Journal of Animal Ecology最新文献

Research Highlight: Colares, L. F., Peres, C. A., Dambros, C. S. (2026). Life history induces markedly divergent insect responses to habitat loss. Journal of Animal Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70117. Habitat loss is driving biodiversity collapse worldwide. Although this phenomenon has been extensively studied across many taxa and regions, we still lack information about whether species with distinct life histories respond differently to habitat loss. This challenge is particularly critical for tropical insects, where knowledge gaps remain large due to the Linnean (taxonomy) and Raunkiæran (traits) shortfalls. In this issue, Colares et al. (2025) address these gaps by using 236 sticky traps across the world's largest man-made tropical forest archipelago in the Central Amazon (~360,000 ha), generating a dataset of ~23,000 individual insects. They combined these surveys of insect fauna with computer vision models to assess how habitat loss affects both α- and β-diversity in insects with contrasting life histories (terrestrial vs. aquatic). The study reveals that responses diverge strongly depending on whether taxa rely on terrestrial or aquatic environments during their ontogeny. Whereas low forest amount reduced the number of terrestrial species, it increased species with aquatic life histories. Importantly, the authors also linked insect responses to body size (a proxy for dispersal ability), suggesting that larger insects, which disperse more successfully across the water matrix, may be favoured as ‘winner’ species in fragmented habitats. The findings of Colares et al. (2025) have broad implications for animal ecology and insect conservation. First, they highlight that insect declines in response to habitat loss are largely driven by traits that confer high or low resilience to reductions in forest cover. Second, they underscore the potential of computer vision as a powerful tool for uncovering key information about insect populations, thereby facilitating applied research such as rapid biodiversity surveys and long-term monitoring.

Energetic acquisition and growth are key traits that affect demography and life-history strategies. Many animals that live in seasonal environments in which food availability fluctuates store energy endogenously as fat in anticipation of food shortage. Fat-storing mammalian hibernators are an extreme example of this strategy wherein the optimal resolution of resource allocation trade-offs is essential to survival. Hence, these species provide an opportunity to test potential causes and consequences of seasonal body mass dynamics. We used a 12-year dataset of 8753 body mass records from 3351 individually marked northern Idaho ground squirrels (Urocitellus brunneus)-a federally threatened hibernator-to meet three objectives: (1) document seasonal body mass changes by sex, age and reproductive status, (2) test ecological hypotheses to explain spatiotemporal variation in body mass and (3) document fitness consequences of pre-hibernation body condition via condition-dependent overwinter survival. Squirrels varied substantially in seasonal body mass dynamics. The magnitude (36-155%) and onset (late May to early July) of rapid active-season mass gain varied among demographic groups. Reproductive females acquired the necessary fat stores to survive hibernation later in the active season than did males and non-reproductive females. Moreover, squirrels with better pre-hibernation body condition were more likely to survive to the subsequent year, potentially because they allocated excess energetic reserves to prolonging hibernation via early immergence and thereby reduced predation risk. These results suggest a direct trade-off between current and future reproduction mediated by resource acquisition and allocation, as predicted by life-history theory. Colder active-season temperatures and lower conspecific densities negatively influenced squirrel body condition, possibly via reductions in foraging activity associated with those conditions. These ecological effects on body condition constrain resource allocation and demographic outcomes. As such, our results can help guide research and conservation strategies to benefit hibernating animals.

While biotic factors such as traits, abundance or community context have long been recognized as the main determinants of species interactions, abiotic conditions such as temperature can rewire these interactions even when species composition and abundance remain constant. Interaction establishment in plant–pollinator systems is particularly sensitive to these conditions, as pollinator metabolism, cognition and behaviour and floral reward production all respond strongly to thermal variation. Yet empirical evidence for community-wide consequences of such temperature-driven shifts in interactions remains limited. Arrowsmith et al. (2025) demonstrate that changes in temperature, independently of species turnover, can trigger pollinators' flexibility in floral resource use, reshaping which flowers they visit in natural diverse communities. These findings suggest that, alongside trait matching, abundance, phylogeny or spatiotemporal overlap, temperature plays a substantial and previously underappreciated role in shaping plant−pollinator interaction patterns. These thermal effects have particularly important implications at a broader scale as climate change accelerates, as temperature-driven interaction rewiring can cascade through interaction networks, influencing their emerging properties and functional outcomes. This study therefore underscores the need to incorporate the abiotic context into predictive models of these networks for anticipating how climate change may destabilize—or stabilize—ecological systems.