EcospherePub Date : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70332
Alexis Roy, Florence D. Hulot, Kamel Soudani
{"title":"Landsat-based remote sensing of surface water dynamics in southern African wetlands in drylands from 1986 to 2022","authors":"Alexis Roy, Florence D. Hulot, Kamel Soudani","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70332","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70332","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Wetlands in drylands represent distinct ecosystems characterized by unique assemblages of fauna and flora that coexist in a fluctuating hydrological regime. These habitats provide essential resources, including water and vegetation, which support fauna and thus concentrate a complex web of ecological interactions that rely on the presence of water, especially during the dry season. Understanding the alternating dynamics of recharge and drying is therefore critical, as these processes directly affect the ecological interactions that depend on water availability. To better understand these dynamics, we developed a Landsat-based remote sensing methodology using a 37-year-long time series of images to assess the frequency of water presence in known wetlands in drylands in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, in relation to climate data obtained from ERA5. Annual and monthly frequency of water presence was calculated using a thresholding single water index based on the modified normalized detection water index. We assessed inter- and intra-annual variations in water presence. This methodology provides a month-by-month assessment of water presence and anomalies from the average between 1986 and 2022. The filling and drying of wetlands showed a temporal lag of 2 months between precipitation and water presence, thus allowing the assessment of the ecological drought intensity in the dry season. Overall, the results allow us to evaluate the drying and filling dynamics of wetlands in drylands as well as their surface variability, giving crucial insights into the water availability dynamics and their resilience to climate forcing and variations.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70332","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606579","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70327
Roel Lammerant, Jenna Hölttä, Janina Pykäri, Nishant Nishant, Anna Villnäs, Sofia A. Wikström, Alf Norkko, Camilla Gustafsson
{"title":"Environmental gradients strongly affect functional composition and biomass C stocks within aquatic plant meadows","authors":"Roel Lammerant, Jenna Hölttä, Janina Pykäri, Nishant Nishant, Anna Villnäs, Sofia A. Wikström, Alf Norkko, Camilla Gustafsson","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70327","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70327","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ecological succession provides a critical framework to evaluate and predict the effects of successional dynamics within plant communities on ecosystem functions, which has become increasingly relevant in recent years as humans adapt to a world that is progressively shaped by anthropogenic disturbances. To date, we lack a mechanistic understanding of how environmental gradients shape succession of functional diversity within aquatic plant communities, complicating our ability to predict the C sink potential of aquatic plant meadows. This makes it imperative to explore the factors underlying shifts in functional community structure and associated functions provided by aquatic plants across broad environmental gradients. We conducted a field survey in August–September 2023, where we sampled 20 soft-bottom sites along a strong (50 km) gradient of environmental variables (i.e., exposure and salinity) in the northern Baltic Sea. Spatial differences in the functional community structure and biomass-bound C stocks were influenced by an interplay between wave exposure, depth and salinity. The functional community structure of aquatic plant meadows shifted from more conservative strategies under high hydrodynamic forces to more acquisitive strategies under relatively benign environmental conditions. Functional trait variation across meadows was driven by both intraspecific variation (ITV) and species turnover, but their relative role was highly variable. Biomass-bound C stocks were mainly influenced by light availability. Overall, our study illustrates the importance of addressing ITV and that the functional community structure and biomass-bound C stocks of aquatic plant meadows were shaped by an interplay between wave exposure, depth, and salinity. This highlights the complexity in assessing ecosystem services provided by vegetated coastal ecosystems and the need to improve our understanding of the relationships among the environment, species traits, and ecosystem functioning for developing effective measures of ecosystem conservation.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70327","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606578","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70319
Heather E. Johnson, Gabrielle L. Coulombe, Layne G. Adams, Colleen Arnison, Perry Barboza, Martin Kienzler, William B. Leacock, Michael J. Suitor
