Ecological Applications最新文献

{"title":"The impact of plant-derived fire management prescriptions on fire-responsive bird species.","authors":"Rhys Makdissi, Simon J Verdon, James Q Radford, Andrew F Bennett, Michael F Clarke","doi":"10.1002/eap.3036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.3036","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In fire-prone regions, the occurrence of some faunal species is contingent on the presence of resources that arise through post-fire plant succession. Through planned burning, managers can alter resource availability and aim to provide the conditions required to promote biodiversity. Understanding how species occurrence changes at different spatial and temporal scales after fire is essential to achieve this goal. However, many fire prescriptions are guided primarily by the responses of fire-sensitive plants when setting tolerable fire intervals. This approach assumes that maintaining floristic diversity will satisfy the requirements of fauna. We surveyed bird species in two semi-arid vegetation types across an environmental gradient in south-eastern Australia. We conducted four surveys at each of 253 sites across a 75-year chronosequence of time since fire and used generalized additive mixed models to examine changes in the occurrence of birds in response to time since fire. Model predictions were compared to plant-derived fire prescriptions currently guiding fire management in the region. Time since fire was a significant predictor for 18 of 28 species modeled, in at least one vegetation type, over a gradient of 1.3° of latitude. We detected considerable variation in the responses of some species, both between vegetation types and geographically within a vegetation type. Our evaluation of plant-derived fire prescriptions suggests that the intervals considered acceptable for maintaining floristic diversity may not be sustainable for populations of birds requiring longer unburnt vegetation, with 6 of the 12 species assessed attaining a mean occurrence probability of 20.3% by the minimum tolerable fire interval, and 57.3% by the maximum tolerable fire interval, in their respective vegetation types. Our findings highlight the potential vulnerability of fire-responsive bird species if fire prescriptions are applied in a manner that fails to account for the slow development of habitat resources needed by some species, and the variation detected within the responses of species. This highlights the need for species-specific data collected at an appropriate spatial scale to inform management plans.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142332715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Tree diversity across the Minneapolis‐St. Paul Metropolitan Area in relation to climate and social vulnerability","authors":"Adrienne B. Keller, Leslie A. Brandt, Jeannine Cavender‐Bares, Joseph F. Knight, Sarah E. Hobbie","doi":"10.1002/eap.3034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.3034","url":null,"abstract":"Urban tree canopy cover is often unequally distributed across cities such that more socially vulnerable neighborhoods often have lower tree canopy cover than less socially vulnerable neighborhoods. However, how the diversity and composition of the urban canopy affect the nature of social‐ecological benefits (and burdens), including the urban forest's vulnerability to climate change, remains underexamined. Here, we synthesize tree inventories developed by multiple organizations and present a species‐specific, geolocated database of more than 600,000 urban trees across the 7‐county Minneapolis‐St. Paul (MSP) metropolitan area in the Upper Midwest of the United States. We find that tree diversity across the MSP is variable yet dominated by a few species (e.g., <jats:italic>Fraxinus pennsylvanica</jats:italic>, <jats:italic>Acer platanoides</jats:italic>, and <jats:italic>Gleditsia triacanthos</jats:italic>), contributing to the vulnerability of the MSP urban forest to future climate change and disturbances. In contrast to tree canopy cover, tree diversity was not well predicted by socioeconomic or demographic factors. However, our analysis identified areas where both climate and social vulnerability are high. Our results add to a growing body of literature emphasizing the importance of considering how complex and interacting social and ecological factors drive urban forest diversity and composition when pursuing management objectives.","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142276857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Modeling cheatgrass distribution, abundance, and response to climate change as a function of soil microclimate","authors":"Tyson J. Terry, Stuart P. Hardegree, Peter B. Adler","doi":"10.1002/eap.3028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.3028","url":null,"abstract":"Exotic annual grass invasions in water‐limited systems cause degradation of native plant and animal communities and increased fire risk. The life history of invasive annual grasses allows for high sensitivity to interannual variability in weather. Current distribution and abundance models derived from remote sensing, however, provide only a coarse