Ecological Applications最新文献

{"title":"Dominant species drove the balance between biodiversity and productivity in mown grasslands under nitrogen fertilization","authors":"Xiaojing Zhang,&nbsp;Guojiao Yang,&nbsp;Yu Ning,&nbsp;Liangchao Jiang,&nbsp;Xingguo Han,&nbsp;Xiao-Tao Lü","doi":"10.1002/eap.70009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70009","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Annual mowing, a main management strategy of grasslands, would reduce primary productivity, though might increase plant diversity. Nitrogen (N) fertilization is widely used to raise productivity in global pastures, but always results in biodiversity losses. It is thus a challenge to balance the divergent impacts of mowing and N fertilization on biodiversity and productivity. Here, we examine 9-year responses of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and species richness to mowing across a N addition gradient (0, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 g N m⁻² year⁻¹) in a temperate steppe. The negative impacts of mowing on ANPP were exacerbated over time under N fertilization with rates at or lower than 10 g N m⁻² year⁻¹ but were reversed by higher N fertilization rates. Such responses of community-level ANPP were largely driven by the dominant grass, <i>Leymus chinensis</i> (L.c.), instead of species richness. Nitrogen fertilization reversed the negative impacts of mowing on the contribution of L.c. to community-level production over time, with less time being needed for the critical reverse under higher fertilization rates. A “win–win” pattern of biodiversity and production could be reached in the mown grasslands under the N fertilization rate of 5 g N m⁻² year⁻¹, as evidenced by no temporal variation in both production and biodiversity over time in comparison with grasslands under ambient conditions (unmown and non-fertilization). Our results highlight the role of dominant species instead of species diversity in driving the fundamental functioning of mown grasslands and thus facilitate adaptive grassland management.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143380758","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":"Replacing native grazers with livestock influences arthropods to have implications for ecosystem functions and disease","authors":"Pronoy Baidya,&nbsp;Shamik Roy,&nbsp;Jalmesh Karapurkar,&nbsp;Sumanta Bagchi","doi":"10.1002/eap.3091","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3091","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Grazing by large mammalian herbivores influences ecosystem structure and functions through its impacts on vegetation and soil, as well as by the influence on other animals such as arthropods. As livestock progressively replace native grazers around the world, it is pertinent to ask whether they have comparable influence over arthropods, or not. We use a replicated landscape-level, long-term grazer-exclusion experiment (14 years) to address how ground-dwelling arthropods respond to such a change in grazing regime where livestock replace native grazers in the cold deserts of the Trans-Himalayan ecosystem of northern India. We analyze spatial and temporal variation in the abundance of 25,604 arthropods sampled using pitfall traps across 2765 trap-days through the duration of the growing season spanning spring, summer, and autumn. These were from 88 operational taxonomic units covering six orders from 33 families (ants, wasps, bees, ticks and mites, spiders, grasshoppers, and beetles). We find that grazer assemblage—whether livestock or native herbivores—had a strong influence on both vegetation and arthropods. Partial redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that 53.6% of the spatial and temporal variation in arthropod communities could be explained by grazing and by grazer assemblage identity, alongside covariation with vegetation composition and soil variables. Structural equation models revealed that grazing and grazer assemblage identity have direct effects on arthropods, as well as indirect effects that are mediated through vegetation. Importantly, spiders (predators) were less abundant under livestock, whereas grasshoppers (leaf eaters) and ticks and mites (parasitic disease vectors) were more abundant, compared with native grazers. Reduction in spiders can fundamentally alter material and energy flow through the cascading effects of losing predators, and an abundance of grasshoppers may even contribute to vegetation degradation that is often associated with livestock. Parallelly, increases in ticks and mites lead to concerns over vector-borne disease that require planned interventions to align animal husbandry with One Health. Thus, losing native grazers to livestock expansion can have wide-ranging repercussions via arthropods. This may not only affect ecosystem structure and functions, but also offer challenges and opportunities to mitigate risks from vector-borne disease.