Ecology Letters最新文献

{"title":"Three-Dimensional Correlated Random Walks for Animal Movement and Habitat Selection","authors":"Natasha Klappstein,&nbsp;Théo Michelot,&nbsp;Ron Togunov,&nbsp;Joanna Mills Flemming","doi":"10.1111/ele.70414","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70414","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Animal movement and habitat selection underpin important ecological phenomena, from individual behaviour to population-level distributions. Despite navigating three-dimensional space, animals' movement is typically measured and analysed on a two-dimensional plane, which limits our understanding of species that swim or fly. Therefore, we propose a step selection function (SSF) capable of quantifying animal movement and habitat selection in three dimensions. We formulate a very general family of three-dimensional correlated random walks, aimed at capturing unique features of three-dimensional data. Using Antarctic petrel data, we illustrate how these SSFs can be used to assess selection for vertically-stratified habitat, account for barriers (e.g., the ground or ocean surface), and model attraction to any number of directional targets. Our modelling framework provides a solid foundation for three-dimensional analyses, which will be crucial to answer ecological questions that would otherwise be ignored in two dimensions.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70414","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148366202","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":"Higher-Order Interactions Can Promote Coexistence by Rewiring Intransitivities Into Competitive Networks","authors":"Zachary Hajian-Forooshani,&nbsp;Ivette Perfecto,&nbsp;Warren Irizarry,&nbsp;John Vandermeer","doi":"10.1111/ele.70415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70415","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Higher-order interactions (HOIs) are widely predicted to promote coexistence, yet the underlying ecological mechanisms behind this effect remain largely unexplored in natural communities. Here, we integrate natural history and theory to show how HOIs can restructure competitive networks and influence coexistence. With over 2 years of data on a tropical ant community, we estimate pairwise competitive interactions and demonstrate that, in isolation, they fail to recreate observed community dynamics. We find that inclusion of an HOI, imposed by a parasitoid of the dominant species, can theoretically reorganize competitive networks to mirror the dynamics of the empirical system. We demonstrate how temporal variation in HOIs forces the community between dominance regimes and that the interregnum between regimes is riddled with competitive intransitivities that promote coexistence. This work provides an empirical example of the ecological mechanisms behind the coexistence-promoting effects of HOIs and suggests that HOIs and intransitivity, which are typically treated separately, can be mechanistically linked through the rewiring of species interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70415","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148343141","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":"Plants That Evolved Under High Phylogenetic Diversity Have Higher Invasion Success, Particularly in Undisturbed Communities","authors":"Joshua I. Brian,&nbsp;Mark van Kleunen,&nbsp;Wayne Dawson,&nbsp;Anne Kempel,&nbsp;Weihan Zhao,&nbsp;Jane A. Catford","doi":"10.1111/ele.70417","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70417","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The evolutionary imbalance hypothesis predicts that species from ecologically stable regions of high genetic potential and intense competition are more likely to be invasive, while regions with the opposite characteristics are more likely to be invasible. Relative phylogenetic diversity (PD) of species' indigenous ranges could indicate evolutionary imbalance and help identify high-risk invaders and vulnerable communities. We tested this with three seed addition experiments where 166 species of varying origins were sown into disturbed and undisturbed grassland plots. Species with high relative indigenous-PD had high colonisation and first-year survival regardless of disturbance, whereas species with low relative indigenous-PD only colonised disturbed communities and at a lower rate. Species' indigenous-PD did not appear to affect second-year survival. Although long-term outcomes are unknown, evidence suggests that species with high relative indigenous-PD pose a high invasion risk, even to intact communities. Regional PD could help indicate species invasiveness and community invasibility, informing biosecurity.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70417","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148322150","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":"Using Modern Coexistence Theory to Understand Community Disassembly","authors":"Joe Brennan,&nbsp;Sebastian J. Schreiber","doi":"10.1111/ele.70424","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70424","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Community disassembly examines how species extinction alters ecological communities. Sometimes, the extinction of one species can trigger the loss of others, known as secondary extinction. These secondary extinctions often result from complex species interactions, complicating the identification of underlying mechanisms. Here, we leverage Modern Coexistence Theory to identify when and why secondary extinctions occur. To identify when secondary extinctions occur, we introduce the community disassembly graph that uses invasion growth rates (IGRs) to identify transitions between coexisting communities due to extinction. When a secondary extinction is identified, we decompose the IGRs associated with the secondary extinction to understand why it occurs. We demonstrate the utility of this framework by applying it to models in which different species interactions–competition, facilitation and predation–contribute significantly to secondary extinctions. Our results show that Modern Coexistence Theory offers a flexible and interpretable approach to understanding when and why secondary extinctions occur.