EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-28DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70070
Tadeo H. Ramirez-Parada, Isaac W. Park, Sydne Record, Charles C. Davis, Susan J. Mazer
{"title":"Scaling flowering onset and duration responses among species predicts phenological community reassembly under warming","authors":"Tadeo H. Ramirez-Parada, Isaac W. Park, Sydne Record, Charles C. Davis, Susan J. Mazer","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70070","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Global warming has caused widespread shifts in plant phenology among species in the temperate zone, but it is unclear how population-level responses will scale to alter the structure of the flowering season at the community level. This knowledge gap exists largely because—while the climatic sensitivity of first flowering within populations has been studied extensively—little is known about the responsiveness of the duration of a population's flowering period. This limits our ability to anticipate how the entire flowering periods of co-occurring species may continue to change under warming. Nonetheless, flowering sensitivity to temperature often varies predictably among species between and within communities, which may help forecast temperature-related changes to a community's flowering season. However, no studies—empirical or theoretical—have assessed how patterns of variation in flowering sensitivity among species could scale to alter community-level flowering changes under warming. Here, we provide a conceptual overview of how variation in the sensitivity of flowering onset and duration among species can mediate changes to a community's flowering season due to warming trends. Specifically, we focus on the effects of differences in (1) the mean sensitivity of flowering onset and duration among communities and (2) the sensitivity of flowering onsets and durations among species flowering sequentially through the season within a community. We evaluated the manner and degree in which these forms of between-species variation in sensitivity might affect the structure of the flowering season—both independently and interactively—using simulations, which covered a wide but empirically informed range of parameter values and combinations representing distinct community-level patterns. Our findings predict that communities across the temperate zone will exhibit varied and often contrasting flowering responses to warming across biomes, underscoring that accounting for the temperature sensitivity of both phenological onset and duration among species is essential for understanding community-level flowering dynamics in a warming world.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70070","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143717025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-28DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70117
A. Raine Detmer, Eric J. Ward, Mary E. Hunsicker, Kelly S. Andrews, Michele Conrad, Bridget E. Ferriss, Elliott L. Hazen, Kirstin K. Holsman, Julia Indivero, Scott I. Large, Michael Malick, Kristin N. Marshall, Stuart H. Munsch, Kiva L. Oken, William H. Satterthwaite, S. Kalei Shotwell, Andrew R. Thompson, Jameal F. Samhouri
{"title":"Evaluating the robustness of generalized additive models as a tool for threshold detection in variable environments","authors":"A. Raine Detmer, Eric J. Ward, Mary E. Hunsicker, Kelly S. Andrews, Michele Conrad, Bridget E. Ferriss, Elliott L. Hazen, Kirstin K. Holsman, Julia Indivero, Scott I. Large, Michael Malick, Kristin N. Marshall, Stuart H. Munsch, Kiva L. Oken, William H. Satterthwaite, S. Kalei Shotwell, Andrew R. Thompson, Jameal F. Samhouri","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70117","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As global climate change and anthropogenic activities amplify widespread environmental variability, there is a strong need for management strategies that incorporate relationships between ecosystem components. This need is especially apparent when changes in environmental drivers cause threshold responses (abrupt, nonlinear changes) in ecosystems. Such ecological thresholds can provide useful reference points for management decisions. However, methods for detecting thresholds in empirical datasets may fail to find an existing threshold, find one that does not exist, or be biased in their estimates of threshold locations. These types of threshold misspecifications can result in high conservation and socioeconomic costs. Simulation studies can mitigate these risks by providing information about method performance across different scenarios. Here, we constructed a series of simulations to evaluate the robustness of threshold detection with generalized additive models (GAMs) when exposed to a variety of common, real-world data characteristics. GAMs generally performed best when time series were long, observation error was low, thresholds were crossed fairly frequently, and covariates were accounted for. Over realistic ranges of values, observation error and frequency of threshold crossing had stronger effects on threshold detectability than time series length. Importantly, detectability was found to depend on both the shape of the threshold relationship and the statistical definition of the threshold location. As a case study, we applied this threshold detection method to an empirical dataset relating ocean temperature and the spatial distribution of Pacific hake (<i>Merluccius productus</i>), the largest volume fishery on the US West Coast. While the data suggest no statistical evidence for a threshold relationship, our simulations indicated approximately equal chances of true and false threshold detection given currently available data. Our results provide general guidelines for where threshold detection with GAMs is likely to be robust and are useful in the context of indicator development for ecosystem-based management in a variable world.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70117","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143717381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-28DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70236
