EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-24DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08681
Cesar Herraiz, Pelayo Acevedo
{"title":"From patterns to predictions: a framework for the spatial epidemiology of wildlife diseases","authors":"Cesar Herraiz, Pelayo Acevedo","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08681","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08681","url":null,"abstract":"Wildlife diseases pose a significant threat to biodiversity conservation, public health, and livestock. Spatial epidemiology provides a robust framework to understand disease dynamics and guide policy and management. However, the rapid proliferation of spatial methods has largely occurred in isolation across disciplines, leaving the field without a unified framework that connects these approaches and clarifies their strengths, limitations, and applications. The spatial epidemiology workflow includes three main steps: 1) descriptive analysis of spatial patterns; 2) exploration of observed patterns through explicative analyses; and 3) prediction of pathogen distribution and spread. Descriptive analysis, such as disease mapping and clustering analysis, identifies spatial patterns and informs hypotheses about potential risk factors. Subsequently, explicative analyses can link pathogen presence to ecological or anthropogenic drivers and explain spatiotemporal dynamics. Drivers of pathogen transmission can be further understood through mechanistic models, ranging from population‐level Susceptible‐Infected‐Removed (SIR) frameworks to individual‐ or group‐based SIR approaches such as metapopulation and network models that can incorporate host behavior and social structure. Molecular epidemiology, through genetic variant identification and phylogenetic mapping, can identify outbreak origins and host linkages. Lastly, predictions of pathogen distribution and spread are enabled by ecological niche models and species distribution models, which project potential pathogen distributions based on ecological, geographical, and/or anthropogenic factors, and by mechanistic simulations that parameterize pathogen spread processes to predict expansion over space and time. System‐based simulations focus on population‐level dynamics, while agent‐based simulations incorporate individual‐level dynamics, offering detailed insights into pathogen spread and control measures. Consequently, the integration of descriptive analyses, explicative procedures, and predictive models provides a robust framework for addressing the challenges posed by wildlife diseases and developing management and control measures.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149048685","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-24DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08522
Loïc Sanchez, Jeanne Rolland, Adèle Barroil, Célia Bertrand, Agathe Blandin, Pierre Boissery, Thomas Bockel, Eric Charbonnel, Julie Deter, Régis Hocdé, Florian Holon, Jean‐Baptiste Juhel, Nicolas Loiseau, Bastien Macé, Anthony Maire, Stéphanie Manel, Marie Orblin, Franck Pichot, Jean‐Jacques Riutort, Lola Romant, Rémy Simide, Alice Valentini, Laure Velez, David Mouillot
{"title":"Human pressure, habitat heterogeneity and species traits jointly determine the level of dark diversity in coastal fish communities","authors":"Loïc Sanchez, Jeanne Rolland, Adèle Barroil, Célia Bertrand, Agathe Blandin, Pierre Boissery, Thomas Bockel, Eric Charbonnel, Julie Deter, Régis Hocdé, Florian Holon, Jean‐Baptiste Juhel, Nicolas Loiseau, Bastien Macé, Anthony Maire, Stéphanie Manel, Marie Orblin, Franck Pichot, Jean‐Jacques Riutort, Lola Romant, Rémy Simide, Alice Valentini, Laure Velez, David Mouillot","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08522","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding how anthropogenic pressures and environmental gradients shape coastal fish communities is a central question in biogeography and marine conservation. Yet, the set of species expected to occur at a site given ecological conditions but being absent – the so‐called dark diversity – has received far less attention than observed species, even if they hold key information about local extirpations and conservation effectiveness. Quantifying dark diversity in the sea is particularly challenging because many species are rare, cryptobenthic or mobile, while sampling effort is rarely standardized. Here we combined 930 environmental DNA (eDNA) samples collected at 401 sites along 2000 km of the French Mediterranean coast with fine‐scale mapping of habitats, anthropogenic pressures and protection levels. Using a Bayesian model of dark diversity affinity (DDA) that explicitly controls for sampling effort, we decomposed the correlates of species absences into site characteristics and species traits, separating dispersal‐related from sensitivity‐related signals. At the site level, fishing effort, marine traffic, and artificial habitats were associated with greater DDA, so a deficit of species, whereas protected areas and diverse natural habitats were associated with lower DDA, increasing the likelihood of observing more complete fish communities. At the species level, demersal and predator species, together with those bearing their eggs (e.g. many elasmobranchs) compared to species with demersal or pelagic eggs, exhibited the highest DDA, suggesting local extirpations linked to a combination of limited dispersal and higher sensitivity to cumulative pressures. Beyond the creation of marine protected areas, preserving habitat heterogeneity and mitigating coastal pressures therefore emerge as essential levers to limit the local erosion of fish biodiversity. More broadly, coupling eDNA with a sampling‐effort‐corrected DDA framework offers a transferable benchmark to evaluate where, and for which species, conservation efforts are most needed.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149048684","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-15DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08440
