Ecology最新文献

{"title":"Extreme drought impacts drove local extinction in a social rodent.","authors":"Annemarie van der Marel, Madan K Oli, Azad Hossain, Praveena Krishnan, Tim Wilson, Loreto A Correa, Luis A Ebensperger, Loren D Hayes","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70489","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wildlife populations worldwide are increasingly exposed to climatic extremes, yet demographic mechanisms linking environmental variability to local extinction remain poorly understood. We evaluated the population dynamics of a degu (Octodon degus) population in central Chile over a 12-year period (2009-2020) encompassing a decade-long megadrought. Using capture-mark-recapture models, we estimated apparent survival, recruitment, and population growth rates and assessed their relationships with climatic and ecosystem variables. Population growth remained positive throughout most of the study period despite prolonged drought conditions, indicating resistance to long-term environmental stress. However, in 2019, an extreme drought year with markedly reduced precipitation and resource availability, gross primary productivity (GPP) crossed a critical threshold (a tipping point). As a result, survival and recruitment declined sharply, the population underwent an abrupt state shift and rapid collapse, and ultimately went locally extinct. Our analyses indicate that variation in GPP was the strongest predictor of both survival and recruitment, highlighting the importance of resource availability in mediating demographic responses to drought. These results show that the extreme environmental conditions in 2019 acted as the proximate driver of extinction, rather than a cumulative effect of the preceding megadrought. We discuss how species-specific traits, including short lifespan, seasonal reproduction, and social organization, may limit the ability of degus to buffer consecutive demographic failures under extreme conditions, contributing to threshold-like population collapse. Our findings suggest that populations may persist under prolonged adverse conditions yet remain vulnerable to rare but severe environmental events, emphasizing the importance of extreme climatic variability in driving local extinction risk.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 9","pages":"e70489"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149042893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Extraordinary movements connecting distant ecosystems by African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus).","authors":"Scott Creel, Stephani Matsushima, Henry Mwape, Bridget Mayani-Nkhoma, Kachama Banda, Ben Goodheart, Johnathan Reyes de Merkle, Anna Kusler, Daan Smit, Johane Njobvu, Moses Muwowo, Reuben Kabungo, Michelo Mungolo, Mwamba Sichande, Catherine Sun, Carolyn A Sanguinetti, Charlotte Krag, Lucky Chama, Mwansa Chisanga, Twakundine Simpamba, Howard Maimbo, Ella Bradford, Clive Chifunte, Craig Reid, Bruce Ellender, David Christianson, Egil Dröge, Matthew S Becker","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70504","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70504","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 9","pages":"e70504"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13572030/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148964049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reducing consumer pressure increases community dissimilarity leading to coral- or algal-dominance on a coral reef.","authors":"Kelly E Speare, Thomas C Adam, Allison Aplin, Noe Castañeda, Lauren N Enright, Hannah E Epstein, Jordan P Gallagher, Adam Goodman, Olivia Isbell, Christian John, Mackenzie A Kawahara, J Grace Klinges, Mark C Ladd, Jamie M McDevitt-Irwin, Rowan H McLachlan, Nury Molina, Joseph R Peters, Julianna J Renzi, Andrew A Shantz, Andrew R Thurber, Alex D Vompe, Rebecca Vega Thurber, Deron E Burkepile","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70507","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70507","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In many ecosystems, anthropogenic influences are altering the strength of top-down (e.g., herbivory and predation by consumers) and bottom-up (e.g., nutrients) processes through the exploitation of consumers and increasing anthropogenic nutrient inputs. Altered top-down and bottom-up processes may significantly change ecological communities, resulting in shifts in the abundance or composition of primary producers, or shifts in ecosystem states. An often-overlooked consequence of altered top-down and bottom-up process is how these forces shape community variability, especially following disturbances when alterations to top-down and bottom-up processes may have particularly strong effects during community reassembly. Here, we experimentally test the relative importance of top-down and bottom-up processes in determining community development after a simulated disturbance on a coral reef in Moorea, French Polynesia. We established eight 30-m² plots in which corals and macroalgae were removed to mimic the effects of a severe cyclone. Within each plot, we nested four consumer exclosures (~1.25 m² each) with different size openings that allowed different size fishes access to the benthos, creating four levels of consumer pressure (Very Low, Low, Medium, High). Each plot was then assigned to either Ambient or Enriched nutrient conditions. Consumer pressure strongly affected community development, whereas nutrients had a weaker, but significant, effect. After 4 years, consumer pressure was inversely related to beta diversity, where plots with High consumer pressure had highly similar communities, and plots with reduced consumer pressure had dissimilar communities. This dissimilarity in community structure under reduced consumer pressure was the result of plots becoming rapidly colonized by either coral or macroalgae. By contrast, community development in plots with High consumer pressure was slow but predictable, with all plots slowly increasing in coral cover and remaining relatively free of macroalgae. Our results suggest that reduced top-down pressure by consumers can result in alternate community paths that lead to either coral- or algal-dominance under similar environmental conditions. We conclude that consumer pressure influences both the rate and predictability of community development in these ecosystems and that human stressors that alter consumer pressure may result in ecological surprises on coral reefs.