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143069894","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":"Predicting the impact of targeted fence removal on connectivity in a migratory ecosystem","authors":"Imogen A. Schwandner,&nbsp;Thomas A. Morrison,&nbsp;J. Grant C. Hopcraft,&nbsp;Jake Wall,&nbsp;Lacey Hughey,&nbsp;Randall B. Boone,&nbsp;Joseph O. Ogutu,&nbsp;Andrew F. Jakes,&nbsp;Shem C. Kifugo,&nbsp;Campaign Limo,&nbsp;Stephen Ndambuki Mwiu,&nbsp;Vasco Nyaga,&nbsp;Han Olff,&nbsp;Gordon O. Ojwang,&nbsp;Wilson Sairowua,&nbsp;Jackson Sasine,&nbsp;Jully S. Senteu,&nbsp;Daniel Sopia,&nbsp;Jeffrey Worden,&nbsp;Jared A. Stabach","doi":"10.1002/eap.3094","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3094","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Fencing is one of the most widely utilized tools for reducing human-wildlife conflict in agricultural landscapes. However, the increasing global footprint of fencing exceeds millions of kilometers and has unintended consequences for wildlife, including habitat fragmentation, movement restriction, entanglement, and mortality. Here, we present a novel and quantitative approach to prioritize fence removal within historic migratory pathways of white-bearded wildebeest (<i>Connochaetes taurinus</i>) across Kenya's Greater Masai Mara Ecosystem. Our approach first assesses historic and contemporary landscape connectivity of wildebeest between seasonal ranges by incorporating two sets of GPS tracking data and fine-scale fencing data. We then predict connectivity gains from simulated fence removal and evaluate the impact of different corridor widths and locations on connectivity and removal costs derived from locally implemented interventions. Within the study system, we found that modest levels of fence removal resulted in substantial connectivity gains (39%–54% improvement in connectivity for 15–140 km of fence line removed). By identifying the most suitable corridor site, we show that strategically placed narrow corridors outperform larger, more expensive interventions. Our results demonstrate how and where targeted fence removal can enhance connectivity for wildlife. Our framework can aid in identifying suitable and cost-effective corridor restoration sites to guide decision-makers on the removal of fences and other linear barriers. Our approach is transferable to other landscapes where the removal or modification of fences or similar barriers is a feasible mitigation strategy to restore habitat and migratory connectivity.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11771689/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143048547","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":"Radio-tracking urban breeding birds: The importance of native vegetation","authors":"Gábor Seress,&nbsp;Krisztina Sándor,&nbsp;Veronika Bókony,&nbsp;Boglárka Bukor,&nbsp;Katalin Hubai,&nbsp;András Liker","doi":"10.1002/eap.3095","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3095","url":null,"abstract":"<p>As urban areas continue to expand globally, a deeper understanding of the functioning of urban green spaces is crucial for maintaining habitats that effectively support wildlife within our cities. Cities typically harbor a wide variety of nonnative vegetation, providing limited support for insect populations. The resulting scarcity of arthropods has been increasingly linked to adverse effects at higher trophic levels, such as the reduced reproductive success of insectivorous birds in urban environments. However, the responses by which urban breeding birds cope with the challenges of food limitation remain largely unexplored. To address this knowledge gap, in a Central European city, we employed radiotelemetry tracking and real-time observations on urban-breeding female great tits' habitat use, combined with detailed plant surveys and video recordings of nestlings' diet. This integrated approach enabled us to establish direct links between great tits' foraging behavior, vegetation preferences, and nestling diet. We found that besides tree canopies, great tits also frequently foraged on the ground and that the availability of bird feeders notably affected birds' habitat use. Foraging great tits generally avoided nonnative plants, particularly broadleaved species. When searching for nestling food, great tits were most time-efficient on conifers, albeit these trees provided low amounts of caterpillars (a preferred prey type). Great tits were more likely to forage on and deliver nestling food from large native trees and foraged less on and collected fewer prey items from the most abundant tree species. Our results underscore the importance of several factors that may help improve habitat quality for urban insectivorous birds, with preserving large trees and increasing diverse native vegetation being key elements in this endeavor.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11754724/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143025757","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":"A probabilistic approach to estimating timber harvest location","authors":"Jakub Truszkowski,&nbsp;Roi Maor,&nbsp;Raquib Bin Yousuf,&nbsp;Subhodip Biswas,&nbsp;Caspar Chater,&nbsp;Peter Gasson,&nbsp;Scot McQueen,&nbsp;Marigold Norman,&nbsp;Jade Saunders,&nbsp;John Simeone,&nbsp;Naren Ramakrishnan,&nbsp;Alexandre Antonelli,&nbsp;Victor Deklerck","doi":"10.1002/eap.3077","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3077","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Determining the harvest location of timber is crucial to enforcing international regulations designed to protect natural resources and to tackle illegal logging and associated