"abstract":"Scavengers play a key role in recycling animal biomass, yet the relative contributions of insects and vertebrates to this process remain poorly understood. Moreover, understanding whether one scavenger group can compensate for the absence of another is critical for predicting how carrion decomposition may respond to changes in community composition or seasonal conditions. To address this, we assessed the capacity of scavenging insects and facultative vertebrate scavengers to recycle animal biomass in alpine Australia. We measured carcass persistence (decay rates) of 64 eastern gray kangaroos ( <jats:italic>Macropus giganteus</jats:italic> ; 1709.6 kg of total biomass) across four seasons and experimental scenarios of (1) full vertebrate and insect scavenger access, and (2) vertebrate exclusion but insect access. In warmer seasons, insects were the primary consumers of carrion, with only occasional vertebrate scavenging observed. There was almost a complete lack of carrion removal in colder seasons when insects were less active, even where vertebrate scavenging rates were highest. Moreover, the presence of vertebrates did not influence the number of flies or beetles at carrion in any season, suggesting that vertebrates were not suppressing these specialist insect scavengers by rapidly consuming carrion. Our results indicate that carrion decomposition of a relatively large carcass in this alpine ecosystem is primarily driven by insects. Indeed, insect scavengers compensated for the absence of vertebrates, resulting in similar carcass removal rates across treatments. However, vertebrate scavengers did not compensate where insect scavengers were functionally absent during cooler months, with carcasses persisting for prolonged periods. These findings stand in contrast to many studies globally that demonstrate a dominant role of vertebrate scavengers in removing carcass biomass or outcompeting insects, even during colder seasons. Understanding whether insects can compensate for the absence of vertebrates to accelerate carcass biomass removal and vice versa—a form of functional redundancy—is crucial for informing when efficient carcass removal occurs and in turn how ecosystems might respond to high carcass loads during different times of the year.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-17DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70500
Casey A. Pennock, Gary P. Thiede, Phaedra Budy, Anne Giblin, Chris Luecke, George W. Kling
{"title":"Ecological stability of zooplankton communities in changing arctic lakes over three decades","authors":"Casey A. Pennock, Gary P. Thiede, Phaedra Budy, Anne Giblin, Chris Luecke, George W. Kling","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70500","url":null,"abstract":"In the Arctic, rapid warming is altering disturbance regimes, creating an urgent need to assess the ecological stability of these relatively pristine ecosystems. The Arctic landscape has thousands of lakes that are experiencing both gradual, persistent disturbances (e.g., warming) and increased frequency and intensity of pulse disturbances (e.g., land‐surface failures). To assess the ecological stability of lake communities in a changing environment, we analyzed long‐term data (14–39 years) on zooplankton communities and environmental variables from 25 lakes in arctic Alaska. We characterized long‐term change and evaluated the resistance and recovery of communities to natural or experimental disturbances. We hypothesized that reference lakes would demonstrate resistance to background environmental change, represented by variable but consistent relative abundances over time, while manipulated or disturbed lakes would show recovery after the disturbance ceased, as represented by directional changes in relative abundance with return to pre‐disturbance conditions. Environmental variables including water conductivity, chlorophyll‐ <jats:italic>a</jats:italic> , NO <jats:sub>3</jats:sub> <jats:sup>−</jats:sup> , pH, dissolved oxygen, light extinction, and soluble reactive phosphorus changed directionally through time, suggesting press effects due to climate change. Zooplankton communities were resistant to environmental change in undisturbed lakes, but, despite monitoring lakes for up to 28 years after disturbance, few lakes showed evidence of recovery to pre‐disturbance conditions. This lack of recovery may indicate shifting baselines due to environmental change. The variation we did observe was largely due to shifts in species relative abundance rather than in species turnover, and this variability was related to lake depth. Zooplankton communities and environmental variables displayed more interannual variation in shallow (depth <jats:italic>≤</jats:italic> 6 m) lakes than in deep lakes. Overall, our results demonstrate that arctic zooplankton communities have high resistance to the effects of climate change but potentially low recovery or long recovery times to pulse disturbances.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-17DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70497
Justine Boutry, Noa Lavi Shasha, Frida Ben‐Ami