{"title":"DNA metabarcoding and video camera collars yield different inferences about the summer diet of an arctic ungulate","authors":"Heather E. Johnson, Gabrielle L. Coulombe, Layne G. Adams, Colleen Arnison, Perry Barboza, Martin Kienzler, William B. Leacock, Michael J. Suitor","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70319","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70319","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The diets of wild ungulates are a foundational component of their ecology, influencing their behavior, body condition, and demography. With changing environmental conditions, there is a significant need to identify important forage items for ungulates, but this has often proved challenging. Declines in several barren-ground caribou herds across the North American Arctic have raised concerns about the influence of climate change on caribou forage conditions. Shifts in plant phenology, biomass, quality, and composition may be influencing caribou diets and subsequently affecting their body condition and demographic rates. Although forage is a primary driver of barren-ground caribou behavior and population dynamics, there is limited recent information about the specific foods they consume, and uncertainty about appropriate methods for identifying those foods. Investigators are increasingly using fecal DNA metabarcoding and video camera collars to assess ungulate diets, but comparative studies of these approaches are lacking. To examine the summer diets of barren-ground caribou, we used both fecal metabarcoding and video camera collars to identify forage used by the Porcupine caribou herd, which spans the Alaska–Yukon border. In 2021, we sampled the diets of adult females by collecting fecal samples and observing collar videos during 4 sampling occasions. We found that caribou consumed very specific forage items, and those items varied markedly across the growing season. Caribou predominantly consumed graminoids and lichens during early summer, and shrubs and forbs later in the season. Metabarcoding and video data provided significantly different estimates of diet for all taxonomic levels we evaluated, and inferences from the two approaches were often disparate. Metabarcoding failed to detect some items frequently consumed in videos, such as lichens, and indicated high use of other items rarely consumed, such as mosses. We found that video data provided greater taxonomic diversity and resolution for vascular plants and lichens, and more closely aligned with past research and biological expectations than data from fecal metabarcoding. Additional research is needed to be able to use these methods to identify the biomass of different forage items consumed.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70319","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606575","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70314
R. E. Burnham, S. Vagle
{"title":"Using masking metrics as a means to quantify effect and guide mitigation measures of underwater anthropogenic noise","authors":"R. E. Burnham, S. Vagle","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70314","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70314","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Anthropogenic noise in oceanic soundscapes is increasing, as is concern for its impacts on marine life. Until now, the potential effects have been considered by the comparison of sound levels to defined thresholds. Here, the influence of acoustic masking on a species is considered, quantifying the proportional reduction in range for acoustic signals as one means to characterize the impact of acoustic disturbance. The use of this metric is demonstrated by calculating the potential for masking communication calls and echolocation signals of southern resident killer whales (<i>Orcinus orca</i>) in the Salish Sea, British Columbia, subjected to significant commercial vessel traffic noise. The use of thresholds facilitates an empirical interpretation of changes in the sound field over space and time, whereas a masking metric determines when and where a whale's ability to send and receive acoustic information will be most obstructed. By considering the level of masking, the severity of a response might be distinguished. For example, a 0%–24% range reduction may be overcome by adaptive signaling, but this may not be possible when communication or echolocation range is reduced by 75% or more. This degree of masking was found in known foraging areas for southern residents, suggesting consequences to their success in finding and capturing food. Masking metrics will be useful to managers and policy makers to better understand acoustic disturbance of marine species and determine individual- to population-level consequences of anthropogenic noise additions to soundscapes.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70314","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606663","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70303
Julia E. F. Stepanuk, Janet A. Nye, Nicholas R. Record, Lesley H. Thorne
