Verena Rösch , Fernanda Chavez , Lasse Krey , Stefan Möth , Božana Petrović , Sylvie Richart-Cervera , Adrien Rusch , Mareike Tiedemann , Pauline Tolle , Leon Weyandt , Silvia Winter , Martin H Entling
{"title":"Semi-natural habitats are key to breeding bird diversity in intensified vineyard landscapes across Europe","authors":"Verena Rösch , Fernanda Chavez , Lasse Krey , Stefan Möth , Božana Petrović , Sylvie Richart-Cervera , Adrien Rusch , Mareike Tiedemann , Pauline Tolle , Leon Weyandt , Silvia Winter , Martin H Entling","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In climatically suitable regions across Europe, vineyards can be the dominant perennial crop type. While many wine-growing landscapes are intensively managed, they may still be an attractive habitat for a wide range of bird species. In this study we investigated how breeding birds in three wine-growing regions in Europe (Germany: Palatinate, France: Bordeaux, Austria: Leithaberg) are influenced by the composition of the landscape, focussing on woody semi-natural vegetation.</div><div>We recorded bird vocalizations with autonomous sound recorders in 93 landscapes across Europe. Bird species were identified according to their songs and calls. The landscape in a 200-m buffer around the recording points was mapped. In total, we recorded 72 bird species, including species typical for vineyard landscapes such as cirl bunting (<em>Emberiza cirlus</em>), hoopoe (<em>Upupa epops</em>) and turtle dove (<em>Streptopelia turtur</em>). For all three countries we found that an increase in overall woody vegetation in the landscape led to an increase in species richness and altered community composition. Most species were recorded in landscapes with abundant hedges, small woods and tree rows rather than in vineyard-dominated landscapes but e.g. woodlark (<em>Lullula arborea</em>) and linnet (<em>Linaria cannabina</em>) showed an opposite preference.</div><div>We conclude that in intensively used wine-growing landscapes the ongoing decline in farmland birds and the ecosystem services they provide can be reversed by the reintroduction of semi-natural woody vegetation between vineyards. These in frequently many cases linear structural elements can be established included in the landscape with only small losses in production area.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 66-74"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142587026","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}
Chao Duan , Zhixin Wen , Bingquan Zheng , Yang Chen , Wenling Wang , Jianghong Ran
{"title":"Small mammal diversity and community structure exhibit congruent hump-shaped patterns along a subtropical elevational gradient","authors":"Chao Duan , Zhixin Wen , Bingquan Zheng , Yang Chen , Wenling Wang , Jianghong Ran","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Incomplete elevational sampling in studies of biodiversity and community assembly along elevational gradients can result in inconsistent findings and potentially inaccurate conclusions about assembly mechanisms. In this study, we conducted extensive sampling of small mammals over a 3200 m elevational gradient on Xiling Snow Mountain, Southwestern China. We integrated functional and phylogenetic diversity to determine the mechanisms structuring small mammal assemblages. Our findings indicate that taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity, along with all species richness-corrected indices of functional and phylogenetic diversity, exhibit similar hump-shaped patterns. Our results suggest that environmental filtering plays a considerable role in structuring small mammal communities at low and high elevations, while competitive exclusion governs the assembly processes at middle elevations. Human footprint, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, precipitation seasonality and potential evapotranspiration are key drivers of small mammal diversity and community structure along elevational gradients. In summary, our study provides evidence that phylogenetic diversity is a robust surrogate for functional diversity, and challenges the recent large-scale studies that advocate a linear relationship between small mammal assembly process and elevation. We emphasize the importance of continuously documenting general patterns of small mammal diversity across entire elevational gradients in future studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 25-34"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142535251","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":"Challenges and opportunities when studying movement ecology in science and practical conservation","authors":"Christina Fischer","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Movement is a key mechanism influencing biodiversity patterns and ecosystem processes. Movement ecology aims to understand the causal relationships between environmental conditions, animal movements, interactions and coexistence of species, as well as effects of movement patterns on ecosystem processes. In contrast, practical conservation primarily aims to understand organisms' movements to improve species management, protection, legal monitoring or risk assessment, and species-habitat interactions. Despite the many studies of movement ecology in basic and applied sciences as well as in practical conservation in terrestrial ecosystems, knowledge gain and transfer between disciplines are limited. Better integration and linking of both disciplines would result in diverse science-practice synergies, but these are currently constrained by numerous challenges that need to be overcome. From a scientific perspective, knowledge gain from practice is limited by a multitude of case studies with limited spatial and temporal resolution. This can be overcome by improving access and combining the diversity of data for a research area that often deals with small sample sizes. From a practical perspective, the movement ecology framework, which is often dedicated to basic research, as well as the access and language barriers to scientific publications, limit the application of scientific results. Here movement ecologists should be encouraged to consider conservation issues more frequently in addition to basic research. The transfer of scientific results could be improved by scientists providing sufficient details for practitioners to extract relevant information and publish at least an open-access abstract in local language with clear management recommendations. Further, the use of open-access repositories allows both, scientists and practitioners an overview of the multitude of studies and helps to share data in order to derive general conclusions. Challenges impacting science and practice can be conceptual, organisational and technical in nature. Such constraints can be overcome, for example, by providing verified trapping protocols, using recent technological developments and analytical methods combined with trainings on these state-of-the-art tracking and analysing tools. In particular, collaborative project planning between scientists and practitioners can help to improve the sampling design of applied studies and broaden the data base for science in order to significantly advance the movement ecology framework and gain comprehensive knowledge for practical conservation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 59-65"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142561419","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}
