Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

Conventionally, juvenile salmonids are thought to migrate unidirectionally from freshwater systems to marine systems and therefore only inhabit natal drainages. Although scattered evidence suggests juveniles can move bidirectionally between freshwater rivers and the ocean, including into non-natal drainages, such movements have never been documented with high replication. Here, we detected hundreds of movements of juvenile salmonids between drainages that involved 0–22% of cohort emigrants in Washington State and California. Individuals moved up to nine times and between drainages up to 70 km apart. These findings reveal a life-history type of salmonids whose remarkably complex migrations have gone unnoticed. Implicitly, juveniles may use any coastal freshwater habitat accessible from the sea and may not descend from spawning populations of drainages they inhabit. Consequently, typical conservation focused on natal drainages may overlook freshwater habitat elsewhere. A concept of coastal areas as meta-nurseries formed by multiple watersheds connected by the sea may accurately describe anadromous species’ habitat options and better inform management.

There is a movement across settler–colonial institutions of education and research to engage with Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges. Many settler and Indigenous governments are pursuing pathways to move forward together to address global problems such as climate change. However, given the pervasive history of exploitation and displacement of Indigenous communities, this development has caused some concern among Indigenous leaders and scholars. At the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) in Montreal, Canada, the Traditional Ecological Knowledge Section of the ESA hosted a 2-day workshop. This gathering of 21 Indigenous environmental scientists included scholars from across the career and professional spectrum. By consensus, workshop participants identified three emergent themes—Engage, Heal, and Reconcile—that provide a pathway toward reconciliation between Indigenous and settler–colonial ways of knowing. This path allows for an ever-greater sharing of institutional resources and power toward a co-equal interfacing of Indigenous Knowledges and settler science.

Climate change is likely to affect infectious diseases that are facilitated by biological invasions, with repercussions for wildlife conservation and zoonotic risks. Current invasion management and policy are underprepared for the future risks associated with such invasion-related wildlife diseases. By considering evidence from bioclimatology, invasion biology, and disease research, we illustrate how climate change is anticipated to affect disease agents (parasites and pathogens), hosts, and vectors across the different stages of invasions. We highlight the opportunity to integrate these disciplines to identify the effects of climate change on invasion-related wildlife diseases. In addition, shifting to a proactive stance in implementing management and policy, such as by incorporating climate-change effects either into preventative and mitigation measures for biosecurity or with rapid response protocols to limit disease spread and impacts, could help to combat future ecological, economic, and human health risks stemming from invasion-related wildlife diseases.

The extent of built marine infrastructure—from energy infrastructure and ports to artificial reefs and aquaculture—is increasing globally. The rise in built structure coverage is concurrent with losses and degradation of many natural habitats. Although historically associated with net negative impacts on natural systems, built infrastructure—with proper design and innovation—could offer a largely unrealized opportunity to reduce those impacts and support natural habitats. We present nine recommendations that could catalyze momentum toward using built structures to both serve their original function and benefit natural habitats (relative to the status quo, for example). These recommendations integrate functional, economic, and social considerations with marine spatial planning and holistic ecosystem management. As the footprint of the Anthropocene expands into ocean spaces, adopting these nine recommendations at global scales can help to ensure that ecological harm is minimized and that, where feasible, ecological benefits from marine built structures are accrued.

In many forests globally, resilience-focused restoration is necessary to prevent fire-driven regime shifts. However, restoration planning is challenged by limited resources for monitoring biodiversity responses to management intervention and to natural disturbances. Bioregional-scale passive acoustic monitoring, when combined with automated species identification tools and management-relevant habitat data, can be a tractable method to simultaneously monitor suites of complementary indicator species and rapidly generate species-specific information for resource managers. We demonstrate these methods by mapping the occurrence of ten avian indicator species while examining the impact of fire history on patterns of occurrence across 25,000 km² of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Monitoring complementary indicator species with rapidly developing bioacoustics technology and relating their occurrence to policy-ready habitat metrics have the potential to transform restoration planning by providing managers with high-resolution, ecosystem-scale information that facilitates adaptive management in an era of rapid environmental change.

The ecological and developmental history of the Chicago, Illinois, region has affected the current distribution of forests therein. These same factors, along with systemic and long-lasting racial segregation, have shaped the distribution of the urban populations that benefit from the ecosystem services provided by urban forests. This study demonstrates that forest patch history is related to forest attributes like tree species composition, tree density, canopy height, and structural heterogeneity—all of which are important predictors of a forest's ability to provide ecosystem services. However, this effect of forest history was only seen in forest cores, as forest edges were similar regardless of patch history. We also found that forests in minoritized communities tended to be less able to support high levels of ecosystem services. This research indicates that, when improving green equity, it is important to consider the variable capacity of forests to provide ecosystem services.

Efforts to restore habitat for wildlife often target single species, with limited consideration of the potential benefits provided to sympatric species. On the basis of range-wide data from the Fourth National Giant Panda Survey and infrared camera trapping, we used species distribution models to project the outcomes of five habitat restoration scenarios—designed to benefit giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca)—for giant pandas as well as for sympatric birds and mammals. Scenario outcomes, particularly those involving the conversion of plantation forests and shrublands into suitable forests, demonstrated a significant enhancement in giant panda habitat suitability, but with contrasting effects for sympatric species. Moreover, while restoration of giant panda habitat may enhance species richness and functional diversity, especially when shrublands are converted into forests, such action could also reduce phylogenetic diversity. Our findings suggest that single-species habitat restoration may have negative outcomes for sympatric species, highlighting the need to consider trade-offs between focal and non-focal taxa.