Peter Santema, Eunbi Kwon, Luke Eberhart‐Hertel, Mihai Valcu, Bart Kempenaers
{"title":"A global latitudinal decline in breeding site fidelity emerges from a single biome","authors":"Peter Santema, Eunbi Kwon, Luke Eberhart‐Hertel, Mihai Valcu, Bart Kempenaers","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08440","url":null,"abstract":"Species that breed in multiple years can either return to the same location to reproduce between seasons or disperse to a different location. Previous studies have shown that breeding site fidelity varies with species‐ and individual‐specific traits, but much of the observed variation remains unexplained. Breeding site fidelity may also vary latitudinally, given that key ecological factors relevant for breeding such as seasonality, resource availability, and habitat stability show strong latitudinal gradients. We examined variation in breeding site fidelity among shorebirds, using 189 estimates of local return rate from 120 populations of 55 species. We first show that there is a strong non‐linear latitudinal pattern in breeding site fidelity, with return rates being stable at lower latitudes and progressively decreasing towards higher latitudes. We then show that this effect is driven entirely by the tundra biome: in the tundra – but not in other biomes – return rates decrease sharply with latitude, resulting in overall lower return rates in the tundra compared to other biomes. We suggest that the high inter‐annual variability in local breeding conditions and short window for reproduction that characterize the tundra, especially at higher latitudes, favor breeding dispersal and hence lead to low site fidelity. Our findings show that an apparent global latitudinal trend in a life‐history trait can be driven by a single biome.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"90 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2026-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979690","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":"Climatic niche divergence and high-elevation adaptation promoted rapid diversification of Pimoa spiders in Pan-Himalaya","authors":"Xiaoqing Zhang, Zhe Zhao, Bingyue Zhu, Tongyao Jiang, Lili Shao, Stefano Mammola, Jiangni Li, Hao Xu, Bing Li, Shuqiang Li","doi":"10.1002/ecog.07821","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecog.07821","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The Pan-Himalayan region harbors exceptional biodiversity, yet the origins and underlying mechanisms driving this remarkable diversity remain poorly understood, especially among species-rich invertebrates. <i>Pimoa</i> spiders exhibit an intercontinental disjunct distribution across three major mountain regions: the Rockies, the Alps, and the Pan-Himalaya. Notably, in the Pan-Himalaya, <i>Pimoa</i> occurs at significantly higher elevations and exhibits far greater species diversity than in the other two regions, making it an ideal model for studying invertebrate diversification in this area. We integrated extensive genetic data (59 new transcriptomes and over 22 700 newly generated DNA sequences from 393 samples), along with distribution and climatic data, to explore the origins and drivers of the rich diversity of Asian <i>Pimoa</i> in the Pan-Himalaya. Our findings indicate that Pan-Himalayan <i>Pimoa</i> spiders originated from widely distributed ancestors in North America and Asia. During the Miocene, they dispersed southward from northeast Asia to south China and the Pan-Himalaya, experiencing rapid diversification. Climatic niche modeling and ancestral reconstruction analyses revealed niche divergence between Pan-Himalayan <i>Pimoa</i> and their ancestors, particularly in elevation and temperature. Gene selection analyses showed that high-elevation adaptations primarily involve enhanced energy metabolism, hypoxia resistance, and DNA repair mechanisms. These results suggest that ecological niche differentiation, high-elevation adaptation, and rapid diversification during the Miocene are crucial factors shaping the rich diversity of Asian <i>Pimoa</i> in the Pan-Himalaya. Our study, which integrates genetic, distributional, and climatic data, provides a novel framework for understanding invertebrate diversification in the Pan-Himalaya.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.07821","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148675031","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-02Epub Date: 2026-06-22DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08527
Mahallelah Shauer, Roberto Massaro, Olumide Temitope Julius, Franceso Zangaro, Marco Rainó, Francesca Marcucci, Valeria Specchia, Armando Cazzetta, Nicholas R. Record, Maurizio Pinna
{"title":"Linking species distribution models with population abundance to support adaptive fisheries management","authors":"Mahallelah Shauer, Roberto Massaro, Olumide Temitope Julius, Franceso Zangaro, Marco Rainó, Francesca Marcucci, Valeria Specchia, Armando Cazzetta, Nicholas R. Record, Maurizio Pinna","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08527","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08527","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding how environmental variability structures essential fish habitat (EFH) is central to managing keystone populations in dynamic marine ecosystems. Using nearly three decades of standardized survey data (1994–2021) from the Adriatic Sea, we present the first basin-scale, process-based framework linking estimated habitat suitability and abundance for the European anchovy <i>Engraulis encrasicolus</i>. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) species distribution models were coupled with quantile generalized additive models (QGAMs) to quantify spatiotemporal dynamics of EFH and identify environmental thresholds that regulate population expansion and contraction. Predicted habitat suitability was primarily driven by variation in bottom temperature and biotic interactions, with persistent core areas along the northern and central shelves. Quantile analyses revealed asymmetric abundance responses to environmental gradients, indicating stronger constraints under unfavorable hydrographic regimes. This integrative approach bridges potential habitat and population dynamics, offering transferable tools for climate-ready, ecosystem-based fisheries management.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.08527","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148862264","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-02Epub Date: 2026-06-24DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08561