understanding of how species respond to weather, making it difficult to anticipate how climate change will affect vulnerability to invasion. Here, we derived germination covariates (rate sums) from mechanistic germination and soil microclimate models to quantify the favorability of soil microclimate for cheatgrass (<jats:italic>Bromus tectorum</jats:italic> L.) establishment and growth across 30 years at 2662 sites across the sagebrush steppe system in the western United States. Our approach, using four bioclimatic covariates alone, predicted cheatgrass distribution with accuracy comparable to previous models fit using many years of remotely‐sensed imagery. Accuracy metrics from our out‐of‐sample testing dataset indicate that our model predicted distribution well (72% overall accuracy) but explained patterns of abundance poorly (<jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> = 0.22). Climatic suitability for cheatgrass presence depended on both spatial (mean) and temporal (annual anomaly) variation of fall and spring rate sums. Sites that on average have warm and wet fall soils and warm and wet spring soils (high rate sums during these periods) were predicted to have a high abundance of cheatgrass. Interannual variation in fall soil conditions had a greater impact on cheatgrass presence and abundance than spring conditions. Our model predicts that climate change has already affected cheatgrass distribution with suitable microclimatic conditions expanding 10%–17% from 1989 to 2019 across all aspects at low‐ to mid‐elevation sites, while high‐ elevation sites (&gt;2100 m) remain unfavorable for cheatgrass due to cold spring and fall soils.","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142236272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Fertility and tillage intensity affect weed community diversity and functional structure in long-term organic systems","authors":"Jake Allen,&nbsp;Uriel D. Menalled,&nbsp;Guillaume Adeux,&nbsp;Christopher J. Pelzer,&nbsp;Sandra Wayman,&nbsp;Ashley B. Jernigan,&nbsp;Stéphane Cordeau,&nbsp;Antonio DiTommaso,&nbsp;Matthew R. Ryan","doi":"10.1002/eap.3029","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3029","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Knowledge of how agricultural management interacts with weed seed banks and emergent weed communities is crucial for proactive weed management. Though studies have detailed how differences in disturbance and nutrient applications between organic and conventional herbicide-based systems affect weed communities, few have focused on these same factors in contrasting organic systems. This study assessed the seed banks and emergent weed communities from the most recent crop rotation cycle (2017–2022) of a long-term experiment, which compared four organic grain and forage cropping systems differing in nutrient inputs and soil disturbance. The high fertility (HF) system received high-rate nutrient applications, low fertility (LF) received low-rate applications, enhanced weed management (EWM) focused on weed control through frequent soil disturbance, and reduced tillage (RT) prioritized soil health with less intense or frequent soil disturbance. Soil samples for greenhouse germination assays were collected at the beginning (2017) and end (2022) of the rotation to explore how these four systems influenced seed bank dynamics over time. Weed community biomass was also sampled in each crop during this time. Treatment effects on weed abundance, taxonomic diversity, and community-weighted means and functional dispersion of weed traits were analyzed with generalized mixed-effect models. The RT system had the highest weed seed bank taxonomic diversity, and EWM had the lowest. RT and LF had higher functional dispersion of traits than HF in the seed bank. Weed seed bank communities in HF and RT were characterized by short, small-seeded, and early germinating weed species. However, seed banks were also labile: Differences between systems in seed density and all other mean trait values were dependent on the crop, which preceded seed bank sampling. Likewise, differences among emergent weed communities in the four systems depended on an interaction between crop species and their planting year. Results suggest that resource availability and intensity of disturbance act as weed community assembly filters in organic cropping systems. Organic growers seeking to design systems that balance weed management and production goals can use relatively low soil disturbance and nutrient application to increase weed community taxonomic or functional diversity without necessarily increasing weed biomass or seed bank density.