Ecology最新文献

{"title":"Trapped honey bees reduce floral visitation on milkweed flowers","authors":"Ian D. Jett,&nbsp;Louie H. Yang","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70452","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70452","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Trapped arthropods have been shown to benefit plants in several ways, but few studies have examined the potential costs of arthropod entanglement. Milkweeds (<i>Asclepias</i> spp.) have an unusual pollination system that requires relatively large packets of pollen (pollinia) to become attached to the appendages of insect pollinators and be pulled through a narrow opening in the flower. Honey bees (<i>Apis mellifera</i>) commonly become trapped and die with their legs still attached to milkweed flowers. In this study, we conducted a field experiment to examine how dead trapped honey bees affect floral visitation. We expected that the presence of a dead trapped bee would reduce floral visitation via two non-mutually exclusive pathways: (1) a direct deterrent effect on floral visitors and (2) an indirect deterrent effect mediated by an increased abundance of scavenging predators such as ants. The presence of a dead bee reduced floral visitation by 37% compared with controls, and this effect was stronger and more robust for honey bee visitors than non-<i>Apis</i> visitors. While ant densities were 51% higher on floral umbels with a dead bee and ants reduced floral visitation by 30%, our path analysis indicated that the direct deterrent pathway explained 91% of the total effect, consistent with an aversion to dead conspecifics among honey bees. Our results suggest that the lethal entanglement of honey bees is likely to incur an ecological cost for milkweed flowers, although the deterrence of honey bees could also shift the pollinator communities on milkweeds with unexpected consequences.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70452","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148408598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fuzzy relationships among plant dispersal mechanisms, syndromes, and animal vectors","authors":"Casper H. A. van Leeuwen,&nbsp;Ruben Heleno,&nbsp;Andy J. Green,&nbsp;Esther Sebastián-González,&nbsp;José Miguel Costa,&nbsp;Christophe Baltzinger,&nbsp;Evan Fricke,&nbsp;Ádám Lovas-Kiss,&nbsp;Irene Castañeda,&nbsp;Isabel Donoso,&nbsp;Alistair G. Auffret,&nbsp;Sara B. Mendes","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70450","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70450","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Knowledge of which animal clades and dispersal mechanisms contribute to seed dispersal is critical for understanding the ecology and evolution of plant communities. However, a broad understanding is limited by a focus on single clades and mechanisms. Here, we analyzed a Europe-wide multi-clade seed dispersal dataset with interactions among 447 animal species and 1901 plant species via four dispersal mechanisms: endozoochory (ingestion followed by egestion), epizoochory (external attachment), synzoochory (actively carried by vertebrates), and myrmecochory (dispersal by ants). We aimed to (1) characterize the relative importance of animal dispersal clades and biotic dispersal mechanisms; (2) evaluate links among clades and mechanisms; (3) compare dispersal of dry- and fleshy-fruited diaspores; and (4) evaluate the predictive power of seed dispersal syndromes with empirical data on observed dispersal mechanisms. This revealed that endozoochory by birds and mammals encompasses 90% of plant–animal interaction records. Mammal species tend to have more plants depending upon their dispersal services; however, due to the larger diversity of bird species, more plants depend upon the cumulative services of birds (followed by mammals, insects, and reptiles). Plants with fleshy fruits comprise only 15% of all plant species dispersed by animals but had more animal partners per plant species than plants with dry fruits. Fleshy-fruited plant species were more specifically selected by dispersers, while selection of dry-fruited plants depended more on their relative abundance. Different animal clades tend to disperse plant species via different mechanisms. Endozoochory is the most recorded interaction for birds, mammals, and reptiles. Epizoochory is almost exclusively carried out by mammals, with a negligible role of birds, insects, and reptiles. Synzoochory is performed chiefly by ants (via myrmecochory), followed by birds and then mammals. Predicting vector importance by assigning dispersal syndromes based on diaspore traits (including endozoochorous, epizoochorous, synzoochorous, and myrmecochorous syndromes) only moderately predicted empirically observed dispersal mechanisms. Animals disperse many more species than inferred from diaspore traits, including plants with abiotic syndromes and plants without clearly visible morphological traits. Our results suggest that different animal clades perform complementary dispersal services via multiple mechanisms to plant species with fleshy as well as dry fruits.