Matthew Baker, Ian Yesilonis, Laura Templeton, Beatriz Shobe, Jaelyn Bos, Nancy F. Sonti, Katherine Lautar
{"title":"Distributed urban forest patch sampling detects edge effects and woodland condition for monitoring and management","authors":"Matthew Baker, Ian Yesilonis, Laura Templeton, Beatriz Shobe, Jaelyn Bos, Nancy F. Sonti, Katherine Lautar","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70236","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Urban forest patches, including woodland interiors and bounding edge habitat, result from secondary succession and fragmentation of more extensive forested landscapes in the eastern United States. Management regimes, surrounding land use, and successional processes lead to distinct environments and contribute to local and regional heterogeneity. However, many woodlands are degraded due to frequent disturbance, aggressive exotic species, and heavy browsing, which stress canopies, reduce regeneration, and may reduce ecosystem services. Effective management requires rapid, repeatable assessment of forest composition, structure, and condition at the scale of local decision-making. We present and apply a protocol for characterizing urban woodlands that generates new insight into the status of urban woodlands and baseline data for change detection over time. Samples of overstory composition, ground cover, surface soil measurements, and the Schumacher Vine Encroachment Index were collected at 845 points across each of 47 patches across Baltimore, Maryland. Simple citywide summaries allowed characterization of Baltimore's urban overstories as overwhelmingly native, though dominated by a range of successional conditions. By contrast, we found that ground layers were predominantly exotic, with abundant invasives or ruderal native species benefiting from disturbed conditions. Seven overstory types were distinguished, the majority under threat from aggressive vines. Most soils showed little evidence of compaction, but variable organic content. Distributed data allowed cross-patch comparison as well as within-patch analyses along edge-to-interior gradients. Species diversity, nativity, and overstory basal area all increased toward woodland interiors, whereas soil compaction and vine encroachment decreased. Structural and compositional shifts in both overstory and ground layer species revealed indicators of edge (15.2–18.7 m) and interior (>41.5 m) conditions, as well as evidence of transitional zones with distinct patterns of biodiversity. Despite high levels of fragmentation and disturbance that challenge municipal land managers operating with limited resources, rapid, low-cost sampling enabled comparison across multiple scales, encouraging repeated sampling and adaptive response to changing forest conditions. Qualitative and quantitative analysis as well as specific examples illustrated the generic utility of the protocol for a range of applications and its ability to produce new insight enabling management action and informed conservation planning.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70236","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143717427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-27DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70197
Kaleb A. Goff, Meagan F. Oldfather, Jan Nachlinger, Brian V. Smithers, Michael J. Koontz, Catie Bishop, Jim Bishop, Mary T. Burke, Seema N. Sheth
{"title":"Limited directional change in mountaintop plant communities over 19 years in western North America","authors":"Kaleb A. Goff, Meagan F. Oldfather, Jan Nachlinger, Brian V. Smithers, Michael J. Koontz, Catie Bishop, Jim Bishop, Mary T. Burke, Seema N. Sheth","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70197","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Plant communities on mountain summits are commonly long-lived, cold-adapted perennials with low dispersal ability. These characteristics in tandem with limited area to track suitable conditions make these mountain communities potentially highly vulnerable to climate change, and indicators of climate change impacts. We investigated temporal changes in plant communities on 29 arid mountain summits across eight study regions in California and Nevada, USA, over 19 years. We analyzed community dynamics in terms of species richness, turnover, gain and loss of functional groups, and relative abundance of functional groups. First, across all summits and regions, we found no change in species richness over time. Second, there was relatively high species turnover (21.7%) between the five-year survey intervals, but turnover was not significantly different from random expectation. Within functional groups, forbs had the greatest proportion of gains and cushions had the greatest proportion of losses. Third, qualitative abundance categories presented a small but consistent signal of decrease in the relative abundance of cushions, graminoids, and shrubs/trees over the study period. Across a broad geographic scale and nearly two decades, community patterns were widely similar, suggesting that climate change has not impacted local colonization or extirpation of mountaintop species in this arid region. These findings support observed differences in response to climate change between temperature-limited and water-limited regions globally, and highlight the lagged and variable nature of high-elevation systems. Our findings fill a major data gap on alpine plant community responses to climate change in the western United States and bolster the importance of long-term ecological monitoring with rapid climate change.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70197","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143717451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-27DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70205