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3029","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142170565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Ecological success of no-take marine protected areas: Using population dynamics theory to inform a global meta-analysis","authors":"Jess K. Hopf,&nbsp;Victoria Quennessen,&nbsp;Jacob Ridgway,&nbsp;Caren Barceló,&nbsp;Fabio Prior Caltabellotta,&nbsp;Sarah Farnsworth Hayroyan,&nbsp;Derek Garcia,&nbsp;Montana McLeod,&nbsp;Sarah E. Lester,&nbsp;Kerry Nickols,&nbsp;Mallarie Yeager,&nbsp;J. Wilson White","doi":"10.1002/eap.3027","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3027","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Adaptively managing marine protected areas (MPAs) requires accurately assessing whether established MPAs are achieving their goals of protecting and conserving biomass, especially for harvested populations. Ecological MPA assessments commonly compare inside of the MPA to a reference point outside of and/or before implementation (i.e., calculating “response ratios”). Yet, MPAs are not simple ecological experiments; by design, protected populations interact with those outside, and population dynamic responses can be nonlinear. This complicates assessment interpretations. Here, we used a two-patch population model to explore how MPA response ratios (outside–inside, before–after, and before–after-control-impact [BACI]) for fished populations behave under different conditions, like whether the population is receiving a sustainable larval supply or if it is declining despite protection from harvest. We then conducted a Bayesian evaluation of MPA effects on fish and invertebrate populations based on data collected from 82 published studies on 264 no-take MPAs worldwide, using the results of an earlier global meta-analysis as priors. We considered the effects of calculating different summary metrics on these results, drawing on the theoretical insights from our population model as a comparative framework. We demonstrate that not all response ratio comparison types provide the same information: For example, outside–inside and BACI comparisons can fail to detect population decline within MPAs, whereas before–after comparisons likely detect that pattern. Considering these limitations, we nonetheless found that MPAs globally are producing positive outcomes, with on average greater biomass, density, and organism size within their boundaries than reference sites. However, only a small portion of studies (18 of 82) provided the temporal data necessary to determine that protection, on average, has led to increased abundance of populations within MPAs over time. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the underlying system dynamics when assessing MPA effects. Assuming that large outside–inside or BACI response ratios always reflect large and net positive conservation effects may lead to misleading conclusions, we recommend that: (1) when assessing specific MPA effects, empirical findings be considered alongside theoretical knowledge relevant to that MPA system, and (2) management should respond to the local conditions and outcomes, rather than a blanket expectation for positive MPA effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142170497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Thinning followed by slash burning enhances growth and reduces vulnerability to drought for Pinus nigra","authors":"Lena Vilà-Vilardell,&nbsp;Teresa Valor,&nbsp;Rebecca Hood-Nowotny,&nbsp;Katharina Schott,&nbsp;Míriam Piqué,&nbsp;Pere Casals","doi":"10.1002/eap.3030","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3030","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Increasingly frequent severe drought events are pushing Mediterranean forests to unprecedented responses. Lack of management leads to dense forests that are highly susceptible to drought stress, potentially resulting in extensive dieback and increased vulnerability to other disturbances. Forest treatments like thinning and slash burning reduce competition for resources and have the potential to enhance tree growth and vigor and minimize tree vulnerability to drought. Here, we used tree rings to study the growth and physiological response of black pine (<i>Pinus nigra</i>) to drought in northeastern Spain under different treatments, including two thinning intensities (light and heavy, with 10% and 40% basal area reduction, respectively) followed by two understory treatments (clearing alone and in combination with slash burning), resulting in a research design of four treatments plus an untreated control with three replicates. Specifically, we studied basal area increment (BAI), resilience indices, and intrinsic water use efficiency (iWUE) using carbon and oxygen isotope composition (δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O in tree-ring cellulose) before and after treatments. Our results showed that BAI and resistance to drought increased in the heavy-thin (burned and unburned) and light-thin burned units. Resilience increased in the burned units regardless of the thinning intensity, while recovery was not affected by treatment. Slash burning additionally increased BAI in the light-thin and resistance and resilience in the heavy-thin units compared with clearing alone. The stable isotope analysis revealed a minor effect of treatments on δ¹³C and δ¹⁸O. No change in iWUE among treatments was presumably linked to a proportional increase in both net CO₂ assimilation and stomatal conductance, which particularly increased in the heavy-thin (burned and unburned) and light-thin burned units, indicating that these trees were the least affected by drought. This study shows that management approaches aimed at reducing wildfire hazard can also increase the vigor of dominant trees under drought stress. By reducing competition both from the overstory and the understory, thinning followed by clearing alone or in combination with slash burning promotes tree growth and vigor and increases its resistance and resilience to drought.