Xiao-Wei Yang , Jacob Weiner , Jing-Wei Fan , Jie-Ying Ren , Wen-Yuan Luo , Feng-Min Li , Yan-Lei Du
{"title":"Evolutionary Agroecology: Individual fitness, population yield and resource availability in wheat","authors":"Xiao-Wei Yang , Jacob Weiner , Jing-Wei Fan , Jie-Ying Ren , Wen-Yuan Luo , Feng-Min Li , Yan-Lei Du","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Evolutionary Agroecology theory predicts that the relationship between population yield and individual fitness among genotypes of a crop species is unimodal, and experimental evidence supports this. We test the theory further by investigating the role of resource availability on this relationship by comparing growth and reproductive output of three old and three modern cultivars of wheat (Triticum aestivum) in mixture and monocultures grown at three resource levels. The relationship between population grain yield and individual fitness (mean individual grain yield in mixture) of genotypes was resource dependent in a way that is consistent with the theory: when resource levels are low and limit individual growth directly, individual and population yield are positively correlated. When resource levels are high and the growth of individual plants is limited by competition for these resources, the relationship between individual fitness and population yield becomes negative. There was evidence for the unimodal relationship at the intermediate resource level. Old cultivars had higher fitness than newer cultivars at all three resource levels. Old cultivars had higher yields at low resource levels, but the newer cultivars yielded more when resource levels were high. Evaluating individual fitness and population yield in different environments may help wheat breeders to develop locally adapted, cooperative cultivars to increase production across large wheat-producing areas.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 53-58"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142554737","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}
Justin S. Benjamin, James D. Roth, John H. Markham
{"title":"Red foxes increase white spruce seed production at its northern range limit","authors":"Justin S. Benjamin, James D. Roth, John H. Markham","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The northern boreal forest treeline is usually considered to be the result of climate limiting tree reproduction. Although climate also influences the cycling of nutrients, the effects of nutrient availability on the treeline have largely been ignored. Various animal activities can alter nutrient cycling, creating microsites of highly fertile soil. Red foxes (<em>Vulpes vulpes</em>) act as ecosystem engineers in the nutrient-poor northern boreal woodlands by concentrating soil nutrients through their denning activities, increasing white spruce (<em>Picea glauca</em>) tree growth. Here, we examined how denning activity affects reproduction in white spruce by determining the number cones per tree, seeds per cone (with or without endosperm, i.e., filled or not) and their viability. Overall, seed production in the study region was low, with an average of 3.7 filled seeds and 0.73 viable seeds per cone. Denning activity affected all stages of seed production, with trees on dens producing an average of two times more cones, three times more total seeds, four times more filled seeds, and 18 times more viable seeds than trees growing away from dens. While cone counts per tree were a good predictor of filled seeds per tree, they were less reliable at predicting viable seeds per tree. Additionally, the number of cones on a tree does not predict the number of filled seeds in a cone, making it difficult for granivores like squirrels and birds to assess food availability from cone abundance. Overall, these results suggest that nutrient availability can play a crucial role in tree reproduction at the treeline and denning activities can create hotspots of seed production and seed viability, acting as a potential food source for granivores and locations for tree reproduction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 1-6"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142535302","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":"","authors":"Carsten F. Dormann","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.09.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.09.008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"80 ","pages":"Pages 135-136"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142419587","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}
Cassandra Vogel , Nils-Christian Schumacher , Marcell K. Peters , Karl Eduard Linsenmair , Erik T. Frank
{"title":"Functional traits mediate ant community assembly in a West African savannah-forest mosaic (Côte d'Ivoire)","authors":"Cassandra Vogel , Nils-Christian Schumacher , Marcell K. Peters , Karl Eduard Linsenmair , Erik T. Frank","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>African forest-savannah mosaics are complex landscapes holding mixtures of woody grasslands (savannah) and different forest systems (gallery forests and forest islands). In these landscapes, ants are highly diverse and perform essential ecosystem services, however, the assembly of ant communities in African forest-savannah mosaics is poorly understood. Here we showed the diversity and species overlap of ant communities in three habitats of the West African savannah and quantified the contribution of thermal tolerances and trophic ecology to community assembly. We investigated ant diversity in the West African Comoé National Park (Côte d'Ivoire) at 16 sites of three habitat types within a forest-savannah mosaic: continuous gallery forest, isolated forest islands and savannah. Across all sites, we