Ecology Letters最新文献

{"title":"Effects of Disturbance and Fertilisation on Plant Community Synchrony, Biodiversity and Stability Through Succession","authors":"Janette L. Davidson,&nbsp;Kaitlyn R. McKnight,&nbsp;Megan Szojka,&nbsp;Dustin Gannon,&nbsp;Nathan I. Wisnoski,&nbsp;Chhaya M. Werner,&nbsp;Maowei Liang,&nbsp;Eric W. Seabloom,&nbsp;Courtenay Ray,&nbsp;Melissa H. DeSiervo,&nbsp;Lauren G. Shoemaker","doi":"10.1111/ele.70052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70052","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Global change drivers alter multiple components of community composition, with cascading impacts on ecosystem stability. However, it remains largely unknown how interactions among global change drivers will alter community synchrony, especially across successional timescales. We analysed a 22-year time series of grassland community data from Cedar Creek, USA, to examine the joint effects of pulse soil disturbance and press nitrogen addition on community synchrony, richness, evenness and stability during transient and post-transient periods of succession. Using multiple regression and structural equation modelling, we found that nitrogen addition and soil disturbance decreased both synchrony and stability, thereby weakening the negative synchrony–stability relationship. We found evidence of the portfolio effect during transience, but once communities settled on a restructured state post-transience, diversity no longer influenced the synchrony–stability relationship. Differences between transient and post-transient drivers of synchrony and stability underscore the need for long-term data to inform ecosystem management under ongoing global change.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143749565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Seed Production and 22 Years of Climatic Changes in an Everwet Neotropical Forest","authors":"Jason Vleminckx,&nbsp;J. Aaron Hogan,&nbsp;Margaret R. Metz,&nbsp;Liza S. Comita,&nbsp;Simon A. Queenborough,&nbsp;S. Joseph Wright,&nbsp;Renato Valencia,&nbsp;Milton Zambrano,&nbsp;Nancy C. Garwood","doi":"10.1111/ele.70019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70019","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Examining the cues and drivers influencing seed production is crucial to better understand forest resilience to climate change. We explored the effects of five climatic variables on seed production over 22 years in an everwet Amazonian forest, by separating direct effects of these variables from indirect effects mediated through flower production. We observed a decline in seed production over the study period, which was primarily explained by direct effects of rising nighttime temperatures and declining average vapour pressure deficits. Higher daytime temperatures were positively related to seed output, mainly through a flower-mediated effect, while rainfall effects on seed production were more nuanced, showing either positive or negative relationships depending on the seasonal timing of rains. If these trends continue, they are likely to lead to significant changes in forest dynamics, potentially impacting both forest structure and species composition.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143749564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Insights Into Ecology, Evolution and Global Change Responses From Very Long-Term Studies","authors":"Vincent A. Viblanc,&nbsp;Helene C. Muller-Landau","doi":"10.1111/ele.70072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70072","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;At a time where human activities are altering ecosystems and their associated biodiversity at unprecedented scales (Díaz et al. &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;; McFadden et al. &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;), there is a pressing need to understand how ecosystems function and how they have changed over time, to pinpoint the key processes structuring populations, communities and ecosystems, and to predict how ecosystems and the species inhabiting them will respond to ongoing change. Very long–term studies are crucial because many ecological and evolutionary processes unfold over long time scales, and because the links between cause and effect may take years to manifest (Table 1).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Long-term studies enable not only documentation of changes that may be missed (or misperceived) in shorter term snapshots (Figure 1) but also a better understanding of the importance of year-to-year variability, including rare events, in shaping ecosystem dynamics and evolutionary responses to change (Franklin, Bledsoe, and Callahan &lt;span&gt;1990&lt;/span&gt;). Recent meta-analyses demonstrate the importance of long-term studies to correctly detect the direction of population trends (White &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;; Wright and Calderon &lt;span&gt;2025&lt;/span&gt;) and effects of experimental treatments (Cusser et al. &lt;span&gt;2021&lt;/span&gt;). Further, long-term studies allow for a closer integration between the fields of ecology and evolution (Jarne and Pinay &lt;span&gt;2023&lt;/span&gt;) as longer datasets increasingly capture evolution in action (e.g., Ålund et al. &lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;; Johansson et al. &lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;), thus enabling investigations of the roles of fundamental evolutionary processes such as phenotypic plasticity and maternal effects in adapting to change (Carroll et al. &lt;span&gt;2007&lt;/span&gt;; Räsänen and Kruuk &lt;span&gt;2007&lt;/span&gt;; Clutton-Brock and Sheldon &lt;span&gt;2010&lt;/span&gt;; Charmantier, Garant, and Kruuk &lt;span&gt;2014&lt;/span&gt;). Critically, such evolutionary responses are likely to differ substantially depending on organisms' pace of life and the environmental conditions encountered over individual lifetimes (Figure 2). Of course, even the longest observational and experimental studies are limited by the time scales of the human research endeavour, which are shorter than those of many ecological and evolutionary processes (Table 1).