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142165964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Quantifying the impact of habitat modifications on species behavior and mortality: A case study of tropical tuna","authors":"Amaël Dupaix,&nbsp;Laurent Dagorn,&nbsp;Jean-Louis Deneubourg,&nbsp;Manuela Capello","doi":"10.1002/eap.3018","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3018","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Ecosystems and biodiversity across the world are being altered by human activities. Habitat modification and degradation are among the most important drivers of biodiversity loss. These modifications can have an impact on species behavior, which can, in turn, impact their mortality. While several studies have investigated the impacts of habitat degradation and fragmentation on terrestrial species, the extent to which habitat modifications affect the behavior and fitness of marine species is still largely unknown, particularly for pelagic species. Since the early 1990s, industrial purse seine vessels targeting tuna have started deploying artificial floating objects—Drifting Fish Aggregating Devices (DFADs)—in all oceans to increase tuna catchability. Since then, the massive deployment of DFADs has modified tuna surface habitat, by increasing the density of floating objects, with potential impacts on tuna associative behavior and mortality. In this study, we investigate these impacts for yellowfin tuna in the Indian Ocean. Using an individual-based model based on a correlated random walk and newly available data on DFAD densities, we quantify for the first time how the increase in floating object density, due to DFAD use, affects the percentage of time that yellowfin tuna spend associated, which, in turn, directly impacts their availability to fishers and fishing mortality. This modification of tuna associative behavior could also have indirect impacts on their fitness, by retaining tuna in areas detrimental to them or disrupting schooling behavior. Hence, there is an urgent need to further investigate DFAD impacts on tuna behavior, in particular, taking social behavior into account, and to continue regulation efforts on DFAD use and monitoring.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142134543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Scale-dependent population drivers inform avian management in a declining saline lake ecosystem","authors":"Aimee M. Van Tatenhove,&nbsp;John Neill,&nbsp;Russell E. Norvell,&nbsp;Erica F. Stuber,&nbsp;Clark S. Rushing","doi":"10.1002/eap.3021","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3021","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Shrinking saline lakes provide irreplaceable habitat for waterbird species globally. Disentangling the effects of wetland habitat loss from other drivers of waterbird population dynamics is critical for protecting these species in the face of unprecedented changes to saline lake ecosystems, ideally through decision-making frameworks that identify effective management options and their potential outcomes. Here, we develop a framework to assess the effects of hypothesized population drivers and identify potential future outcomes of plausible management scenarios on a saline lake-reliant waterbird species. We use 36 years of monitoring data to quantify the effects of environmental conditions on the population size of a regionally important breeding colony of American white pelicans (<i>Pelecanus erythrorhynchos</i>) at Great Salt Lake, Utah, US, then forecast colony abundance under various management scenarios. We found that low lake levels, which allow terrestrial predators access to the colony, are probable drivers of recent colony declines. Without local management efforts, we predicted colony abundance could likely decline approximately 37.3% by 2040, although recent colony observations suggest population declines may be more extreme than predicted. Results from our population projection scenarios suggested that proactive approaches to preventing predator colony access and reversing saline lake declines are crucial for the persistence of the Great Salt Lake pelican colony. Increasing wetland habitat and preventing predator access to the colony together provided the most effective protection, increasing abundance 145.4% above projections where no management actions are taken, according to our population projection scenarios. Given the importance of water levels to the persistence of island-nesting colonial species, proactive approaches to reversing saline lake declines could likely benefit pelicans as well as other avian species reliant on these unique ecosystems.