Habitat Restorations in an Urban Landscape Rapidly Assemble Diverse Pollinator Communities That PersistUlrich, Jens; Sargent, Risa D.
doi: 10.1111/ele.70037pmid: 39737676
Ecological restoration is a leading approach to mitigating biodiversity decline. While restoration often leads to an immediate increase in species abundance or diversity, it is rarely clear whether it supports longer‐term biodiversity gains at the landscape scale. To examine the impacts of urban restoration on pollinator biodiversity, we conducted a 3‐year natural experiment in 18 parks across a large metropolitan area. We applied an occupancy model to our survey data to determine how restoration, woody plant density and pollinator specialisation impacted interannual pollinator metacommunity dynamics. Restoration drove a rapid increase in pollinator species occurrence that was maintained through a positive balance between colonisation and persistence, resulting in pollinator species richness gains that are retained. We conclude that urban restoration can effectively conserve pollinator biodiversity by influencing the processes that underlie long‐term population stability. Our results highlight the need to study the long‐term effects of restoration in different landscape contexts.
Seasonal Assembly of Nectar Microbial Communities Across Angiosperm Plant Species: Assessing Contributions of Climate and Plant TraitsCecala, Jacob M.; Landucci, Leta; Vannette, Rachel L.
doi: 10.1111/ele.70045pmid: 39737670
Plant–microbe associations are ubiquitous, but parsing contributions of dispersal, host filtering, competition and temperature on microbial community composition is challenging. Floral nectar‐inhabiting microbes, which can influence flowering plant health and pollination, offer a tractable system to disentangle community assembly processes. We inoculated a synthetic community of yeasts and bacteria into nectars of 31 plant species while excluding pollinators. We monitored weather and, after 24 h, collected and cultured communities. We found a strong signature of plant species on resulting microbial abundance and community composition, in part explained by plant phylogeny and nectar peroxide content, but not floral morphology. Increasing temperature reduced microbial diversity, while higher minimum temperatures increased growth, suggesting complex ecological effects of temperature. Consistent nectar microbial communities within plant species could enable plant or pollinator adaptation. Our work supports the roles of host identity, traits and temperature in microbial community assembly, and indicates diversity–productivity relationships within host‐associated microbiomes.
Continuous Abrupt Vegetation Shifts in the Global Terrestrial EcosystemWei, Maohong; Li, Shengpeng; Zhu, Lin; Lu, Xueqiang; Li, Hongyuan; Feng, Jianfeng
doi: 10.1111/ele.70069pmid: 39831744
Previous studies have primarily focused on single abrupt shifts; however, the actual ecosystem will experience continuous abrupt shifts (CAS), including different directions shifts (DDS) and same direction shifts (SDS). The patterns and drivers of these CAS remain unclear. We examined the patterns of the DDS and SDS by two vegetation datasets and then tested climate drivers comprising atmospheric temperature (MAT), atmospheric precipitation (MAP), soil temperature (ST) and soil water content (SW); finally, hysteresis effects were examined with reference to principal drivers. The results demonstrate that the DDS and SDS varied across climatic regions. The ST, SW, MAT and MAP were the primary drivers of the DDS, while the MAT and MAP were the primary drivers of the SDS. Furthermore, the presence of hysteresis effects was validated via the DDS. This study presents the widespread occurrence of the CAS and the divergent roles of climate change on the DDS and SDS globally.
Impacts of Weather Anomalies and Climate on Plant DiseaseKirk, Devin; Cohen, Jeremy M.; Nguyen, Vianda; Childs, Marissa L.; Farner, Johannah E.; Davies, T. Jonathan; Flory, S. Luke; Rohr, Jason R.; O'Connor, Mary I.; Mordecai, Erin A.
doi: 10.1111/ele.70062pmid: 39831741
Predicting the effects of climate change on plant disease is critical for protecting ecosystems and food production. Here, we show how disease pressure responds to short‐term weather, historical climate and weather anomalies by compiling a global database (4339 plant–disease populations) of disease prevalence in both agricultural and wild plant systems. We hypothesised that weather and climate would play a larger role in disease in wild versus agricultural plant populations, which the results supported. In wild systems, disease prevalence peaked when the temperature was 2.7°C warmer than the historical average for the same time of year. We also found evidence of a negative interactive effect between weather anomalies and climate in wild systems, consistent with the idea that climate maladaptation can be an important driver of disease outbreaks. Temperature and precipitation had relatively little explanatory power in agricultural systems, though we observed a significant positive effect of current temperature. These results indicate that disease pressure in wild plants is sensitive to nonlinear effects of weather, weather anomalies and their interaction with historical climate. In contrast, warmer temperatures drove risks for agricultural plant disease outbreaks within the temperature range examined regardless of historical climate, suggesting vulnerability to ongoing climate change.
Environment‐Organism Feedbacks Drive Changes in Ecological InteractionsMeacock, Oliver J.; Mitri, Sara
doi: 10.1111/ele.70027pmid: 39737705
Ecological interactions are foundational to our understanding of community composition and function. While interactions are known to change depending on the environmental context, it has generally been assumed that external environmental factors are responsible for driving these dependencies. Here, we derive a theoretical framework which instead focuses on how intrinsic environmental changes caused by the organisms themselves alter interaction values. Our central concept is the ‘instantaneous interaction’, which captures the feedback between the current environmental state and organismal growth, generating spatiotemporal context‐dependencies as organisms modify their environment over time and/or space. We use small microbial communities to illustrate how this framework can predict time‐dependencies in a toxin degradation system, and relate time‐ and spatial‐dependencies in crossfeeding communities. By re‐centring the relationship between organisms and their environment, our framework predicts the variations in interactions wherever intrinsic, organism‐driven environmental change dominates over external drivers.