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70450","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148400667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Species interactions shape the thermal performance curve and distribution of tropical Drosophila species","authors":"Vanessa Kellermann,&nbsp;Antti Miettinen,&nbsp;Carla M. Sgrò,&nbsp;Tarmo Ketola,&nbsp;Mads F. Schou,&nbsp;Belinda van Heerwaarden","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70451","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70451","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Decades of research have demonstrated the importance of temperature in dictating species distributional limits. We know species interactions also play a key role, but we lack a predictive framework for understanding when and where species interactions will be more important than temperature in shaping distributional limits. In the current study, we determine how species interactions impact thermal performance for egg-to-adult viability (as a proxy for fitness), a commonly used method for predicting climate change vulnerability. We do so by contrasting thermal performance curves (TPCs) with and without species interactions in six species of <i>Drosophila</i> (three tropical and three subtropical species) across a range of temperatures (16–30°C). We found that thermal optimum (<i>T</i>_OPT) was largely insensitive to species interactions, but the presence of species interactions altered the thermal sensitivities in several species and lowered the maximum performance (<i>P</i>_MAX) compared to single-species cultures. This suggests that competition was the dominant form of species interactions rather than facilitation. While theory proposes species interactions are more important in shaping warm-range limits (equatorial/low elevation/low latitude) but not cool-range limits (poleward/high elevation/high latitude), we found evidence that species interactions have larger effects at the cool range of the TPC. Moreover, species that were more sensitive to species interactions (i.e., experienced the largest effect on egg-to-adult viability) tended to be tropical species with restricted distributions, further supporting species interactions as an essential element shaping cool-range distributional limits. Given that species interactions can influence thermal performance and are likely to shape species range limits, integrating species interactions into predictive models will be necessary to predict how species distributions will shift under climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70451","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148408337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Consequences of phenological shifts are determined by the number of generations per season","authors":"Heng-Xing Zou,&nbsp;Volker H. W. Rudolf","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70454","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The order and timing of species' arrival in a community can often change species interactions. Termed priority effects, this phenomenon arises in communities with drastically different life histories (e.g., bacteria, insects, and amphibians), yet how their life history traits affect the consequences of priority effects in seasonal systems remains understudied. Here, we test how the length of one growing season, which can accommodate different numbers of overlapping generations, interacts with priority effects using two competing flour beetles, <i>Tribolium castaneum</i> and <i>Tribolium confusum</i>. We manipulated the sequence and timing of arrivals and collected all adults after one, two, or three generations, simulating phenological shifts in communities with different growing season lengths with less or more overlapping generations. The early-arriving species always reached a higher population, and in general, its per capita competition towards the late arriver was stronger, indicating priority effects. However, fitting competition models to the data revealed that for both species, longer experimental durations (which included more overlapping generations) led to less dramatic changes in competitive outcomes with differences in arrival time, indicating that overlapping generations of each species provided a buffer against strong priority effects from different arrival times. These results suggest that changes in the order and timing of species arrival (e.g., due to climate change) can impact species coexistence, but such effects could be contingent on the life history, such as the number of generations of interacting species, or abiotic factors, such as the duration of a growing season.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148373267","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}

{"title":"Mechanistic and scale-specific analyses advance the preference–performance hypothesis","authors":"Kelley F. Slimon,&nbsp;Scott H. McArt,&nbsp;Juha-Pekka Salminen,&nbsp;Anurag A. Agrawal","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70447","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70447","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Oviposition choice and larval performance are essential determinants of fitness in plant–herbivore interactions. The long-standing preference–performance hypothesis (PPH) predicts that parents should oviposit on plants that maximize offspring performance; an abundance of work supports the PPH, but many exceptions limit its generality. These exceptions may stem from applying the PPH across diverse contexts without adequately considering mechanistic processes and scale-specific factors. Using the specialist seed predator moth <i>Schinia florida</i> and the common evening primrose <i>Oenothera biennis</i>, we investigated the mechanistic drivers of preference and performance and how these dynamics shift across scales, between versus within plants. We measured a suite of 126 plant traits, most of which were plant specialized metabolites captured