Adrianne P. Smits, Ed K. Hall, Bridget R. Deemer, Facundo Scordo, Carolina C. Barbosa, Stephanie M. Carlson, Kaelin Cawley, Hans-Peter Grossart, Patrick Kelly, Stefano Mammola, Matthew R. Pintar, Caleb J. Robbins, Albert Ruhi, Mattia Saccò
{"title":"Too much and not enough data: Challenges and solutions for generating information in freshwater research and monitoring","authors":"Adrianne P. Smits, Ed K. Hall, Bridget R. Deemer, Facundo Scordo, Carolina C. Barbosa, Stephanie M. Carlson, Kaelin Cawley, Hans-Peter Grossart, Patrick Kelly, Stefano Mammola, Matthew R. Pintar, Caleb J. Robbins, Albert Ruhi, Mattia Saccò","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70205","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Evaluating progress toward achieving freshwater conservation and sustainability goals requires transforming diverse types of data into useful information for scientists, managers, and other interest groups. Despite substantial increases in the volume of freshwater data collected worldwide, many regions and ecosystems still lack sufficient data collection and/or data access. We illustrate how these data challenges result from a diverse set of underlying mechanisms and propose solutions that can be applied by individuals or organizations. We discuss creative approaches to address data scarcity, including the use of community science, remote-sensing, environmental sensors, and legacy datasets. We highlight the importance of coordinated data collection efforts among groups and training programs to improve data access. At the institutional level, we emphasize the power of prioritizing data curation, incentivizing data publication, and promoting research that enhances data coverage and representativeness. Some of these strategies involve technological and analytical approaches, but many necessitate shifting the priorities and incentives of organizations such as academic and government research institutions, monitoring groups, journals, and funding agencies. Our overarching goal is to stimulate discussion to narrow the data disparities hindering the understanding of freshwater processes and their change across spatial scales.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70205","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143717450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-27DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70233
Baylee L. Wade, Anna Carolina Resende, Danielle Willis-Kaio, Alice Rogers
{"title":"Exploring the consequences of complex habitat loss for the New Zealand blue cod, Parapercis colias","authors":"Baylee L. Wade, Anna Carolina Resende, Danielle Willis-Kaio, Alice Rogers","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70233","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70233","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Complex coastal habitats including seaweed and kelp forests are declining throughout the world due to the impacts of ocean warming, coastal development, overfishing, and pollution. Complex habitats provide shelter, food, nesting, and nursery sites, allowing for high biodiversity and productivity that supports valuable economic, cultural, and recreational services. From the perspective of prey, habitat-forming macroalgae offer physical and visual refuges that reduce their risk of predation. However, for predators, this refuge availability presents a trade-off. Whilst prey might be more abundant in the presence of complex habitats, they are also likely to be more difficult to catch and consume, creating uncertainty around the consequences of habitat loss for predatory species. Here we explore the trade-off between prey availability and predation success for a model coastal predator, the New Zealand blue cod, <i>Parapercis colias</i>, which is a valuable commercial and recreational fisheries target. Field surveys quantified differences in prey abundance inside and outside complex habitats, whilst mesocosm experiments determined the influence of refuges on prey consumption. A simple food web model was developed to explore how prey availability and predation success trade-off in the presence of habitat complexity to determine predator population dynamics and vulnerability to fishing. Results indicate that increased prey abundance compensates for decreased predation success within complex habitats and allows for high densities of predators. However, the effects of habitat loss are dependent on the mechanisms by which complexity increases prey abundance. If complex habitats act only as predation refuges, then a loss of complexity is advantageous for predators, increasing their abundance and reducing their vulnerability to overfishing. However, if complex habitats also enhance the carrying capacity of prey through mechanisms unrelated to predation, then habitat loss reduces predator abundance and increases vulnerability to overfishing. Our study highlights the need to understand specific mechanisms that promote population abundance in complex habitats and shows how this knowledge will help us to better predict the impacts of habitat loss for coastal fisheries.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70233","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143717452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-26DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70112
Matthew Ware, Paul Hillbrand, Ali Johnson, Stephanie J. Kamel, Elizabeth S. Darrow