Sergey Rosbakh, Sabine B. Rumpf, Stefan Dullinger
{"title":"Faster growing and more functionally diverse: global change alters functional trait composition of mountain plant communities in the European Alps","authors":"Sergey Rosbakh, Sabine B. Rumpf, Stefan Dullinger","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08561","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding how global change reshapes mountain plant communities is essential for predicting biodiversity and ecosystem function in a warming world. Using resurvey data from over 1400 non-forest vegetation plots across the European Alps, we show that community-weighted means of key functional traits capturing important dimensions of plant ecological strategies – specific leaf area, leaf nitrogen, and seed mass – have increased significantly over recent decades, reflecting a widespread shift towards more resource-acquisitive strategies. Yet trait–environment relationships along the elevational gradient have remained remarkably stable, pointing to persistent abiotic filtering. Contrary to expectations, plant height declined slightly, and increases in seed mass were mainly confined to lowland communities, likely due to edaphic constraints and reduced uphill dispersal by large herbivores, respectively. These findings indicate that global change is reshaping the functional structure of montane plant communities by shifting baseline trait composition while leaving the underlying elevational filters largely intact.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.08561","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148862358","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-02Epub Date: 2026-07-11DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08695
Mauro Gobbi, Barbara Valle, Mattia Brambilla, Duccio Tampucci, Marco Caccianiga
{"title":"Global threats, local opportunities: ice-related landforms provide refugia for high-elevation plants and arthropods","authors":"Mauro Gobbi, Barbara Valle, Mattia Brambilla, Duccio Tampucci, Marco Caccianiga","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08695","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecog.08695","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ice-related landforms in mountain areas have been hypothesized to play a key role in the survival of cold-adapted species threatened by climate change. However, our understanding of such landforms acting as refugia remains speculative. Here we analyse occurrence data, collected through a standardized sampling at 471 sampling points across the European Alps in relation to landform type and other environmental predictors, to identify the drivers of local presence for 209 high-elevation plant and arthropod species. Forty-three species show a negative response to temperature; the occurrence of debris-covered glaciers and rock glaciers weakens the negative relationship with temperature of nine of them (21%). This finding highlights the role of ice-related landforms for the survival of an important fraction of species threatened by climate change, although their role is taxon-related, being maximum for carabid beetles and not observed for spiders. Fine-scale landscape heterogeneity therefore plays a key role in mediating species responses to climate change. By integrating ecological and geographic perspectives, this study provides a framework for identifying refugia and assessing their biodiversity to target conservation measures for mountain areas worldwide.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.08695","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148415362","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-02Epub Date: 2026-07-20DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08590
Gonzalo E. Pinilla-Buitrago, Jamie M. Kass, Robert P. Anderson
{"title":"Extrapolation strategy matters when transferring ecological niche models: new visualization tools for informed decisions","authors":"Gonzalo E. Pinilla-Buitrago, Jamie M. Kass, Robert P. Anderson","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08590","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecog.08590","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ecological niche models (ENMs) are commonly used to predict species' potential distributions across space and time, allowing researchers and practitioners to assess invasion risk, estimate the impacts of future climate change, and reconstruct past distributions. These predictions, however, often require extrapolation into environmental conditions that fall outside the range of values used for model training (i.e. ‘non-analog environments'). Two primary strategies exist for extrapolating into new conditions for some modeling algorithms: unconstrained extrapolation (allowing the modeled response curve to maintain its trajectory) and clamping (holding the response constant at the values observed at the limits of the training data). As these can lead to considerable differences in model predictions, it is important to inspect the behavior of modeled responses under different extrapolation strategies, which is rarely done in ENM studies. Such examination can help promote biologically realistic model transfers, for example by avoiding unconstrained extrapolation when the relevant tail of the modeled response has a sharply increasing trend. Here, we present a proposed workflow and new visualization tools to guide researchers in choosing appropriate extrapolation strategies, including plots for marginal response curves and non-analog pixel densities. As an illustration, we used this workflow and tools to compare extrapolation strategies for two hindcast scenarios at the Last Glacial Maximum (~ 21 kya) for the black-eared mouse <i>Peromyscus melanotis</i> in Mexico, which currently occurs in montane forests. Making extrapolation choices individually for each tail per variable (‘custom clamping') helped avoid unrealistically high suitability predictions for non-analog environments. This study emphasizes the importance of both inspecting response curves and assessing the total area with non-analog conditions. By making these choices by variable and tail – a first for ENMs – this study and associated code empower researchers to understand how individual extrapolation strategies affect results and to make decisions that should lead to more realistic predictions.