by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry and applied a novel machine learning approach to identify traits that predict both preference and performance. Between plants, we found no relationship between maternal oviposition preference and offspring performance. Nevertheless, nine overlapping plant traits independently predicted both preference and performance, with all traits positively correlated with preference showing a negative association with performance. This negative trait-based preference–performance link may result from trade-offs of moths using plant defenses as host-finding cues. Overall, weak correlations between the nine predictive traits appear to limit a link between preference and performance between plants. Within plants, moths disproportionately oviposited on flower buds over fruits and concordantly showed higher relative performance on buds. At this scale, only one overlapping trait predicted both preference and performance, and had positive associations with preference and performance. Thus, our results show that (1) a specialist herbivore faces trait-based trade-offs between host selection among plants and larval performance, while making more adaptive decisions at finer scales within plants, and (2) mechanistic and cross-scale approaches offer insight into when adult preference predicts larval performance.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148372664","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}

{"title":"Ground-to-canopy monitoring reveals hidden ecological patterns in Congo Basin mammals","authors":"Daniel Gorczynski,&nbsp;Daniel Alempijevic,&nbsp;Junior Amboko,&nbsp;Charlene Fournier,&nbsp;Martin Balimu,&nbsp;Kate M. Detwiler","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70449","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70449","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Vertical stratification has long been recognized as a key dimension of biodiversity in structurally complex ecosystems, shaping animal movement and community structure. Camera traps provide a powerful means to extend biodiversity monitoring across forest strata through continuous, standardized observation. However, most camera trapping studies focus on terrestrial observations or a single arboreal layer, limiting inference about vertically structured communities. Here, we evaluate a standardized “camera column” approach for assessing mammal community occupancy in the Congo Basin. We deployed camera traps in three forest strata (canopy, understory-midstory, and ground) at each sampling point in a standardized grid and used a multispecies, multi-scale occupancy model to assess how incorporating observations across strata influences estimates of species occupancy. Our results demonstrate that incorporating vertical space can alter the inferred relationship between mammal communities and environmental gradients, with a significant positive effect of elevation on mean occupancy emerging only when observations from all forest strata were incorporated. These results suggest that even small elevation gradients in lowland tropical forests can shape mammal diversity, likely through soil-mediated effects on habitat structure and resource availability. Furthermore, accounting for three-dimensional habitat structure may be essential for accurately characterizing community–environment relationships in vertically structured systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70449","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148372665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Combining individual and close-kin mark–recapture to design an effective wildlife population survey","authors":"Eiren K. Jacobson,&nbsp;Mark V. Bravington,&nbsp;Rebecca L. Taylor,&nbsp;Irina S. Trukhanova,&nbsp;David L. Miller,&nbsp;William S. Beatty","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70377","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70377","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Close-kin mark–recapture (CKMR) is a promising approach for assessing population size of species that have been difficult to survey using more traditional methods. Here, we combine individual and close-kin mark–recapture in a single modeling framework (ICKMR) and provide an example of study design using this approach for Pacific walrus (<i>Odobenus rosmarus divergens</i>). We develop the ICKMR model and test it using simulated datasets, then use properties of the pseudo-likelihood to investigate the expected precision in estimates of abundance with different proposed survey designs. Our motivating example, the Pacific walrus, is an ice-associated marine mammal found in the Bering and Chukchi seas, where it is an important resource for Indigenous peoples. Pacific walrus abundance declined in the late 20th century, and it is currently a species of conservation concern due to potential impacts of climate change, particularly the loss of sea ice. To reduce uncertainty in population size estimates, researchers undertook a genetic mark–recapture sampling campaign from 2013 to 2017 and collected tissue samples from over 8000 individuals. Another campaign of a similar scale is ongoing (2023–2028). While sample collection was designed for individual mark–recapture, advances in CKMR methods and associated molecular techniques mean that these samples could also be suitable for CKMR. The advantages of CKMR over mark–recapture include an increased effective sample size (because each individual tags itself and its parents, siblings, and offspring) and additional insights into demographic quantities of interest. To make best use of genetic samples, we combine individual mark–recapture (IMR) with CKMR (ICKMR) and investigate whether different sampling strategies can increase precision in estimates of abundance. Our modeling approach includes special considerations for walrus life history, including a multi-year inter-birth interval. We found that expected coefficients of variation (CVs) of the ICKMR estimates of abundance, adult female survival, juvenile female survival, and proportion of breeding females are lower than those expected from IMR alone, and with ICKMR, fewer years of sampling can be conducted to obtain sufficient precision in estimates of abundance. This work demonstrates the utility of ICKMR and could be applicable across a variety of taxa.