Ecology Letters

doi: 10.1111/ele.14247pmid: N/A

Lilkendey, Julian

doi: 10.1111/ele.14311pmid: 37787081

Ecological researchers who train Artificial Intelligence models using digital media have to be cognizant of legal and ethical implications when sourcing such content from online repositories. The way forward? Complying with Creative Commons licensing requirements, obtaining consent from media creators and adhering to FAIR data principles. Collective action from researchers, repositories, licence providers, and legislators is needed to conserve this complex open media ecosystem. This way, we can continue to develop innovative applications to address pressing ecological issues while maintaining the trust of content creators and respecting the legal and ethical framework of online media use.

VanAcker, Meredith C.; DeNicola, Vickie L.; DeNicola, Anthony J.; Aucoin, Sarah Grimké; Simon, Richard; Toal, Katrina L.; Diuk‐Wasser, Maria A.; Cagnacci, Francesca

doi: 10.1111/ele.14326pmid: 37882483

Although the role of host movement in shaping infectious disease dynamics is widely acknowledged, methodological separation between animal movement and disease ecology has prevented researchers from leveraging empirical insights from movement data to advance landscape scale understanding of infectious disease risk. To address this knowledge gap, we examine how movement behaviour and resource utilization by white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) determines blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis) distribution, which depend on deer for dispersal in a highly fragmented New York City borough. Multi‐scale hierarchical resource selection analysis and movement modelling provide insight into how deer's movements contribute to the risk landscape for human exposure to the Lyme disease vector–I. scapularis. We find deer select highly vegetated and accessible residential properties which support blacklegged tick survival. We conclude the distribution of tick‐borne disease risk results from the individual resource selection by deer across spatial scales in response to habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic disturbances.

Haesen, Stef; Lenoir, Jonathan; Gril, Eva; De Frenne, Pieter; Lembrechts, Jonas J.; Kopecký, Martin; Macek, Martin; Man, Matěj; Wild, Jan; Van Meerbeek, Koenraad

doi: 10.1111/ele.14312pmid: 37788337

Species distributions are conventionally modelled using coarse‐grained macroclimate data measured in open areas, potentially leading to biased predictions since most terrestrial species reside in the shade of trees. For forest plant species across Europe, we compared conventional macroclimate‐based species distribution models (SDMs) with models corrected for forest microclimate buffering. We show that microclimate‐based SDMs at high spatial resolution outperformed models using macroclimate and microclimate data at coarser resolution. Additionally, macroclimate‐based models introduced a systematic bias in modelled species response curves, which could result in erroneous range shift predictions. Critically important for conservation science, these models were unable to identify warm and cold refugia at the range edges of species distributions. Our study emphasizes the crucial role of microclimate data when SDMs are used to gain insights into biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change, particularly given the growing policy and management focus on the conservation of refugia worldwide.

Lear, Luke; Inamine, Hidetoshi; Shea, Katriona; Buckling, Angus

doi: 10.1111/ele.14325pmid: 37847646

Anthropogenic activities expose many ecosystems to multiple novel disturbances simultaneously. Despite this, how biodiversity responds to simultaneous disturbances remains unclear, with conflicting empirical results on their interactive effects. Here, we experimentally test how one disturbance (an invasive species) affects the diversity of a community over multiple levels of another disturbance regime (pulse mortality). Specifically, we invade stably coexisting bacterial communities under four different pulse frequencies, and compare their final resident diversity to uninvaded communities under the same pulse mortality regimes. Our experiment shows that the disturbances synergistically interact, such that the invader significantly reduces resident diversity at high pulse frequency, but not at low. This work therefore highlights the need to study simultaneous disturbance effects over multiple disturbance regimes as well as to carefully document unmanipulated disturbances, and may help explain the conflicting results seen in previous multiple‐disturbance work.

