Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology最新文献

{"title":"Habitat and food resource type, rather than sampling date, drive co-occurrence of dung beetle species in a tropical ecosystem mosaic","authors":"N.L. Reis ,&nbsp;K.A. Santos ,&nbsp;L. Vieira ,&nbsp;J. Louzada","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actao.2023.103956","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The species’ coexistence and distribution patterns are fundamental in community ecology research. Niche partitioning is used to evaluate co-occurrence patterns resulting from species interactions. Dung beetle communities are ideal models for understanding ecological patterns and processes. However, their co-occurrence patterns remain poorly understood. We tested if habitat type, sampling date, and food resources could explain the co-occurrence patterns of dung beetles. We expected that habitat would have the most impact on species co-occurrence, followed by food resource and sampling date. We conducted our study during the rainy season of 2012, using baited pitfall traps in a mosaic of four habitats including montane semideciduous forest, cerrado, rupestrian field, and introduced pasture, resulting in 16 sites. We used the Cooccur R package to analyze species co-occurrence probabilities and tested the effects of niche partitioning on species co-occurrence via DistLM analysis. We collected 2.743 individuals, representing 86 dung beetle species. In most co-occurring pairs, species exhibited random associations. Our results supported the hypothesis that habitat and food resources explained dung beetle co-occurrence. Habitat explains 13% of the total variance in co-occurrence patterns, food resources (7%), and sampling date (6%). Overall, our model explained 31% of the variance correspond to the sum of each variable isolated with the values shared between them. Our results suggested that dung beetle species' co-occurrence was stochastic. I.e., non-biotic external factors can also potentially explain the coexistence of species with similar requirements. Food resources were important in co-occurrence. This is consistent with the lottery competition since colonization by species on ephemeral resources is random and by chance. Niche partitioning had little explanatory power for co-occurrence patterns, however, tropical forests have the potential to maintain many positive species associations. Here, the sampling date did not influence the species' co-occurrence, possibly due to stable temperatures and consistent precipitation during the season.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"121 ","pages":"Article 103956"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49895125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Corrigendum to “How to be a fig nematode” [Acta Oecol. 119 (2023) 103916]","authors":"Justin Van Goor ,&nbsp;Natsumi Kanzaki ,&nbsp;Gavin Woodruff","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103930","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103930","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103930"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49004642","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Corrigendum to ‘Micro-scale patterns and drivers of bird visitation on street fig trees in Delhi, India’[Acta Oecol. 118 (2023) 103875]","authors":"Prakhar Rawal ,&nbsp;Deepali Chatrath ,&nbsp;Ghazala Shahabuddin","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103919","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103919","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103919"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46886898","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Small carnivores contribute surrogate seed dispersers for a megafaunal-fruited liana in subtropical Asia","authors":"Jifa Cui ,&nbsp;Jinyu Guo ,&nbsp;Yao Wang,&nbsp;Nan Wu,&nbsp;Youbing Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103928","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actao.2023.103928","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The megafaunal seed dispersal hypothesis posits that mega-fruits co-evolved for seed dispersal by extremely large mammals, such as elephant-like gomphotheres, which became extinct during the Pleistocene. Nevertheless, various plants in subtropical Asia still produce oversized fruits as a seed dispersal syndrome anachronism. Here, we investigated how a mega-fruited perennial woody liana, <em>Akebia trifoliata</em> achieves the consumption of its large, sweet, edible fruits to disperse its seeds in a subtropical region on China where the mega frugivores are absent nowadays. We hypothesized that some other surrogate species may be fulfilling this dispersal function. From 2926 fecal samples from 13 species of mammal and various unidentified birds, collected over two years, we identified <em>A. trifoliata</em> seeds in only 13 feces from the masked palm civet (<em>Paguma larvata</em>). Our systematic sampling allowed us to eliminate any role being played by all other plausible dispersal mutualists; not least, these fruits rarely fall to the ground and deteriorate quickly, and so must be picked from the vine by species able to reach 2–5m above the ground. Of 338 masked palm civet feces examined during the August to September fruiting season only 3.85% (frequency of occurrence) contained <em>A. trifoliata</em> seeds, although when seeds were present, they were abundant (c. 600/feces). All seeds passing through the gut of masked palm civets were intact. Moreover, masked palm civets mainly dispersed <em>A. trifoliata</em> seeds in degraded habitats (i.e., the logged, and selectively logged forests). These results showed that although masked palm civets dispersed <em>A. trifoliata</em> seeds in low proportion, they could play a surrogate seed dispersal role for this mega-fruit vine species, especially in degraded forests. Our findings highlight that, in subtopical Asia, small frugivorous carnivores can act as surrogate seed dispersers for oversized fruit plants, advancing knowledge on how past species interactions and defaunation underlie modern plant distributions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103928"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49898075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"A matter of scale: Local biotic differentiation and potential regional homogenization of understory plant communities in a highly fragmented tropical landscape","authors":"Jean M. Freitag Kramer ,&nbsp;Jhéssica L. Bald ,&nbsp;Jaqueline de Lima Pessato ,&nbsp;Fabiane Maziero Kupas ,&nbsp;Carina Kozera ,&nbsp;Victor