{"title":"Phenotypic plasticity of ‘off‐host’ parasite stages in response to heatwaves in the Daphnia ‐ Pasteuria system","authors":"Justine Boutry, Noa Lavi Shasha, Frida Ben‐Ami","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70497","url":null,"abstract":"Heatwaves challenge our understanding of how environmental stressors reshape host–parasite interactions, particularly during the critical “off‐host” stages of endoparasites. These stages, often dismissed as inert and unaffected by environmental changes, remain a black box in ecological research despite their key role in parasites' life cycle. Here, we examined how heatwaves affect the infectivity and progression of infection of <jats:italic>Pasteuria ramosa</jats:italic> , a bacterial parasite of the planktonic crustacean <jats:italic>Daphnia magna</jats:italic> . In order to measure the respective influences of the bacterial genotype and the heatwaves, we exposed the off‐host stages (=spores) from four genetically distinct parasite clones to three temperature regimes (20°C, 30°C, 40°C) and tested their subsequent effects on host and parasite traits. Heatwaves reduced parasite infectivity, regardless of parasite genotype. Intriguingly, heat‐stressed spores induced genotype‐specific shifts in their host: One host clone increased castration rates at higher temperatures, while others experienced moderate to dramatic declines. Furthermore, individuals exposed to heat‐stressed spores that remained uninfected exhibited enhanced survival, suggesting reduced costs of resistance against damaged parasite spores. This study provides insights into how heatwaves, endured only by the parasite, can modulate various aspects of host–parasite interactions, underlying the importance of the parasite's environmental history in evolutionary ecology and epidemiology.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-17DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70502
Neil Paprocki, Courtney J. Conway
{"title":"Causes of interspecific variation in avian migration distance","authors":"Neil Paprocki, Courtney J. Conway","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70502","url":null,"abstract":"Migration is an awe‐inspiring behavior employed by a diverse suite of taxa throughout the animal kingdom. Avian migration is arguably the most well‐known animal behavior and birds vary widely in how far they migrate, but the ecological mechanisms underlying interspecific variation in migration distance remain unclear. We developed a novel set of predictions deduced from seven mechanistic hypotheses proposed to explain interspecific variation in avian migration distance. We then used a Bayesian phylogenetic comparative analysis to test predictions from these seven hypotheses based on migration data and species traits from 446 species of migratory birds throughout the world based on data from animal‐borne tracking technology. Body mass, seasonal food availability, and morphological/behavioral traits that improve flight efficiency explained significant interspecific variation in migration distance after controlling for absolute breeding latitude (which was positively correlated with migration distance). Specifically, we found migration distance was negatively correlated with body mass and seasonal food availability but positively correlated with hand‐wing index (a measure of wing elongation and pointedness) and soaring flight. Moreover, the negative relationship between body mass and migration distance was not ubiquitous but rather depended on flight mode and intraspecific nonbreeding group size, such that species employing flapping flight during migration and those overwintering in smaller intraspecific groups had the strongest negative relationships between body mass and migration distance. Within group‐living birds, smaller bodied species may gain a foraging or thermoregulatory advantage that shortens migration distances, while larger bodied species may gain an energetic advantage by using flock formations during migration that facilitates longer migrations to more suitable nonbreeding areas. From a life history perspective, maximum annual reproductive investment was negatively correlated with migration distance, while minimum annual reproductive investment and adult annual survival were not correlated with migration distance. Overall, our results support flight efficiency, food limitation, and thermoregulatory‐based hypotheses as causes of interspecific variation in migration distances in birds. Our results also help to refine the numerous and often ambiguous mechanisms underlying the negative relationship between body size and migration distance and refute several hypotheses previously proposed to explain interspecific variation in avian migration distance.","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EcologyPub Date : 2026-09-17DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70506
Sylvana R. Finn, Emily Erickson, Elizabeth E. Crone
{"title":"Urban gardens foster year‐round activity of bumble bee queens","authors":"Sylvana R. Finn, Emily Erickson, Elizabeth E. Crone","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70506","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"382 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2026-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}