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 9","pages":"e70507"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13577821/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148979216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"EverWatch airborne bird imagery dataset for detection and classification of Everglades wading birds.","authors":"Lindsey Garner, Ben G Weinstein, Michael Rickershauser, Melissa Baldino, Holly Coates, Mary Commins, Tracey Faber, Jonah Gula, Shayly Van Ert, Peter Frederick, Ethan P White, S K Morgan Ernest","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70512","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Large-scale monitoring of populations and communities using airborne remote sensing is increasingly central to a broad range of research, management, and decision-making efforts. Performing this work at scale requires automating the detection and classification of individual organisms in airborne imagery. This is typically done using computer vision models, which require large amounts of data for training and precisely labeled data for evaluation. One area of high demand for airborne detection and classification is wildlife monitoring, including the monitoring of large birds. However, open mixed-species annotated datasets that are sufficiently large for training computer vision models are rare, especially for the United States. Mixed-species datasets are important because many bird species forage, roost, and nest in mixed-species flocks, requiring computer vision models for airborne monitoring to be able to accurately distinguish between similar-looking species from above. Here we provide a dataset of airborne imagery from uncrewed aircraft systems and associated detection and species classification labels of over 50,000 wading birds in the Florida Everglades. The dataset includes 5128 images with 50,491 annotations for training (split into training and validation data) and 196 images with 4113 annotations for model evaluation, making it the largest open mixed-species dataset of which we are aware. Species represented in the dataset include White Ibis (Eudocimus albus), Great Egret (Ardea alba), Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias), Snowy Egret (Egretta thula), Wood Stork (Mycteria americana), Roseate Spoonbill (Platalea ajaja), and Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga). These species are widely geographically distributed and therefore likely to occur in airborne imagery around the world. They also represent a diverse range of large wading bird appearances, making the dataset well suited to pre-training models for use in other ecosystems. This dataset was initially produced to support the development of computer vision models for monitoring one of the largest ongoing wetland restoration efforts in the world using wading birds as indicators. It has also been used to pre-train a key general bird detection model. The dataset will be useful for continued improvement of models for population and community monitoring of the Everglades in the United States (a crucial ecosystem undergoing large-scale restoration), as training data for airborne models involving widely distributed bird species, and will serve as a key data source for pre-training other bird detection and classification models (due to its size and mixed-species nature), thus supporting the development of individual-level airborne computer vision approaches more broadly. The data are available for reuse under CC0 1.0 Universal Licensing.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 9","pages":"e70512"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149019281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Distinct root-associated fungal communities may account for the persistence of Podocarpus conifers in tropical forest.","authors":"Astrid Ferrer, Blaine Martin, Adriana Corrales, James W Dalling","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70519","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70519","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Podocarps (Podocarpaceae) are one of the few lineages of conifers found in closed canopy tropical forests. They typically have highly restricted distributions that are associated with nutrient-poor sites. Unlike other tree species, the presence of distinct nodule-like structures allows their roots to be easily distinguished from those of co-occurring taxa. In highly infertile ever-wet lower montane forest at Fortuna, Panama, roots of Podocarpus oleifolius occur in three microsites: in the soil; lying on top of surface litter; as aerial roots that climb the trunks of neighboring trees. We examined how microsite affects Podocarpus root fungal community composition by sequencing the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, and by measuring root nutrient concentration and phosphatase enzyme activity. We also compared Podocarpus roots collected from the soil with those of two common co-occurring angiosperm trees, Graffenrieda bella and Weinmannia pinnata. We found that root microsite accounted for 11% of the variation in root-associated fungal communities and also affected root calcium, potassium, and manganese concentration. Root fungal diversity, phosphate concentration, and phosphatase activity were unchanged. Across all microsites, the fungal order Helotiales accounted for 50%-60% of ITS reads, while aerial roots had significantly higher abundance of Trechisporales. When comparing across species, Glomeromycota were only detected in very low numbers overall (1.8%-3.3% of reads in angiosperms), and were especially low in Podocarpus (0.14% of reads). In contrast, Podocarpus had a higher fraction of reads belonging to Leotiomycetes than Graffenrieda and Weinmannia. Our findings highlight how root-associated fungal communities vary at the order level with microsite and host species in tropical montane forest. In continuously cool, low-nutrient wet environments, where nutrients are rapidly leached from throughfall, or are mineralized slowly from decomposing organic matter, alternatives to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may be especially advantageous to plants. Biotrophic fungi in the Helotiales have been implicated in nutrient transfer in alpine and arctic environments, and together with Trechisporales, may be key unrecognized mutualistic partners in the tropics. Collectively, these taxa may explain the association of podocarps with low-nutrient montane forest.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 9","pages":"e70519"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13613075/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149042786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pelagic sea cucumbers in the Galapagos: Midwater grazers that short-circuit deep-sea carbon flux.","authors":"Bruce H Robison","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70536","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70536","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Direct observations from submersible dives off the Galapagos Islands have revealed that Pelagothuria natatrix, the only known holopelagic echinoderm, actively intercepts settling particles well before they can reach the deep seafloor, thereby short-circuiting the typical downward flux of organic carbon generated in the photic zone.