P. Zwiener","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actao.2023.103935","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Plant communities in highly fragmented tropical landscapes can undergo biotic homogenization and differentiation after land-use changes, such as forest fragmentation. Here we evaluated the beta diversity of understory plant communities in fragmented forest remnants and assessed species geographic distribution to infer potential local and regional scale dependency of homogenization and differentiation pathways in the Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil. More specifically we assessed: (i) community composition; (ii) the frequency of locally rare species, generalists, interior and edge specialists; (iii) the relative contribution of beta diversity components; and (iv) the influence of widely, intermediate and narrowly distributed species to the observed patterns. Understory communities were sampled in a nested design with plots allocated to the interior and edge of forest fragments, and geographic distributions were estimated based on occurrence records from herbaria collections. Our results revealed differences in species composition among fragments and habitat types (edge and interior). Most of the sampled species were classified as locally rare. The turnover component of beta diversity explained a higher proportion of variation in species composition among fragments and habitats. Species richness and abundance were higher in the interior of fragments and most of the recorded species in the study had a wide geographic distribution. Our results support a local community differentiation (high beta diversity) among fragments and habitat types and suggest a potential regional homogenization, given the predominance of widely distributed generalist species in a domain historically characterized by high levels of endemism. We recommend urgent protection and restoration actions on the few remaining fragments of the Atlantic Forest given that each remnant can support different plant assemblages that have been increasingly threatened. Future studies should explicitly consider multiple spatial and temporal scales across fragmented tropical landscapes to better understand links with biotic homogenization and differentiation of ecological communities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103935"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49890728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Difficult times for amphibians: Effects of land-use change at the local and landscape scales in the Iberá Wetlands","authors":"Facundo Schivo,&nbsp;Rafael Grimson,&nbsp;Diego Aquino,&nbsp;Rubén Darío Quintana","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actao.2023.103931","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Land-use change and management practices have led to habitat loss, one of the greatest factors in biodiversity decline. Particularly, amphibians comprise the highest number of threatened vertebrate species at the global scale. In this work, amphibian communities were analysed in three differing landscapes: a protected wetland, a livestock-impaired rangeland and a pine afforestation. In each landscape, amphibian species were sampled. Land-cover type and composition, as well as primary vegetation types were characterised at the landscape and local scale, respectively. The relationship between these environmental variables and the amphibian communities was analysed. Twenty-one amphibian species were identified; the protected and afforested landscapes were the richest, whereas the rangeland showed the lowest species richness and diversity estimates. At the local scale, vegetation, water coverage and land-use category explained the higher presence of amphibian species and their abundance. These results show how different land-uses, especially livestock farming, modify the composition of amphibian communities. This work constitutes a foundation for the development of sustainable management practices for conserving amphibians in landscape-level altered habitats.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103931"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49853364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Heavy metal pollution is more conducive to the independent invasion of Solidago canadensis L. than the co-invasion of two Asteraceae invasive plants","authors":"Zhongyi Xu ,&nbsp;Jiajun Xu ,&nbsp;Pibo Chen ,&nbsp;Shanshan Zhong ,&nbsp;Zhelun Xu ,&nbsp;Youli Yu ,&nbsp;Congyan Wang ,&nbsp;Daolin Du","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103934","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103934","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Allelopathy is one of the primary factors that affects the successful invasion of invasive plants. Two invasive plants can often co-invade the same habitat. However, increasing amounts of heavy metal contamination can alter the independent allelopathy and co-allelopathy of two invasive plants that co-invade the same habitat. However, research on the co-allelopathy of two invasive plants treated with different types of heavy metals is limited. This study aimed to analyze the independent allelopathy and co-allelopathy of the two Asteraceae invasive plants horseweed (<em>Conyza canadensis</em> [L.] Cronq.) and Canadian goldenrod (<em>Solidago canadensis</em> L.) on the seed germination and seedling growth of the horticultural Asteraceae species lettuce (<em>Lactuca sativa</em> L.) treated with different types of heavy metals, including the independent contamination with copper (Cu), the independent contamination of lead (Pb), and the co-contamination of Cu and Pb. The aqueous extract of <em>S. canadensis</em> leaves triggers stronger allelopathy than that of <em>C. canadensis</em>. There is an antagonistic effect for the co-allelopathy of the two Asteraceae invasive plants compared with their independent allelopathy. Both types of heavy metals can significantly intensify the independent allelopathy of <em>S. canadensis</em> and the co-allelopathy of two Asteraceae invasive plants but weaken the independent allelopathy of <em>C. canadensis</em>. Thus, the increase in heavy metal contamination can favor the independent invasion of <em>S. canadensis</em> and the co-invasion of two Asteraceae invasive plants by intensified allelopathy. The intensity of influence of co-allelopathy of both invasive plants was lower than that of the independent allelopathy of <em>S. canadensis</em> treated with heavy metals. Thus, heavy metal contamination is more conducive to the independent invasion of <em>S. canadensis</em> than the co-invasion of the two Asteraceae invasive plants.