{"title":"Recent increases in sea turtle incubation durations on a North Carolina, USA, beach despite a warming climate","authors":"Matthew Ware, Paul Hillbrand, Ali Johnson, Stephanie J. Kamel, Elizabeth S. Darrow","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70112","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Warming temperatures due to climate change are feminizing sea turtle primary sex ratios, reducing hatchling fitness, and, in extreme cases, limiting hatchling production, including for temperate nesting species such as loggerhead turtles (<i>Caretta caretta</i>). Though more females may lead to short-term population growth through increased egg production, long-term gains may be threatened by the scarcity of males for mating and reduced survival rates of early life stages. Beaches near the limits of sea turtle nesting ranges are typically cooler and thus critical for species conservation efforts as they contribute a higher percentage of males to regional breeding grounds both now and in the future. A feminizing trend up to 88% was previously estimated for loggerhead hatchlings through 2015 on Bald Head Island, North Carolina, USA, near the northern extent of the northwest Atlantic loggerhead nesting range. However, despite a continued increasing trend in air temperature, average incubation durations and modeled primary sex ratios over the past 5 years (67% female) are more similar to those from the mid-2000s. Environmental conditions during incubation, behavioral changes in nest site selection and timing, and physiological variables including clutch size and maternal identity were investigated using a generalized additive model to explain this recent reversal. Increased rainfall, alongshore local movement of nest placement toward cooler conditions, and a minor shift in nesting phenology earlier in the year combined to counteract the 1.1°C increase in average air temperature experienced by incubating nests now versus 20 years ago. Behavioral adaptations may thus mitigate some of the projected impacts from climate change but are insufficient on their own as rainfall had a larger effect size than behavior. Without significant behavioral changes or management interventions, sustained future male hatchling production at many nesting beaches will likely depend on increased rainfall—an uncertain projection for many such beaches.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70112","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143707609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-26DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70215
Rebecca Bewley Wayman, Quinn M. Sorenson
{"title":"Dead tree removal after drought mortality increases understory plant diversity in a mixed conifer forest","authors":"Rebecca Bewley Wayman, Quinn M. Sorenson","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70215","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Altered disturbance regimes during a time of rapid global change present challenges for decision-making concerning ecosystem recovery. In the Sierra Nevada of California, USA, 129 million trees died due to severe drought from 2012 to 2017, raising concerns over forest ecosystem health and dead fuel loads available for future wildfires. One approach to managing forests after tree mortality is to cut and remove standing dead trees, yet the ecological effects of this management practice are not well understood, particularly in western US montane coniferous forests. We compared the management practice of dead tree removal versus no removal following severe drought and insect-induced tree mortality in the Sierra Nevada and evaluated the initial effects on understory plants in terms of diversity, vegetative cover, and community composition. Understory plants were sampled in 122 paired plots (treated and untreated; 22 m diameter) spanning 300 km of the Sierra Nevada 1–5 years after the removal of recently dead trees. We found that plant species diversity was higher where dead trees were removed across all plant subgroups (annuals, perennials, shrubs, natives, and non-natives). Higher total plant species richness and annual species richness were associated with lower live tree cover, but shrub and perennial richness were associated with higher estimated soil moisture and not with live tree cover. Understory vegetative cover was modestly lower with treatment, driven largely by decreases in tree sapling cover, but annual and non-native species cover were higher with treatment. Plant community composition was significantly different in treated and untreated plots, but communities were highly overlapping. Our results align with research in other western US forests that found a near-term increase in understory diversity following drought-killed dead tree harvests, but future research is needed to identify longer term patterns. Our project provides essential information to assess whether recovery goals related to understory vegetation are likely to be met under different post-disturbance management scenarios.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70215","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143707607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-26DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70234
Michelle L. Fearon, Kristel F. Sánchez, Syuan-Jyun Sun, Siobhan K. Calhoun, Kira J. Monell, Varun Ravichandran, Meghan A. Duffy