Jónsson, Jón Einar; Rickowski, Fiona S.; Ruland, Florian; Ásgeirsson, Árni; Jeschke, Jonathan M.

doi: 10.1111/ele.14313pmid: 37818595

Bird species on islands are strongly impacted by biological invasions, with the Icelandic common eider (Somateria mollissima borealis) being particularly threatened. Down collection by local families in Breiðafjörður, West Iceland, provided long‐term datasets of nests from two archipelagos, covering 95 islands over 123 years and 39 islands over 27 years, respectively. Using these exceptional datasets, we found that the arrival of the invasive semi‐aquatic American mink (Neogale vison) was a more impactful driver of population dynamics than climate. This invasive predator heavily reduced eider nest numbers by ca. 60% in the Brokey archipelago. In contrast, we detected an apparently adaptive response to the return of the native fox in the Purkey archipelago, with dense nests on islands inaccessible to the fox and no apparent impact on eider populations. This difference might be due to the eiders lacking a joint evolutionary history with the mink and therefore lacking appropriate antipredator responses.

Tumolo, Benjamin B.; Collins, Sarah M.; Guan, Yawen; Krist, Amy C.

doi: 10.1111/ele.14317pmid: 37787116

Resource quantity controls biodiversity across spatial scales; however, the importance of resource quality to cross‐scale patterns in species richness has seldom been explored. We evaluated the relationship between stream basal resource quantity (periphyton chlorophyll a) and invertebrate richness and compared this to the relationship of resource quality (periphyton stoichiometry) and richness at local and regional scales across 27 North American streams. At the local scale, invertebrate richness peaked at intermediate levels of chlorophyll a, but had a shallow negative relationship with periphyton C:P and N:P. However, at the regional scale, richness had a strong negative relationship with chlorophyll a and periphyton C:P and N:P. The divergent relationships of periphyton chlorophyll a and stoichiometry with invertebrate richness suggest that autochthonous resource quantity limits diversity more than quality, consistent with patterns of eutrophication. Collectively, we provide evidence that patterns in resource quantity and quality play important, yet differing roles in shaping freshwater biodiversity across spatial scale.

Tang, Bo; Man, Jing; Lehmann, Anika; Rillig, Matthias C.

doi: 10.1111/ele.14320pmid: 37794719

Land plants play a key role in global carbon cycling, but the potential role of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in the responses of a wide range of plant species to global change factors (GCFs) remains limited. Based on 1100 paired observations from 181 plant species, we conducted a meta‐analysis to test the role of AMF in plant responses to four GCFs: drought, warming, nitrogen (N) addition and elevated CO2. We show that AMF significantly ameliorate the negative effects of drought on plant performance. The GCFs N addition and elevated CO2 significantly enhance the performance of AM plants but not of non‐inoculated plants. AM plants show better performance than their non‐inoculated counterparts under warming, although neither of them showed a significant response to this GCF. These results suggest that AMF benefit plants in response to GCFs. Our study highlights the importance of AMF in enhancing plant performance under ongoing global change.

Umaña, María Natalia; Salgado‐Negret, Beatriz; Norden, Natalia; Salinas, Viviana; Garzón, Fabián; Medina, Sandra P.; Rodríguez‐M., Gina M.; López‐Camacho, René; Castaño‐Naranjo, Alejandro; Cuadros, Hermes; Franke‐Ante, Rebeca; Avella, Andrés; Idárraga‐Piedrahita, Álvaro; Jurado, Rubén; Nieto, Jhon; Pizano, Camila; Torres, Alba M.;

van Velzen, Ellen

doi: 10.1111/ele.14321pmid: 37807971

Evolutionary rescue may allow species to survive environmental change, but how this mechanism operates in food webs is poorly understood. Here, the evolutionary rescue was investigated in a small model food web, systematically allowing the evolution of each single species in order to reveal how its adaptation affects the persistence of itself and others. The impact of evolution was highly species‐specific and not necessarily positive: only one species, the specialist predator, consistently had a positive impact on overall persistence. Most strikingly, evolution overwhelmingly affected other species: rescue of others (indirect rescue) was far more frequent than self‐rescue, and negative effects were nearly always indirect. This demonstrates that evolutionary rescue in food webs is inextricably bound up with species interactions, as the effects of evolution in one species ripple through the entire community. It is therefore critically important to consider the food web context in efforts to understand how species may survive global change.