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.08590","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148564726","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}
EcographyPub Date : 2026-09-02Epub Date: 2026-06-26DOI: 10.1002/ecog.08500
Kuan-Yu Chen, Jonathan Peereman, J. Aaron Hogan, Teng-Chiu Lin
{"title":"Topography constrains the climatic response of treeline migration in Taiwan's subalpine forests","authors":"Kuan-Yu Chen, Jonathan Peereman, J. Aaron Hogan, Teng-Chiu Lin","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08500","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Treelines are moving upslope, but the rates and drivers differ among different regions, globally. Many studies have examined the relationship between treeline movement and climate change, particularly rising temperature, while the role of topographical factors has received much less attention, despite the longstanding recognition of its importance. We examined treeline dynamics from 1980 to 2021 in two mountain ranges of Taiwan, the Yushan Mountain Range (YMR) and the Central Mountain Range (CMR), in relation to topography and climate using multi-temporal aerial imagery and U-Net deep-learning segmentation. Treeline elevation advanced approximately 60 m on the two mountains and was accompanied by forest area expansion of 197 ha in the YMR and 158 ha in the CMR, which was mainly due to upward forest movement, not tree densification. Elevation, increases in growing-season temperature and minimum temperature, and growing-season precipitation were important predictors of forest area expansion. In contrast, elevation, increases in growing-season precipitation and maximum temperature, and slope steepness were key predictors of treeline movement. Treeline upslope migration was approximately two times greater during the 1980–2001 period (2.1 in the YMR and 1.6 m year<sup>−1</sup> in the CMR) compared to the 2001–2021 period (1.0 in the YMR and 0.75 m year<sup>−1</sup> in the CMR), likely because forests already occupied most of the suitable habitat, and topographic factors constrained upward movement. Our study highlights the importance of accounting for both climatic and topographic factors in understanding treeline responses to climate change. In addition, our results indicate that treeline advance in mountain island forests, such as those in Taiwan, may be approaching an elevational limit, above which further upward migration is likely to exhibit a more muted response to further warming.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.08500","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148862552","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":"Synergistic mechanisms foster declines in native fish community stability following the introduction of non-native species","authors":"Chengzong Tian, Mengzhen Xu, Congcong Wang, Wei Xin, Xiongdong Zhou, Jorge García-Girón","doi":"10.1002/ecog.08708","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecog.08708","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Non-native species introductions profoundly alter freshwater communities, yet the mechanisms by which non-native fishes affect native community stability remain unclear. Using a multi-decadal dataset on fish community composition and abundance collected across France, we quantified native community stability and decomposed this metric into its main constituents: population variability and synchrony. We examined how non-native fish richness, eco-evolutionary features of non-native and native fishes, and environmental gradients influence the two components of community stability. Our results revealed that increased non-native richness elevated population variability by expanding interspecific functional trait divergence and through persistent disruptive effects on native species resulting from intensified interspecific competition. At the same time, the presence of non-native species amplified temporal synchrony through a contraction in phylogenetic distances of resident communities. Population variability was further regulated by environmental gradients, whereas synchrony was unrelated to the environmental template. In summary, declines in community stability associated with non-native fishes' stem from the synergistic interplay of multiple mechanisms: increased richness of non-native fish species fostered a functional reorganization of native communities that amplified population fluctuations, whereas reduced interspecific phylogenetic distances enhanced temporal synchrony, with environmental gradients exerting additional modulation on these relationships. The study highlights that non-native fishes undermine freshwater community stability through interacting functional, phylogenetic and environmental mechanisms, providing insights for addressing biodiversity changes associated with the establishment and spread of non-native species.</p>","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"2026 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ecog.08708","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148408925","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}