{"title":"Resource quality differentially impacts Daphnia interactions with two parasites","authors":"Michelle L. Fearon, Kristel F. Sánchez, Syuan-Jyun Sun, Siobhan K. Calhoun, Kira J. Monell, Varun Ravichandran, Meghan A. Duffy","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70234","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Resource quality can have conflicting effects on host–parasite interactions; for example, higher resource quality might increase host investment in immune function, or conversely, might permit greater parasite reproduction. Thus, anticipating the impact of changing resource quality on host–parasite interactions is challenging, especially because we often lack a mechanistic understanding of how resource quality influences host physiology and fitness to alter infection outcomes. We investigated whether there are generalizations in how resource quality affects multiple host clones' interactions with different parasites. We used the <i>Daphnia</i> freshwater zooplankton model system to experimentally investigate how a resource quality gradient from high-quality green algae to poor-quality cyanobacteria diets influences host fitness, physiology, and infection by two parasites: a bacterium, <i>Pasteuria ramosa</i>, and a fungus, <i>Metschnikowia bicuspidata</i>. We ran a separate experiment for each parasite using a factorial design with four diets, two <i>Daphnia dentifera</i> host clones, and parasite-inoculated and -uninoculated treatments (16 treatments per experiment). Diet strongly influenced infection by the fungus but not the bacterium. These relationships between diet and infection cannot be explained by changes in feeding rate (and, therefore, parasite exposure). Instead, the impact of diet on fungal infection was associated with impacts of diet on the earliest stage of infection: hosts that fed on poor quality diets had very few attacking spores in their guts. Diet did not significantly influence host immune responses. Diet influenced spore production differently for the two parasites, with reduced resource quality limiting the number of fungal spores and the size (but not number) of bacterial spores. Diet, host clone, and infection all affected host fitness. Interestingly, diet influenced the impact of the bacterium, a parasitic castrator that induces gigantism; for one clone, infected hosts fed high-quality diets still produced a substantial number of offspring, whereas resource limitation hindered gigantism. Finally, there were often costs of resisting infection, though these generally were not affected by diet. Overall, we show that resource quality differentially impacts the exposure, infection, and proliferation processes for different parasites and host clones, which highlights the need to use multi-genotype and multi-parasite studies to better understand these complex interactions.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70234","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143707608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}
EcospherePub Date : 2025-03-25DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70214
Jessene Aquino-Thomas, C. Edward Proffitt
{"title":"Effects of interactions among primary and secondary foundation species on biodiversity and associated community structure","authors":"Jessene Aquino-Thomas, C. Edward Proffitt","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70214","url":null,"abstract":"<p>A key foundation species, red mangroves (<i>Rhizophora mangle</i>), and secondary foundation species (oysters, sponges, and barnacles) that reside on mangrove prop roots are abundant along the coastline in subtropical Florida. We hypothesized the Foundation Species Interaction Biodiversity (FSIB) model, which explains the relationships between the foundation species. The interactions between the foundation species examined in the FSIB model were mutualistic (+, +), commensal (+, 0), and parasitic (+, −) interactions. We investigated the connections between the primary foundation species (mangroves) and the dominant secondary foundation species to understand the resulting variability in biodiversity within these nearshore ecosystems. Building on existing research, this study introduces the FSIB model, hypothesizing how the nuanced interactions between the primary and secondary foundation species contribute to biodiversity enhancements, a critical area previously underexplored, that will increase biodiversity. It posits that the mutualistic relationship will yield the highest biodiversity, followed by the commensal relationship, and then the parasitic relationship. All three relationships are hypothesized to result in higher diversity compared with an ecosystem lacking a secondary foundation species. The main objective of this research was to assess the predictions of the proposed FSIB model in explaining the composition of benthic communities on red mangrove prop roots. We collected data on epibiont abundance and size, site characteristics, physical and geographical variables (fetch, sediment firmness, distances from inlet and nearest freshwater discharge source, distance to nearest mangrove forest), human disturbance variables, and obtained water quality data (salinity, chlorophyll <i>a</i>, and turbidity). The combined results of diversity metrics, hierarchical cluster analysis, nonmetric multidimensional scaling, and constrained distance-based redundancy analysis indicated that the difference in mangrove prop root communities was largely explained by the location of the communities along the latitudinal gradient and by the presence of secondary foundation species (oysters and sponges). The shift from one secondary foundation species to another had sizable effects on associated species biodiversity, with sites that had multiple secondary foundation species experiencing higher biodiversity than sites with only one secondary foundation species.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2025-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70214","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143690163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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}