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103934"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42890961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Decoupled functional and phylogenetic diversity provide complementary information about community assembly mechanisms: A case study of Greek forests","authors":"Anna Mastrogianni ,&nbsp;Diogenis A. Kiziridis ,&nbsp;Milan Chytrý ,&nbsp;Athanasios S. Kallimanis ,&nbsp;Ioannis Tsiripidis","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103933","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103933","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Understanding the mechanisms of community assembly is of great importance to biogeography and ecology. Simultaneous investigation of the functional and phylogenetic facets of diversity has been proposed as a useful approach that allows inferences about such mechanisms. This study applies such an approach to explore diversity and structure within and among the main plant community types of mountainous forests in northern and central Greece. Functional and phylogenetic diversity and structure were measured in 25 community types of broadleaved deciduous and mountainous coniferous forests. Functional richness and Faith’s phylogenetic diversity were used to assess diversity, while mean pairwise functional and phylogenetic distances were used to investigate structure. Relationships between both facets of diversity and structure, as well as community types, were tested using boosted regression trees separately for all vascular plant taxa and taxa occurring in the forest understorey. Phylogenetic diversity was positively correlated with functional diversity, but phylogenetic structure was not a good predictor of functional structure. The understorey dataset revealed non-random structure for more vegetation plots than the dataset with all taxa. Habitat effects, represented by community types, were found to be better predictors of functional structure than phylogenetic structure, highlighting the need to account for habitat variability in studies of community assembly. In our study system, the two diversity facets provide complementary information on the structure of community types since most of the vegetation plots studied were found statistically significantly structured for one diversity facet (functionally clustered or phylogenetically overdispersed) and random for the other. Our results indicate that functional and phylogenetic measures provide different insights into the mechanisms driving the assembly of the forest community types studied.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103933"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44652140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"Widespread butterflies follow inconsistent trends in the Bergmann's rule and flight morphometry: Implications for conservation in the Western Himalaya","authors":"Aman Verma ,&nbsp;Manoj Kumar Arya","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103932","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103932","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Bergmann's rule relating eco-geographic pattern in body size of species with latitude/elevation, remain unexplored among different animal taxa including insects from the Indian Himalayan Region that ranges in elevation and environmental conditions. The applicability of the rule was tested using body size data set of natural adult male populations of six butterfly species that were common in abundance and occur over a range of elevations in the Western Himalaya. The influence of changes in body size on flight related morphometry was also explored to understand the adaptative and dispersal strategies of the species across elevations. Among the various morphometric traits, the principal component analysis revealed that the forewing length was the most reliable measure of determining the body size clinal pattern in butterflies. Species <em>Danaus chrysippus</em>, <em>Danaus genutia</em> and <em>Vanessa indica</em> strongly followed the Bergmann's rule, while <em>Papilio polytes</em> followed the converse Bergmann's rule. By contrast, <em>Pieris brassicae</em> and <em>Catopsilia pomona</em> exhibited a moderate clinal pattern and partially followed the converse of the rule. The flight related morphometric indices namely, wing load and aspect ratio varied among species and showed no regular pattern along elevational gradients. The results suggested inconsistent trends in intra-specific morphometric variations of widespread butterfly species, crucial to comprehend their conservation strategies in the Western Himalaya.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103932"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48430590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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":"The effect of acid rain and fertilization on the performance of invasive Chromolaena odorata and two native plants","authors":"Yan-mei Liu ,&nbsp;Wei-tao Li ,&nbsp;Yu-long Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103938","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.actao.2023.103938","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Acid rain is one important factor of climate change, which may facilitate the invasion of alien plant by creating new niches. In this study, we compared the performance of invasive <em>Chromolaena odorata</em> (L.) R. M. King and H. Robinson and two native plants (<em>Eupatorium chinense</em> L. and <em>Desmodium sequax</em> Wall., common and sympatric distribution with <em>C</em>. <em>odorata</em>) under different acid rain and fertilization (compound fertilizer) levels. The results indicated that acid rain has lower impact on <em>P</em>_n (net photosynthetic rate) and height of the invader than on two native plants, and there were no significant differences between the effects of strong acid rain (pH = 3.5) and weak acid rain (pH = 5.5). The fertilization can alleviate the negative effects of acid rain, which benefit more to the invader than to native plants. Therefore, in future, the invasion status of <em>C</em>. <em>odorata</em> maybe critical in acid rain with fertile environment.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":55564,"journal":{"name":"Acta Oecologica-International Journal of Ecology","volume":"120 ","pages":"Article 103938"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42767527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"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}