{"title":"Changes in the abundance and distribution of rorqual prey in the Northeast United States over four decades","authors":"Julia E. F. Stepanuk, Janet A. Nye, Nicholas R. Record, Lesley H. Thorne","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70303","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70303","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The distribution, phenology, and population dynamics of species at multiple trophic levels have been impacted by climate change across a range of spatial scales. Upper trophic level species may be uniquely impacted through changes to prey species and foraging habitats in space and time. Improving our understanding of how known changes in the abundance and distribution of prey species influence prey availability for marine predators is key to understanding climate impacts on upper trophic level species. Rorquals, a group of baleen whales, are generalist feeders that employ lunge feeding to engulf large volumes of water and prey, thereby requiring dense aggregations of prey for efficient feeding. While climate-driven changes have been well documented for some species of fish and invertebrates consumed by rorquals, changes to the distribution of rorqual prey in aggregate and the implications of these changes for rorqual foraging habitat have received little attention. We used a 40-year time series of prey data to assess spatial and temporal shifts in key prey groups for four rorqual species in the rapidly warming Northeast United States. We found notable changes to the distribution and biomass of prey groups for rorquals through space and time. The center of biomass of key large-bodied prey showed significant poleward shifts and biomass increased in the northern portion of the Northeast United States. Accordingly, we found significant increases in the biomass of large-bodied humpback, minke, and fin whale prey in the northerly Gulf of Maine and George's Bank regions, with concurrent decreases in the biomass of large-bodied humpback whale prey in more southernly Mid-Atlantic Bight and Southern New England regions. In contrast, there was little evidence of change in the distribution and biomass of smaller prey groups, which are of key importance for sei and fin whales. Our results suggest that rorquals that primarily consume large-bodied prey, humpback and minke whales, may be more likely to be impacted by climate-driven shifts in prey than sei and fin whales that feed on smaller prey. Assessments of changing prey distributions are needed for proactive management in light of climate-driven impacts on whale foraging habitat.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70303","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606581","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70336
M. Campbell, J. F. Samhouri, J. W. White
{"title":"Modeling consequences of spatial closures for offshore energy: Loss of fishing grounds and fishery-independent data","authors":"M. Campbell, J. F. Samhouri, J. W. White","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70336","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70336","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Many jurisdictions are currently pursuing renewable sources of energy from the ocean, including offshore wind farms (OWFs). While these could have direct positive effects for global climate change by reducing fossil fuel consumption, there could be unintended consequences for fisheries and conservation. These include the potential loss of fishing grounds (and the consequent spatial displacement of fishing effort) and the potential loss of fishery-independent survey data in OWF areas. Because fishing and other types of vessel traffic are often limited in the OWF area, OWFs may also serve as other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), an important type of spatial protection in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity 30 × 30 initiative. We used spatially explicit population models of groundfish fisheries on an idealized coastline in a management strategy evaluation to investigate the effects of OWF placement on conservation objectives (increased fish biomass) and fishery objectives (maintaining fishery yield). We simulated the loss of fishing grounds on 10% of the coastline, and the concurrent loss of 10% of fishery-independent survey data, introducing uncertainty and bias into stock status estimates. This produced two effects in the model: initial loss of fishery yield due to the closure and reductions in fishing effort when the loss of data triggered precautionary measures in the harvest control rule. Additionally, we assessed scenarios with different placements of the OWF relative to high-quality fish habitat, as OWFs could be placed without fish habitat considerations in mind. As expected (given the sustainable harvest rates we simulated), we found that placing the OWF on high-quality habitat produced the greatest negative effects of fishing grounds and fishery-independent data on fishery yields, but placing the OWF on low-quality habitat caused it to be ineffective as an OECM (in terms of increasing fish population biomass). Additionally, the loss of survey data had a greater effect for less mobile fish species. Our findings highlight the expected trade-offs between the fishery and conservation (i.e., OECM) consequences of OWF expansion and the need to compensate for the loss of fishery-independent data by accounting for species distributions relative to habitat in survey indices.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70336","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606576","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70339
Heather E. Gaya, Gino J. D'Angelo, Jordan L. Youngmann, Stacey L. Lance, John C. Kilgo