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;By collating a series of papers on very long-term studies in ecology and evolution, this special issue of &lt;i&gt;Ecology Letters&lt;/i&gt; highlights the contributions of such studies to advancing our understanding of ecological processes and evolutionary mechanisms. Here, we summarise key findings from the papers in this special issue, grouping them into six areas of research: (1) ecological responses to temporal climate variation and climate change; (2) tipping points and regime shifts; (3) synchrony, stability and stationarity; (4) demographic and environmental determinants of population growth rates; (5) evolutionary patterns and potential and (6) causes and life-long consequences of behaviour. W","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70072","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143749566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Emergence of a Resource Acquisition Trade-off at the Community Scale during Environmental Change","authors":"Anton Pranger,&nbsp;Frank Peeters,&nbsp;Nathalie Wagner,&nbsp;Sebastian Diehl,&nbsp;Dietmar Straile","doi":"10.1111/ele.70097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70097","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Biomass-weighted mean traits of a community's constituent species are a useful tool to assess environmental filtering in community function in response to environmental change. We show that annually averaged phytoplankton community function, expressed by the community mean traits phosphate and light affinity, responded strongly and reversibly to long-term changes in nutrient supply over a 42-year period of eutrophication and re-oligotrophication of Lake Constance. Within the lake's species pool, phosphate and light affinities were weakly negatively correlated, suggesting a weak physiological trade-off. Yet, a strong trade-off between these traits emerged when species were weighted by their biomass, suggesting species sorting along the trade-off line across years of shifting nutrient status. Emergent trade-offs, that is, trade-offs that become apparent first when trait combinations are weighted by the contributions of the trait-bearing organisms to community biomass, may be a useful, novel concept in trait-based ecology of potentially similar importance as commonly considered physiological trade-offs.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70097","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143741252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Consistent Individual Differences and Plasticity in Migration Behaviour of Three North American Ungulates","authors":"Michel P. Laforge,&nbsp;Eric Vander Wal,&nbsp;Quinn M. R. Webber,&nbsp;Chris Geremia,&nbsp;Matthew J. Kauffman,&nbsp;Douglas E. McWhirter,&nbsp;Arthur Middleton,&nbsp;Tony W. Mong,&nbsp;Kevin L. Monteith,&nbsp;Anna C. Ortega,&nbsp;Hall Sawyer,&nbsp;Jerod A. Merkle","doi":"10.1111/ele.70101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70101","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Migratory herbivores often time spring migration to coincide with the green-up of plants. When the timing of green-up changes across years, herbivores can respond directly and be plastic to changing conditions or populations may adapt via inherent differences among individuals that may allow for an evolutionary response. We quantified plasticity and individual variation in the timing of spring migration and selection for high-quality forage as a function of the timing of spring green-up using behavioural reaction norms for three North American ungulate species. The timing of arrival to summer range (but not departure from winter range) was plastic to the timing of green-up, and both arrival and departure timing were repeatable. Our results suggest that herbivores synchronise migration with the timing of green-up by adjusting the pace of migration and may be buffered against change via individual differences. Quantifying plasticity and differences in responses represents a crucial step to elucidating the fate of species in a changing world.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143707701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Tree Diversity Increases Forest Temperature Buffering via Enhancing Canopy Density and Structural Diversity","authors":"Florian Schnabel,&nbsp;Rémy Beugnon,&nbsp;Bo Yang,&nbsp;Ronny Richter,&nbsp;Nico Eisenhauer,&nbsp;Yuanyuan Huang,&nbsp;Xiaojuan Liu,&nbsp;Christian Wirth,&nbsp;Simone Cesarz,&nbsp;Andreas Fichtner,&nbsp;Maria D. Perles-Garcia,&nbsp;Georg J. A. Hähn,&nbsp;Werner Härdtle,&nbsp;Matthias Kunz,&nbsp;Nadia C. Castro Izaguirre,&nbsp;Pascal A. Niklaus,&nbsp;Goddert von Oheimb,&nbsp;Bernhard Schmid,&nbsp;Stefan Trogisch,&nbsp;Manfred Wendisch,&nbsp;Keping Ma,&nbsp;Helge Bruelheide","doi":"10.1111/ele.70096","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70096","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of climate extremes. Forests may buffer climate extremes by creating their own attenuated microclimate below their canopy, which maintains forest functioning and biodiversity. However, the effect of tree diversity on temperature buffering in forests is largely unexplored. Here, we show that tree species richness increases forest temperature buffering across temporal scales over six years in a large-scale tree diversity experiment covering a species richness gradient of 1 to 24 tree species. We found that species richness strengthened the cooling of hot and the insulation against cold daily and monthly air temperatures and temperature extremes. This buffering effect of tree species richness was mediated by enhanced canopy density and structural diversity in species-rich stands. Safeguarding and planting diverse forests may thus mitigate negative effects of global warming and climate extremes on below-canopy ecosystem functions and communities.