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304739","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":"Niche Overlap Is Not Enough: Same Overlap, Contrasting Fluctuations","authors":"Akiva Goldberg,&nbsp;Oshrit Shtossel,&nbsp;Yoram Louzoun,&nbsp;Nadav M. Shnerb","doi":"10.1111/ele.70425","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70425","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Niche overlap (NO) is a cornerstone of coexistence theory, summarising the strength of competitive coupling among species. Yet NO collapses distinct mechanisms into a single value and may miss key dynamical features. We quantify this limitation by examining temporal correlations in species abundances, a key out-of-equilibrium observable in microbial ecology. Using a MacArthur-type consumer-resource model, we show that communities with identical NO can display opposite dynamical patterns. Within the resource-mediated fluctuation regime studied here, a yield-depletion mismatch (YDM)—the difference between depletion and yield dissimilarities—consistently predicts the sign and magnitude of abundance correlations across analytical approximations, stochastic simulations, and a reanalysis of microbial time series. In contrast, growth-rate correlations are governed by NO. More broadly, our results show that dynamical observables can depend on mechanistic details beyond those summarised by niche overlap.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70425","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304808","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 and Resource Supply Drive Continental Variation in Size Structure of Freshwater Food Webs","authors":"Vojsava Gjoni,&nbsp;Justin P. F. Pomeranz,&nbsp;James R. Junker,&nbsp;Jeff S. Wesner","doi":"10.1111/ele.70437","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70437","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Biological communities follow a remarkably consistent negative relationship between individual mass (M) and abundance (N), represented by a power law (<i>N</i> ~ M^λ). The parameter λ denotes the rate of decline in relative abundance from small to large individuals and serves as a proxy for energy transfer efficiency in food webs. Although warming is expected to affect λ, its influence remains uncertain, possibly due to interactions with resource supply. Using ~670,000 individual body sizes from stream food webs, we tested how temperature and resources shape λ. Temperature effects depended on resource supply (gross primary production [GPP] and organic matter standing stock [OM]) but contradicted expectations that λ becomes more negative with warming. At medium and high resources, λ becomes less negative under warming while no change occurred at low resources. Variation in OM, not GPP, drove these patterns, highlighting the role of external energy inputs and challenging the idea that large organisms are rarer at higher temperatures.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70437","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304747","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":"Predictors of Food Web Resistance to Environmental Change","authors":"Javier Jarillo,&nbsp;Jonathan F. Jupke,&nbsp;Tom Sinclair,&nbsp;Lorraine Maltby,&nbsp;Ralf B. Schäfer,&nbsp;Frederik De Laender","doi":"10.1111/ele.70434","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70434","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Impacts of environmental change on ecosystems are seemingly highly context-dependent and contingent on details. Here, we provide mathematical and numerical evidence that there is some generality to the resistance of food webs to species loss. To this end, we mathematically analyse simple food web models, run simulations with randomly wired food webs, develop a spatially explicit meta-community model for realistic macroinvertebrate communities inhabiting European streams, and analyse field data. These approaches jointly support three general rules for food web resistance: (1) all else equal, predators are more vulnerable than prey, and predator diversity declines before prey diversity; (2) food webs with higher prey diversity tend to be less resistant to environmental change; and (3) food web resistance decreases with the mean taxon tolerance and reaches a maximum at an optimal ratio of predator to prey tolerance. Our findings elucidate characteristics that make food webs vulnerable, fostering more effective conservation practices.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304746","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":"(In)determinacy in Woody Plants: Limits and Opportunities for Timing Growth in a Changing Climate","authors":"Frederik Baumgarten,&nbsp;Sally Aitken,&nbsp;Yann Vitasse,&nbsp;Robert D. Guy,&nbsp;EM Wolkovich","doi":"10.1111/ele.70435","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70435","url":null,"abstract":"<p>When and how much plants grow under environmental constraints are fundamental questions in biology and increasingly important for predicting biomass production and carbon sequestration under climate change. While temperature and water availability directly regulate plant growth, the timing and rate of growth are also shaped by internal developmental programming, though this is rarely considered in predictions of tree growth responses to future climates. Here, we revisit a concept central to this internal programming—(in)determinacy. Focusing on woody plants, we define it as the extent to which annual shoot growth is deployed from preformed organs versus produced de novo during the current season. We argue that this trait is best understood as a continuum and that it can help explain contrasting growth responses in a changing climate. More determinate species concentrate growth within a narrow seasonal window, which may reduce exposure to late-season stress but also limit their ability to exploit