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142114959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Landscape change and alien invasions drive shifts in native lady beetle communities over a century","authors":"Kayla I. Perry,&nbsp;Christie A. Bahlai,&nbsp;Timothy J. Assal,&nbsp;Christopher B. Riley,&nbsp;Katherine J. Turo,&nbsp;Leo Taylor,&nbsp;James Radl,&nbsp;Yvan A. Delgado de la flor,&nbsp;Frances S. Sivakoff,&nbsp;Mary M. Gardiner","doi":"10.1002/eap.3024","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3024","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Understanding causes of insect population declines is essential for the development of successful conservation plans, but data limitations restrict assessment across spatial and temporal scales. Museum records represent a source of historical data that can be leveraged to investigate temporal trends in insect communities. Native lady beetle decline has been attributed to competition with established alien species and landscape change, but the relative importance of these drivers is difficult to measure with short-term field-based studies. We assessed distribution patterns for native lady beetles over 12 decades using museum records, and evaluated the relative importance of alien species and landscape change as factors contributing to changes in communities. We compiled occurrence records for 28 lady beetle species collected in Ohio, USA, from 1900 to 2018. Taxonomic beta-diversity was used to evaluate changes in lady beetle community composition over time. To evaluate the relative influence of temporal, spatial, landscape, and community factors on the captures of native species, we constructed negative binomial generalized additive models. We report evidence of declines in captures for several native species. Importantly, the timing, severity, and drivers of these documented declines were species-specific. Land cover change was associated with declines in captures, particularly for <i>Coccinella novemnotata</i> which declined prior to the arrival of alien species. Following the establishment and spread of alien lady beetles, processes of species loss/gain and turnover shifted communities toward the dominance of a few alien species beginning in the 1980s. Because factors associated with declines in captures were highly species-specific, this emphasizes that mechanisms driving population losses cannot be generalized even among closely related native species. These findings also indicate the importance of museum holdings and the analysis of species-level data when studying temporal trends in insect populations.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3024","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142082629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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":"Linking changes in landscape structure to insect herbivory in forest edges and interiors of Atlantic Forest remnants","authors":"José Carlos Morante-Filho,&nbsp;Clarisse Dias Cruz,&nbsp;Maíra Benchimol,&nbsp;Fabrine Vitória Almeida,&nbsp;Rosilene Aparecida de Oliveira","doi":"10.1002/eap.3026","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3026","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Human activities have triggered profound changes in natural landscapes, resulting in species loss and disruption of pivotal ecological interactions such as insect herbivory. This antagonistic interaction is affected by complex pathways (e.g., abundance of herbivores and predators, plant chemical defenses, and resource availability), but the knowledge regarding how forest loss and fragmentation affect insect herbivory in human-modified tropical landscapes still remains poorly understood. In this context, we assessed multi-pathways by which changes in landscape structure likely influence insect herbivory in 20 Atlantic forest fragments in Brazil. Using path analysis, we estimated the direct effects of forest cover and forest edge density, and the indirect effect via canopy openness, number of understory plants and phenolic compounds, on leaf damage in understory plants located in the edge and interior of forest fragments. In particular, plants located in forest edges experienced greater leaf damage than interior ones. We observed that landscape edge density exerted a positive and direct effect on leaf damage in plants sampled at the edge of forest fragments. Our findings also indicated that forest loss and increase of edge density led to an increase in the canopy opening in the forest interior, which causes a reduction in the number of understory plants and, consequently, an increase in leaf damage. In addition, we detected that phenolic compounds negatively influence leaf damage in forest interior plants. Given the increasing forest loss in tropical regions, in which forest fragments become stranded in highly deforested, edge-dominated and degraded landscapes, our study highlights the pervasive enhancement in insect herbivory in remaining forest fragments—especially along forest edges and canopy gaps in the forest interior. As a result, increased herbivory is likely to affect forest regeneration and accelerate the ecological meltdown processes in these highly deforested and disturbed anthropogenic landscapes.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142082630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"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}