collected a total of 91 species from 35 genera from three strata: trees, leaf litter, and soil. Additionally, we assessed differences in functional traits (trophic groups and thermal tolerance) between habitat types and strata. Though species richness was similar in all three habitats, there was a clear separation in species assemblages and functional traits between the two forest habitats and the savannah. Species assemblage shifts were primarily due to species turnover between savannah and forest habitats. In addition, the turnover in species assemblages from forests to savannah habitats was associated with a change in the thermal tolerance of species and in the proportion of trophobionts and predators. Forest and savannah habitats support distinct ant communities with different functional traits and contribute additively to the landscape-scale diversity of the West African ant fauna. Land-use and park management should focus on conserving both savannah and forest sites in tropical protected areas such as the Comoé National Park.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 35-43"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142538248","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}
Natacha P. Chacoff , Julieta Carrasco , Silvio E. Castillo , A. Carolina Monmany Garzia , Lucía Zarbá , Roxana Aragón
{"title":"The contribution of pollinators varies among soybean cultivar traits","authors":"Natacha P. Chacoff , Julieta Carrasco , Silvio E. Castillo , A. Carolina Monmany Garzia , Lucía Zarbá , Roxana Aragón","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.10.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Soybean is one of the most widely cultivated species worldwide. Empirical studies have shown that animal pollination can contribute between 0 and 50 % to soybean yields. However, the role of animal pollination in soybean production is often overlooked in management decisions. Understanding the factors driving variability in pollinator contribution can aid in developing effective management strategies. In this study, we experimentally assessed the contribution of both autonomous and animal pollination across nine widely cultivated soybean cultivars in the Chaco region of Argentina. Additionally, we explored whether specific traits of these cultivars could explain the observed variability in pollination contribution. We used field exclosure experiments to study cultivars that differed in flower color, genetic modifications, and maturity groups, and analyzed the variability in pollinators’ contributions across years and locations. We found that the overall reduction in production between open and bagged plants was, on average, 40 % (CI 25–51 %). The contribution of pollinators varied depending on flower color, maturity groups, and locations, but not across different years or genetic modifications. Cultivars with purple flowers showed greater differences between open and bagged plants compared to those with white flowers, indicating that flower color may influence the attractiveness of flowers to pollinators. Additionally, pollinators’ contribution varied across maturity groups, potentially due to the differential timing of the flowering affecting the local abundance of pollinators within the crop. Notably, the variable used to estimate pollinators’ contribution (i.e., seeds, pods, or yield) conditioned the results. Pollinators’ contribution can be highly variable, and traits associated with cultivars can help improve our understanding of such heterogeneity. Our results showed that the contribution of pollinators to soybean cultivars in the Chaco region of Argentina ranges from modest to high. This suggests that conserving pollinators and managing agricultural fields at plot and landscape scales can significantly impact soybean production.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 44-52"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142538249","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}
David Åhlén , Sofia Hedman , Jerker Jarsjö , Björn K. Klatt , Lea D. Schneider , John Strand , Ayco Tack , Imenne Åhlén , Peter A. Hambäck
{"title":"Hydrological dynamics, wetland morphology and vegetation structure determine riparian arthropod communities in constructed wetlands","authors":"David Åhlén , Sofia Hedman , Jerker Jarsjö , Björn K. Klatt , Lea D. Schneider , John Strand , Ayco Tack , Imenne Åhlén , Peter A. Hambäck","doi":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.09.010","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.baae.2024.09.010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Wetland hydrological dynamics often dictate the composition of biological communities found in or near wetlands, either directly or through changes in vegetation composition. However, much remains unknown, particularly regarding how riparian arthropods respond to such dynamics. In this study, we used high-resolution hydrological data, along with presence of grazing livestock and shoreline vegetation height from 41 constructed wetlands in south-western Sweden to explore flood zone areas, flood frequencies, vegetation and grazing as drivers of the resident arthropod communities. The collected material consisted of 26,817 arthropods, where the dominant groups were Diptera (13,258 specimens), spiders (6,207) and Coleoptera (2,858), which were collected using SLAM (Sea Land and Air Malaise) trapping, along with pitfall trapping and vacuum sampling of riparian arthropods. We found group-specific responses to inundation frequencies, where wetlands with higher frequencies had lower abundances of some beetles and tipulids, and where wetlands with longer low-water table periods contained less trichopterans and heteropterans. In contrast, the size of flood zone areas only affected some wolf spider groups, that were more abundant in wetlands with intermediately sized flood zones. Shoreline vegetation height affected multiple groups, spiders, beetles and dipterans, but in different directions, whereas presence of grazing livestock had limited impact on abundances and community compositions. Given the variable responses to wetland hydrological and structural drivers, it seems that wetland arthropod communities would benefit from a high local wetland habitat variability, or wetlandscapes where individual wetlands have differing hydrological dynamics, morphology and vegetation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":8708,"journal":{"name":"Basic and Applied Ecology","volume":"81 ","pages":"Pages 7-16"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142535249","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}