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70377","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148298885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cross-stressor resilience of soil microbial growth and carbon metabolism under climate change","authors":"Jin-Tao Lí,&nbsp;Lettice C. Hicks,&nbsp;Albert C. Brangarí,&nbsp;Johannes Rousk","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70439","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70439","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The microbial ability to recover metabolism after perturbation events ensures ecosystem functional stability in a changing climate, where multiple climatic stressors increasingly occur in sequential and seasonally cyclic patterns. While prior exposure to a specific stress can enhance microbial resilience to that stress, whether this resilience extends to different stressors remains largely unexplored. Here, we investigated cross-stressor resilience of microbial communities by testing how prior exposure to one type of perturbation (frost or drought) affects microbial resilience to subsequent perturbations of either type in soil systems. We found that prior exposure to drought or frost enhanced the resilience of microbial growth to subsequent perturbations of either type and enabled the maintenance of higher microbial carbon use efficiency. It is likely that this cross-stressor resilience arose because frost and drought both can exert stress on microbes via effects on water potential. This suggests that induced microbial perturbation resilience can extend beyond the stressor they originally were exposed to, indicating that ecological memory transcends the original stressor. Repeated perturbation cycles did not confer additional resilience beyond a single event, indicating that a single perturbation could shape the microbial community's perturbation resilience. We also identified the lag phase as a critical period defining microbial perturbation resilience. Our findings demonstrate a broader adaptive capability within microbial communities under climate change so far overlooked, where winter frost could impact summer drought resilience and vice versa, creating a need to consider selective environmental drivers across seasons.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70439","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148291650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Oh deer! Videography reveals a range of defensive behaviors against a cervid by a ground-nesting bird","authors":"Kylie L. Brunette,&nbsp;Amber M. Roth,&nbsp;Rachel L. Darling,&nbsp;Michael L. Peters,&nbsp;Erik J. Blomberg","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70448","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148282457","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}

{"title":"Microbial responses to stress do not promote plant tolerance to same or different stressors","authors":"Lana G. Bolin,&nbsp;Jennifer A. Lau","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70444","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Microbes can respond to stress in ways that benefit plants under stress, a phenomenon called microbe-mediated acclimation. However, microbe-mediated acclimation has been tested under a limited number of stressors, and it remains unclear whether plant benefits are stress-specific or whether microbial stress responses provide cross-tolerance to multiple stressors. We inoculated <i>Chamaecrista fasciculata</i> plants with microbial communities from the rhizosphere of field plants that experienced salt, herbicide, or herbivory stress, non-stressful conditions, or a sterile inoculant and grew them under these same four environments in the greenhouse. We did not observe microbe-mediated acclimation to any stressor, nor did microbes respond to stress in ways that provided cross-tolerance to multiple stressors. Instead, inoculation with a live microbial community (absent exposure to stress) exacerbated the fitness effects of herbicide and herbivory stress, and microbial responses to herbicide consistently reduced plant survival across all contemporary environments. Our results suggest that microbial communities do not always respond to stress in ways that promote plant stress tolerance, despite the many cases reported in the literature, and illustrate the need for future research identifying which stressors and environmental contexts are most likely to result in microbe-mediated acclimation versus persistent negative microbial legacy effects of stress.</p>","PeriodicalId":11484,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2026-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecy.70444","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148282455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}