trade in forest products. Stable isotope ratio analysis (SIRA) can be used to verify claims of timber harvest location by matching levels of naturally occurring stable isotopes within wood tissue to location-specific ratios predicted from reference data (“isoscapes”). However, overly simple models for predicting isoscapes have so far limited the confidence in derived predictions of timber provenance. In addition, most use cases have limited themselves to differentiating between a small number of predetermined location options. Here, we present a new analytic pipeline for SIRA data, designed to predict the harvest location of a wood sample in a continuous, arbitrarily large area. We use Gaussian processes to robustly estimate isoscapes from reference wood samples, and overlay with species distribution data to compute, for every pixel in the study area, the probability of it being the harvest location of the examined timber. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that this approach is applied to determining timber provenance, providing probabilistic results rather than a binary outcome. Additionally, we include an active learning tool to identify locations from which additional reference data would maximize the improvement to model performance, allowing for optimisation of subsequent field efforts. We demonstrate our approach on a set of SIRA data from seven oak species in the United States as a proof of concept. Our method can determine the harvest location up to within 520 km from the true origin of the sample and outperforms the state-of-the-art approach. Incorporating species distribution data improves accuracy by up to 36%. The future sampling locations proposed by our tool decrease the variance of resultant isoscapes by up to 86% more than sampling the same number of locations at random. Accurate prediction of harvest location has the potential to transform worldwide efforts to enforce anti-deforestation legislation and protect natural resources.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3077","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142992188","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":"The effectiveness of harvest for limiting wildlife disease: Insights from 20 years of chronic wasting disease in Wyoming","authors":"Wynne E. Moss,&nbsp;Justin Binfet,&nbsp;L. Embere Hall,&nbsp;Samantha E. Allen,&nbsp;William H. Edwards,&nbsp;Jessica E. Jennings-Gaines,&nbsp;Paul C. Cross","doi":"10.1002/eap.3089","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3089","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Effective, practical options for managing disease in wildlife populations are limited, especially after diseases become established. Removal strategies (e.g., hunting or culling) are used to control wildlife diseases across a wide range of systems, despite conflicting evidence of their effectiveness. This is especially true for chronic wasting disease (CWD), an untreatable, fatal prion disease threatening cervid populations across multiple countries, for which recreational harvest has been suggested as an important disease control strategy. Using observational data to evaluate whether harvest effectively limits CWD prevalence has been difficult because statistical relationships between harvest and disease prevalence can arise from a causal effect of harvest (i.e., harvest's impacts on prevalence via changes in transmission or demographic structure) or from a number of alternative mechanisms. For instance, correlations between harvest and disease prevalence can also be driven by disease's impacts on population size and harvest (i.e., reverse causality) or from confounding variables (e.g., habitat or geographic location) that impact both harvest rates and disease prevalence. We analyzed two decades of surveillance data (2000–2021) from 10 mule deer herds in Wyoming, using statistical approaches informed by causal inference theory, to test for the effects of harvest on CWD prevalence. Herds with consistently high harvest pressure across 20 years had significantly lower prevalence. Our models predicted that harvesting 40% of adult males per year across 20 years would maintain prevalence below 5% on average, whereas if only 20% of males were harvested in each year, prevalence would increase to &gt;30% by year 20. Moreover, shifting the relative harvest pressure within a herd over a shorter period (3 years) reduced subsequent prevalence, albeit to a smaller degree. Although high harvest is unlikely to completely eradicate CWD, our analysis suggests that maintaining hunting pressure on adult males is an important tactic for slowing CWD epidemics within mule deer herds. Our study also provides guidance for future analyses of longitudinal surveillance data, including the importance of demographic data and appropriate time lags.