{"title":"An integrated population model of a high-density coyote population in South Carolina, USA","authors":"Heather E. Gaya, Gino J. D'Angelo, Jordan L. Youngmann, Stacey L. Lance, John C. Kilgo","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70339","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70339","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the absence of red wolves (<i>Canis rufus</i>), coyote (<i>Canis latrans</i>) populations have expanded across the eastern United States. However, predator populations are particularly difficult to quantify, and it remains unclear if and when eastern coyotes will reach carrying capacity. To assess coyote population trends, we constructed an integrated population model (IPM) using coyote data recorded at the United States Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), a 78,000-ha National Environmental Research Park located in South Carolina, United States. Coyote densities averaged 50 coyotes/100 km<sup>2</sup> prior to lethal control in 2010 but dropped to 14 coyotes/100 km<sup>2</sup> in 2012 after three consecutive years of intensive lethal removal. By 2014, coyote densities stabilized around 44 coyotes/100 km<sup>2</sup>. These results suggest that coyote populations can decline under sustained intensive control efforts but may rapidly increase when control efforts are ceased. Our results highlight the power of IPMs to estimate population parameters across long time scales when data collection is both spatially and temporally heterogenous. Lethal control efforts for coyotes are prohibitively expensive at a large scale and are unlikely to be a viable long-term management strategy. Managers should instead focus on setting game species hunting limits that account for coyote presence on the landscape.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70339","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606751","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70318
Kerstin Wasson, Monique C. Fountain, Margaret A. Zimmer, Karen E. Tanner, Seth A. Robinson, Wesley P. Moore, Zeanna Graves, Rikke Jeppesen, Susanne K. Fork, Bethany J. Lee, Michael Wilshire, John C. Haskins, Charlie Endris, Sean B. McCollum, Levi D. Robbins, Anna E. Braswell
{"title":"Climate sensitivity and restoration trajectories: Insights from tidal marsh restoration in Elkhorn Slough, California","authors":"Kerstin Wasson, Monique C. Fountain, Margaret A. Zimmer, Karen E. Tanner, Seth A. Robinson, Wesley P. Moore, Zeanna Graves, Rikke Jeppesen, Susanne K. Fork, Bethany J. Lee, Michael Wilshire, John C. Haskins, Charlie Endris, Sean B. McCollum, Levi D. Robbins, Anna E. Braswell","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70318","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70318","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding restoration trajectories and their sensitivity to climate is critical for designing effective adaptation strategies for restoration projects. Tidal marsh restoration often involves initial bare earth conditions that may be stressful to colonizing plants, especially on high elevation marsh platforms built to be resilient to sea-level rise. Under these circumstances, stressors such as soil salinity may increase over time, but can be mitigated by strong rainfall. At Hester Marsh, a large tidal marsh restoration site in Elkhorn Slough, California, we evaluated passive restoration success, tracking colonization by plants whose seeds arrived naturally on tides, and active restoration success, monitoring greenhouse-grown transplants. Our investigation revealed nonlinear restoration trajectories with high climate sensitivity, at the scale of the entire landscape and of individual plants. We found strong effects of drought on marsh restoration success indicators. Plant colonization rate decreased dramatically over time in the first area to be completed, which experienced more drought conditions following construction. In contrast, it declined more slowly in the second area, which experienced more rainy years following construction. Both passive and active restoration showed strong differences across these areas and across dry and rainy years. Facilitation can sometimes improve conditions for later-arriving plants, but we found higher mortality of seedlings under existing vegetation than in bare areas. Thus, plant colonization may slow over time both due to increasing abiotic stress and through competition by early colonizers. Our findings lead to recommendations for climate adaptation strategies for tidal marsh restoration. Since we found that the first year following construction appeared to have the least stressful conditions, we recommend managers invest especially heavily in supporting plant colonization during this early window of opportunity. We also found plant size and species affected drought tolerance and recommend larger plant sizes and hardy species be incorporated into active tidal marsh restoration. Furthermore, we recommend planning for phased completion of restoration projects to generate a mosaic of areas with different trajectories and increase the probability that some areas will be completed during optimal climate conditions. We thus illustrate how an understanding of climate sensitivity of restoration trajectories can enhance restoration success.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70318","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606577","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 : 2025-07-12DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70338
Shannon Summers, Grace Shaw, Andrea Swei