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70096","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143672667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Consumers Modulate Effects of Plant Diversity on Community Stability","authors":"Maowei Liang,&nbsp;Seraina L. Cappelli,&nbsp;Elizabeth T. Borer,&nbsp;David Tilman,&nbsp;Eric W. Seabloom","doi":"10.1111/ele.70103","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70103","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Biotic complexity, encompassing both competitive interactions within trophic levels and consumptive interactions among trophic levels, plays a fundamental role in maintaining ecosystem stability. While theory and experiments have established that plant diversity enhances ecosystem stability, the role of consumers in the diversity–stability relationships remains elusive. In a decade-long grassland biodiversity experiment, we investigated how heterotrophic consumers (e.g., insects and fungi) interact with plant diversity to affect the temporal stability of plant community biomass. Plant diversity loss reduces community stability due to increased synchronisation among species but enhances the population-level stability of the remaining plant species. Reducing trophic complexity via pesticide treatments does not directly affect either community- or population-level stability but further amplifies plant species synchronisation. Our findings demonstrate that the loss of arthropod or fungal consumers can destabilise plant communities by exacerbating synchronisation, underscoring the crucial role of trophic complexity in maintaining ecological stability.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70103","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143660489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Temperature Drives the Evolutionary Diversification of Male Harm in Drosophila melanogaster Flies","authors":"Claudia Londoño-Nieto,&nbsp;Michael Butler-Margalef,&nbsp;Roberto García-Roa,&nbsp;Pau Carazo","doi":"10.1111/ele.70102","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70102","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Sexual selection often leads to sexual conflict via pre-copulatory (harassment) and/or copulatory (traumatic insemination) male harm to females, impacting population growth, adaptation and evolutionary rescue. Male harm mechanisms are diverse and taxonomically widespread, but we largely ignore what ecological factors modulate their diversification. Here, we conducted experimental evolution under low- (20°C ± 4°C), moderate- (24°C ± 4°C) and high-temperature (28°C ± 4°C) regimes in <i>Drosophila melanogaster</i>, a species with male harm via harassment and seminal fluid proteins (SFPs), to show that temperature drives the divergent evolution of sexual conflict. At the low-temperature regime, evolution resulted in reduced and less plastic harassment (i.e., pre-copulatory harm) while at the high-temperature regime, it was characterised by responses in the seminal proteome driven by differential expression of SFPs. Our results suggest that temperature can be key to understanding the past diversification and future (global warming) evolution of sexual conflict, and the maintenance of genetic variation in male harm traits.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143660447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"Do Egg Hormones Have Fitness Consequences in Wild Birds? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis","authors":"Lucia Mentesana,&nbsp;Michaela Hau,&nbsp;Pietro B. D'Amelio,&nbsp;Nicolas M. Adreani,&nbsp;Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar","doi":"10.1111/ele.70100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70100","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Egg-laying species are key models for understanding the adaptive significance of maternal effects, with egg hormones proposed as an important underlying mechanism. However, even thirty years after their discovery, the evolutionary consequences of hormone-mediated maternal effects remain unclear. Using evidence synthesis, we tested the extent to which increased prenatal maternal hormone deposition in eggs relates to fitness in wild birds (19 species, 438 effect sizes and 57 studies). Egg androgens, glucocorticoids, and thyroid hormones showed an overall near-zero mean effect for both maternal and offspring fitness proxies. However, heterogeneity was high, suggesting that egg hormone effects on fitness are context-dependent. Hormone type and age did not explain much of the observed variance, nor did methodological factors such as the type of study or experimental design. Heterogeneity decomposition showed that differences in effect sizes were mostly driven by within-study variability and phylogenetic relationships. Our study provides the most comprehensive investigation to date of the relationship between egg hormones and fitness in vertebrates. By synthesising current knowledge, we aim to overcome theoretical shortcomings in the field of maternal effects via egg hormone deposition and inspire new research into its many intriguing aspects.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70100","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143645665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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":"A Busse Balloon in the Lagoon: Herbivore Behaviour Generates Spatial Patterns in Coral Reef Ecosystems","authors":"A. Raine Detmer,&nbsp;Scott D. Miller,&nbsp;Alexandra K. Dubel,&nbsp;Kacie Ring,&nbsp;Christian John,&nbsp;Cheryl J. Briggs,&nbsp;Andrew Rassweiler,&nbsp;Holly V. Moeller","doi":"10.1111/ele.70098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70098","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Spatial processes, particularly scale-dependent feedbacks, may play important and underappreciated roles in the dynamics of bistable ecosystems. For example, self-organised spatial patterns can allow for stable coexistence of alternative states outside regions of bistability, a phenomenon known as a Busse balloon. We used partial differential equations to explore the potential for such dynamics in coral reefs, focusing on how herbivore behaviour and mobility affect the stability of coral- and macroalgal-dominated states. Herbivore attraction to coral resulted in a Busse balloon that enhanced macroalgal resilience, with patterns persisting in regions of parameter space where nonspatial models predict uniform coral dominance. Thus, our work suggests herbivore association with coral (e.g., for shelter) can prevent reefs from reaching a fully coral-dominated state. More broadly, this study illustrates how consumer space use can prevent ecosystems from undergoing wholesale state transitions, highlighting the importance of explicitly accounting for space when studying bistable systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"28 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70098","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143632905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"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}