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3089","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142992186","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":"Using predictive models to identify kelp refuges in marine protected areas for management prioritization","authors":"Mary A. Young,&nbsp;Kay Critchell,&nbsp;Michael A. Sams","doi":"10.1002/eap.3084","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3084","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Kelp forests serve as the foundation for shallow marine ecosystems in many temperate areas of the world but are under threat from various stressors, including climate change. To better manage these ecosystems now and into the future, understanding the impacts of climate change and identifying potential refuges will help to prioritize management actions. In this study, we use a long-term dataset of observations of kelp percentage cover for two dominant canopy-forming species off the coast of Victoria, Australia: <i>Ecklonia radiata</i> and <i>Phyllospora comosa</i>. These observations were collected across three scuba sampling programs that extend from 1998 to 2019. We then associated those observations with habitat and environmental variables including depth, seafloor structure, wave climate, currents, temperature, and population connectivity in generalized additive mixed-effects models and used these models to develop predictive maps of kelp cover across the Victorian marine protected areas (MPAs). These models were also used to project kelp coverage into the future by replacing wave climate and temperature with future projections (2090, Representative Concentration Pathways [RCPs] 4.5 and 8.5). Once the spatial predictions were compiled, we calculated percent cover change from 1998 to 2019, stability over the same period, and future predicted change in percent cover (2019–2090) to understand the dynamics for each species across the MPAs. We also used the current percentage cover, stability, and future percentage cover to develop a ranking system for classifying the maps into very unlikely refugia, unlikely refugia, neutral, potential refugia, and likely refugia. A management framework was then developed to use those refugia ranking values to inform management actions, and we applied this framework across three case studies: one at the scale of the MPA network and two at the scale of individual MPAs, one where management decisions were the same for both species, and one where the actions were species-specific. This study shows how species distribution models, both contemporary and with future projections, can help to identify potential refugia areas that can be used to prioritize management decisions and future-proof restoration actions.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991165","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":"Plant species, inundation, and sediment grain size control the development of sediment stability in tidal marshes","authors":"Marte M. Stoorvogel,&nbsp;Jaco C. de Smit,&nbsp;Lauren E. Wiesebron,&nbsp;Jim van Belzen,&nbsp;Johan van de Koppel,&nbsp;Stijn Temmerman,&nbsp;Tjeerd J. Bouma","doi":"10.1002/eap.3078","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3078","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Tidal marshes can contribute to nature-based shoreline protection by reducing the wave load onto the shore and reducing the erosion of the sediment bed. To implement such nature-based shoreline erosion protection requires the ability to quickly restore or create highly stable and erosion-resistant tidal marshes at places where they currently do not yet occur. Therefore, we aim to identify the drivers controlling the rate by which sediment stability builds up in young pioneer marshes. Sediment stability proxies were measured over age gradients spanning 18 years in six tidal marsh sites in the Western Scheldt estuary (SW Netherlands): Three were dominated by <i>Spartina anglica</i>, a densely growing pioneer species, and three by <i>Scirpus maritimus</i>, a less densely growing pioneer species. Our results showed that the presence of densely growing <i>Spartina anglica</i> increased sediment shear strength compared to the unvegetated tidal flat, while less densely growing <i>Scirpus maritimus</i> did not. This difference may be related to the contrasting clonal expansion strategies and related root densities of these two pioneer species. Sediment stability did not increase further beyond 6 years of coverage by <i>Spartina anglica</i>, implying that the observed effect of <i>Spartina anglica</i> on sediment stability occurs fast (&lt;6 years). Furthermore, sediment stability often increased with decreasing inundation duration and sediment water content. This study shows that in order to create erosion-resistant sediment beds in future marsh restoration projects, the aim should be to create densely vegetated tidal marshes with well-draining, cohesive sediments at relatively high intertidal elevation. Although the development of erosion resistance takes time, our study demonstrates that in the case of densely growing <i>Spartina anglica</i> marshes, increased sediment bed stability can already be reached after 6 years. The ability of <i>Spartina anglica</i> marshes to increase sediment bed stability within 6 years, in combination with wave attenuation and sediment accretion, offers promising perspectives to implement marsh restoration projects as a nature-based shoreline protection strategy that can start to deliver its protective service within a reasonable amount of time.