{"title":"Incorporating phylogenetic metrics of biodiversity to refine Lyme disease risk models","authors":"Shannon Summers, Grace Shaw, Andrea Swei","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70338","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70338","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Biodiversity has been linked to reduced disease transmission through the dilution effect process. Traditional ecological measures of biological diversity, such as species richness, are most commonly used to test for the dilution effect. However, such metrics of species diversity do not consider the evolutionary relationship between species, which has important implications for host immune processes and disease transmission. Phylogenetic diversity incorporates the evolutionary relationships of a wildlife community. Host reservoir competency is partly determined by their capacity to mount effective immune responses, which may be phylogenetically determined. As a result, phylogenetic diversity may be a better metric to evaluate the relationship between host diversity and disease transmission, given that closely related species may have more similar pathogen competencies than distantly related ones. Few studies have examined the relationship between phylogenetic diversity and disease transmission, particularly in vector-borne transmission systems. This study seeks to quantify phylogenetic diversity in the western United States Lyme disease system, where the causal agent <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i> is vectored by the western black-legged tick, <i>Ixodes pacificus.</i> We empirically measured mammalian diversity and tick data over seven years. We collected data on ticks, host community, and infection prevalence with <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i> and constructed generalized linear mixed-effect models to evaluate the utility of phylogenetic diversity in predicting the prevalence of a tick-borne pathogen. We found that phylogenetic diversity metrics improved our disease prediction models. Predictions of the overall density and infection prevalence of ticks were improved by the addition of phylogenetic metrics, whereas the density of infected nymphs was solely predicted by a phylogenetic metric over traditional species diversity or richness. Our study found that phylogenetic diversity improves statistical predictions of the Lyme disease pathogen and entomological risk in the western United States and may be informative in other contexts and systems as well.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70338","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144606580","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 : 2025-07-11DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.70297
Holly S. Embke, Stephen R. Carpenter, T. Douglas Beard Jr., Giancarlo Coppola, Daniel A. Isermann, Eric J. Pedersen, Andrew L. Rypel, Christopher J. Sullivan, Tyler D. Tunney, M. Jake Vander Zanden
{"title":"Differential responses of coolwater fishes to a whole-lake reduction of a warmwater thermal guild","authors":"Holly S. Embke, Stephen R. Carpenter, T. Douglas Beard Jr., Giancarlo Coppola, Daniel A. Isermann, Eric J. Pedersen, Andrew L. Rypel, Christopher J. Sullivan, Tyler D. Tunney, M. Jake Vander Zanden","doi":"10.1002/ecs2.70297","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecs2.70297","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Climate change is transforming the ecology of lakes at a rapid pace, shifting some lakes toward warmwater-dominant habitats. As a result, warmwater fishes are increasingly becoming more prevalent in lakes where they already existed, altering the patterning and strength of species interactions. Understanding shifting species interactions (e.g., competition, predation), and the role of lake management in shaping these interactions, will be critical for lake stewardship in response to climate change. Here, we present results from an intensive 5-year experimental removal of ~285,000 warmwater fishes from a north-temperate lake. The goal of the experiment was to test whether warmwater fish reduction is effective for rewiring lake food webs to reverse undesirable conditions for coolwater species, leading to increased recruitment and abundance of coolwater fishes. Throughout the experiment, warmwater fishes were resilient to reductions, with biomass declines of 23% averaged across five species. Among coolwater fishes, the top predator walleye showed no biomass response, while yellow perch biomass increased by ~914%. Fish species biomass changes translated to food web shifts, including a yellow perch trophic position decline of 0.4, decreased zooplankton abundances, and increased zoobenthos abundances. Our results highlight differential species responses to a management action aimed at adapting to climate change. Despite similar thermal tolerances, two coolwater species responded differently to removal of warmwater fishes, highlighting the characteristics (e.g., life history strategies, adaptive capacity) that contribute to species resilience. Given the importance of biotic interactions, climate adaptation may need to go beyond a “one-size-fits-all” approach even when species have similar thermal tolerances.</p>","PeriodicalId":48930,"journal":{"name":"Ecosphere","volume":"16 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecs2.70297","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144598453","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}