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 9","pages":"e70536"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13601815/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149032150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Spatially explicit capture-recapture models for relative density.","authors":"Murray G Efford","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70455","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70455","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) methods are used widely to estimate animal population density and related parameters. Maximum likelihood has been applied to two flavors of the SECR model-a full model that includes absolute density as a spatially varying parameter, and a model conditional on the number of detected individuals that assumes uniform density. We show how the conditional model may be extended to estimate relative density as a function of habitat and other spatial variables. Unlike absolute density, coefficients of relative density are robust to bias from heterogeneous individual detection. The conditional model has the further advantage of seamlessly including individual covariates of detection, and it is faster to fit than the full model. The spatial absolute density surface may be derived from the conditional model fit. Population growth rate (relative density with respect to time) may also be estimated from a conditional model, given temporal data. These properties are demonstrated by examples and simulation. It is suggested that conditional likelihood models, including those for relative density, play a central role in SECR.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 7","pages":"e70455"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13402786/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148595078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resilient nekton composition in the face of climate-driven foundation species shifts.","authors":"Herbert Leavitt, Alexander Thomas, Jennifer C Doerr, David S Johnson, James A Nelson","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70397","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70397","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Climate-driven range expansions of individual species are well-documented, but corresponding community shifts are not. This lack of widespread community change may indicate communities can resist wholesale change with the arrival of new species. In the northern Gulf of Mexico, climate change is driving the expansion of black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) into areas traditionally dominated by smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). This study investigates the effects of these changes on the species composition of animals and habitat structure in Louisiana, USA, with implications for how species expand their range under shifting climactic regimes. Using quantitative nekton sampling and satellite imagery analysis over two decades, we observed a substantial increase in winter temperatures of 3.5°C and a regime shift from marsh to mangrove habitats. Despite these remarkable environmental changes, the composition of nekton remained stable. We expected that warming temperatures and the expansion of black mangroves would shift nekton community composition in our system by favoring warm-adapted species and facilitating the arrival of new climate migrants. However, based on the community temperature index and species-level analysis of relative abundances, thermal tolerance, and latitudinal range, we found no detectable increase in thermal affinity or establishment of new warm-adapted taxa in Port Fourchon since 2002. Given that many systems experiencing comparable climate forcing have undergone marked compositional shifts, our findings suggest that local biotic interactions and species adaptability may buffer this community from the broader range expansions observed elsewhere. Our findings highlight the resilience of estuarine communities to rapid environmental changes and emphasize the need for further research on the indirect effects of habitat shifts on food web dynamics.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 5","pages":"e70397"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148019743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Environmental and demographic mechanisms underlying population dynamics provide relative stability in an island songbird.","authors":"James C Mouton, Mario Pesendorfer, Nathan J Hostetter, Scott A Morrison, T Scott Sillett","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70409","DOIUrl":"10.1002/ecy.70409","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding demographic and ecological mechanisms underlying population dynamics is a key goal in population ecology and can inform effective conservation and management. Species may be well adapted to persist under normal ranges of environmental conditions, but increasingly novel conditions due to climate change may strain their demographic buffering mechanisms. Small isolated populations on islands are expected to be especially vulnerable to declines caused by novel environmental conditions, but the ecological drivers of population dynamics on islands are often unknown. We used an integrated population model to (1) examine ecological drivers of population growth and (2) assess global population trends of the Island Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma insularis) from 2009 to 2019. Our results suggest that population size increased slightly over this interval despite declines during severe drought. We also found evidence that density dependence, precipitation, and food availability affected fecundity and the survival of nonbreeding individuals. Breeder survival was relatively stable and had a weak effect on population growth as expected for long-lived species. Overall, our results provide an optimistic snapshot for this species by demonstrating resilience to contemporary drought but also emphasize the species' potential vulnerability due to its small population size.</p>","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 5","pages":"e70409"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148019754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unexpected use of marine resources by sika deer in coastal Japan.","authors":"Kei K Suzuki, Hiromi Yamagawa, Taiki Mori","doi":"10.1002/ecy.70422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.70422","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":93986,"journal":{"name":"Ecology","volume":"107 5","pages":"e70422"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148038675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}