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3078","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991282","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":"Functional leaf and plant use by leafcutter bees: Implications for management and conservation","authors":"Palatty Allesh Sinu,&nbsp;Krishnan P. Abhiram,&nbsp;Ashly Baby,&nbsp;C. R. Akshatha,&nbsp;K. Aneha,&nbsp;Anjana P. Unni,&nbsp;Harita Nalamati,&nbsp;K. Manoj,&nbsp;A. R. Pooja","doi":"10.1002/eap.3090","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3090","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Wild solitary bees face a host of challenges from the simplification of landscapes and biodiversity loss to invasive species and urbanization. Pollinator researchers and restoration workers thus far gave much attention to increase flower cover to reduce the impact of these anthropogenic pressures. Over 30% of bee species need nonfloral resources such as leaves and resin for their survival and reproduction. However, the importance of leaves in bee ecology, particularly for leafcutter bees, has received very little attention. Leafcutter bees have global distribution and cut leaves for constructing brood chambers. We have very little information for (a) what bees use and do not use for foraging leaves and (b) what leaf and plant traits and plant community traits drive plant preference and plant usage. To fill this gap and recommend plants for leafcutter bee conservation, we examined 13,062 plants of 612 species and 107 families distributed in 165 plant communities of nine towns/cities of four south Indian states. The plant community of nine locations and four states was quite dissimilar, but had similar proportion of native and exotic plants. The probability of a plant foraged for leaf is governed by its clade, family, nativity, and leaf dimension, particularly the leaf width. Bees have a clear preference for plants of common families, such as Fabaceae, Phyllanthaceae, and Meliaceae for foraging leaves, but bees going to plants of distant lineages, including rare species and families is not rare. At the same time, bees also avoided plants of several cosmopolitan families, such as Apocynaceae, Moraceae, Sapotaceae, and Asteraceae, among others. Bees preferred exotic plants more to native plants. The plant usage in communities is predicted by species richness, proportion of Fabaceae plants in communities, and proportion of herbs; plant diversity and abundance are not crucial drivers. Our study suggests that the bees' preference for leaf-foraging plants is not random, but governed by leaf, plant, and plant community traits. The preference for exotic plants is helpful for planning urban and homestead greening projects as they are dominated by exotics.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991163","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":"Unfriendly neighbors: When facilitation does not contribute to restoration success in tidal marsh","authors":"Karen E. Tanner,&nbsp;Ingrid M. Parker,&nbsp;Monique C. Fountain,&nbsp;Alexandra S. Thomsen,&nbsp;Kerstin Wasson","doi":"10.1002/eap.3079","DOIUrl":"10.1002/eap.3079","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Large-scale restoration projects are an exciting and often untapped opportunity to use an experimental approach to inform ecosystem management and test ecological theory. In our $10M tidal marsh restoration project, we installed over 17,000 high marsh plants to increase cover and diversity, using these plantings in a large-scale experiment to test the benefits of clustering and soil amendments across a stress gradient. Clustered plantings have the potential to outperform widely spaced ones if plants alter conditions in ways that decrease stress for close neighbors. Here, we test whether intraspecific facilitation improves restoration outcomes using a suite of seven high marsh species native to central California salt marshes. We also applied a biochar treatment to test whether soil amendment boosts restoration success. We compared the performance of clustered and uniform plantings across the high marsh elevation gradient for 3 years. There was a strong effect of elevation on plant performance and clear signs of plant stress related to soil conditions. Clustering slightly improved the survival of one species out of seven, although clustering did not benefit that species in a follow-up experiment under more stressful conditions. By contrast, clustering had strong negative effects on the growth and/or cover of all species tested. The stressors in this system—likely related to compaction and soil salinity—were not mitigated by neighbors or biochar. The prevailing negative effect on seven species from distinct evolutionary lineages lends strong generality to our findings. We therefore conclude that for this and similar high marsh systems, intraspecific facilitation confers no benefits and practitioners should space plants widely to minimize competition. To take full advantage of the learning opportunities provided by large-scale restoration projects, we recommend including experimental treatments and monitoring the response of multiple species across years to refine best practices and inform adaptive management.</p>","PeriodicalId":55168,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Applications","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2025-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/eap.3079","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991287","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}