longer growing seasons. More indeterminate species retain greater flexibility to extend or resume growth when conditions remain favourable, which may be advantageous under climate change, but this same flexibility may also increase exposure to frost, drought and incomplete tissue maturation. Because primary shoot growth also shapes canopy development and is linked to other growth processes, variation in (in)determinacy could help explain broader differences in whole-plant performance, carbon gain and species responses to climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70435","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304744","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":"AI, Comparative Advantage, and the Next Decade of Ecological Research","authors":"John M. Drake","doi":"10.1111/ele.70427","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70427","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Science is a highly, but not wholly, competitive enterprise. Scientists give considerable weight to priority of discovery. Watson and Crick raced Pauling to the structure of DNA; Darwin hurried the &lt;i&gt;Origin&lt;/i&gt; into print after Wallace's letter arrived from the Malay Archipelago. Yet science also depends on cooperation in ways that markets do not. Researchers share methods, publish negative results (at least in principle), and build openly on each other's work. This tension between competition and cooperation is part of what keeps the enterprise moving forward. It also means that the strategic landscape of research (who has an advantage, and why) shifts as tools and norms change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I want to argue that we are very likely approaching two such shifts in ecology, and that the second one will surprise many people who are focused on the first.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Economists since Ricardo have understood that trade benefits both parties when each specializes in what they do at lowest relative cost. The insight applies to research teams as much as to nations. A lab with deep expertise in Bayesian hierarchical modelling and a lab with a 20-year demographic dataset on desert rodents are each positioned to do work that the other cannot easily replicate. Their collaboration is productive precisely because their advantages are complementary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The science-of-science literature has increasingly recognized this logic, even when it does not use the Ricardian label. Xiang et al. (&lt;span&gt;2025&lt;/span&gt;) reviewed the growing literature on research topic choice, emphasizing how researchers select topics, methods and collaborators given their skills, networks, and institutional settings. Tripodi et al. (&lt;span&gt;2020&lt;/span&gt;) showed that scientists' research trajectories are shaped by knowledge proximity and social relatedness: moving into a new area is easier when prior expertise and existing collaborations reduce the learning cost. That is a comparative advantage mechanism, even if the language is about networks and friction rather than trade theory. Scientists' rate of topic switching is increasing (Zeng et al. &lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;) and Venturini et al. (&lt;span&gt;2024&lt;/span&gt;) found that collaboration facilitates these switches, especially collaboration with productive, high-impact researchers. That is, comparative advantage in science is often co-produced by the people around you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Topic choice has direct consequences for who gets funded. Hoppe et al. (&lt;span&gt;2019&lt;/span&gt;), analysing NIH applications, found that topic choice alone explained more than 20% of the funding gap between Black and white scientists after controlling for other factors. What you choose to work on interacts with the reward structure of the field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At any given moment, then, the distribution of comparative advantages across the research community shapes what science gets done. When a particular skill is scarce and productive, those who possess it enjoy disproportionate influence. When that skill bec","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70427","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304752","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":"Towards Key Principles of Host-Associated Microbiome Assembly","authors":"Gui Araujo,&nbsp;Torsten Thomas,&nbsp;José M. Montoya,&nbsp;Nicole S. Webster,&nbsp;Miguel Lurgi","doi":"10.1111/ele.70433","DOIUrl":"10.1111/ele.70433","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Symbiotic relationships between microbes and hosts frequently involve the assembly of complex microbial communities. Community-level patterns influence life-history traits, ecological trajectories of partners, and are often critical for host health. These patterns are driven by mechanisms acting at the individual level, including microbial dispersal, host selection, and microbe–resource interactions. Critically, we still lack a clear picture of how these mechanisms interact to shape microbiome assembly. We present a model that describes how distinct community structures arise from those underlying mechanisms. To illustrate the approach, we simulate microbiome data from marine sponges, thereby bridging mechanistic models and empirical patterns. We further apply the model to human data to explore its relevance across systems, proposing that a small set of general mechanisms may govern diverse patterns of diversity and abundance. Our findings advance ecological theory by linking individual-level processes to community-scale patterns, illuminating key drivers of microbiome assembly.</p>","PeriodicalId":161,"journal":{"name":"Ecology Letters","volume":"29 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.7,"publicationDate":"2026-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ele.70433","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148304745","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}