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Interspecific interactions shape how and when species, and population, ranges change. Natural enemies, like parasites, can slow population spread, or, conversely, a population can ‘outrun' its enemies and spread uninhibited. Yet, less is known about how mutualistic interactions shape population spread, and what role outrunning mutualistic partners plays. Here, I examine host–symbiont interactions...
The explanations behind observations of global patterning in species diversity pre‐date the field of ecology itself. The generation of new species–area theories, in particular, far outpaces their falsification, resulting in a centuries‐old accumulation in species diversity theories. We use historical assessment and new data analysis to argue that one of the earliest recognized and most consistent...
Phenotypic plasticity is a key mechanism by which plants respond to changing or heterogeneous conditions. Efforts to predict phenotypic plasticity across plant species have mainly focused on environmental variability or abiotic conditions, i.e. site characteristics. However, the considerable variation in phenotypic plasticity within sites calls for alternative approaches. Different functional groups...
Pollination sustains terrestrial food webs and agricultural systems and links the dynamics of interacting plant and pollinator species. Although environmental stochasticity is ubiquitous and can propagate through communities via species interactions in a way that increases extinction risk, it is unknown whether stochasticity affects species uniformly across pollination networks. In this paper, we...
Pulsed resource environments are known for their marked variations in resource availability over space and time. Animals living in such environments usually increase reproduction after resources become available. Some small mammal populations, however, may use environmental cues that precede large crops of seeds (e.g. pollen, flowers, unripe seeds) to ‘predict' mast‐seeding events and reproduce in...
In theory, canopy openings can influence tree species establishment and resulting distributions over environmental gradients, but evidence concerning the magnitude and direction of such effects remain scarce. In this study we examine how canopy openings influence seedling persistence and growth and resulting elevation range limits. We transplanted 1360 seedlings of eight woody species (trees Trichilia habanensis...
Together, biological soil crust (BSC) and other cryptogamic groundcovers can contribute up to half of the global nitrogen (N) fixation. BSC also stabilizes the soil (reducing erosion and dust emissions), fixes carbon (C), retains moisture and acts as a hotspot of microbial diversity and activity. Much of the knowledge about how climate change is affecting the composition and functioning of BSC comes...
Global climate change threatens to substantially rearrange species interactions, yet we lack clear predictions on how these changes will cascade through communities. Many perturbations associated with climate change, such as droughts, will change resource levels, with consequences for species interactions and thus ecological network structure. Diet theory predicts foraging niche expansion when preferred...
Some three‐species motifs (unique patterns of interactions between three species) are both more stable when modelled in isolation and over‐represented in empirical food webs. This suggests that these motifs may reduce extinction risk for species participating in them, ultimately stabilising the food web as a whole. We test whether a species' time to extinction following a perturbation is related to...
Widespread changes in temperature and precipitation patterns present plant species with new and combined stresses that affect their performance and distribution. Functional traits are indicators of plant resource use–acquisition strategies and thus they are commonly used to understand the geographic distributions of plant species and species' potential responses to climate change. To date, most studies...
The meta‐ecosystem concept provides a theoretical framework to study the effect of local and regional flows of resources on ecosystem dynamics. Meta‐ecosystem theory has hitherto been applied to highly abstract landscapes, and meta‐ecosystem dynamics in real‐world landscapes remain largely unexplored. River networks constitute a prime example of meta‐ecosystems, being characterized by directional...
Predators drive trophic cascades by reducing prey biomass and altering prey traits, selecting for prey that exhibit constitutive and induced anti‐predator defenses that decrease susceptibility to consumption. These defense traits are often costly, generating a tradeoff between consumptive (CEs) and non‐consumptive predator effects (NCEs). The ecological and evolutionary experience that prey share...
In recent decades, anthropogenic and natural disturbances have increased in rate and intensity around the world, leaving few ecosystems unaffected. As a result of the interactions among these multiple disturbances, many biological communities now occur in a degraded state as collections of fragmented ecological pieces. Restoration strategies are traditionally driven by assumptions that a community...
Apex predators structure ecosystems by hunting mesopredators and herbivores. Their ecological influence is determined not only by the number of animals they kill, but also by how prey alter their behaviours to reduce risk. Predation risk is variable in space and time creating a landscape of fear. In Australia, dingoes hunt red foxes and suppress their populations. As both predators are commonly subjected...
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