Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

Despite the expansive old-growth forests of California's Sierra Nevada, its greatest diversity of butterflies is found in non-forested habitats, such as alpine meadows and fell-fields. These unique “sky island” habitats support a number of endemic butterflies, such as the Ivallda Arctic (Oeneis chryxus ivallda). Unlike other, more colorful butterflies in the region, the dark, cryptic coloration of O c ivallda is hypothesized to aid in both thermoregulation and camouflage in the relatively cool, rocky environments they inhabit. Faced with warming temperatures, some alpine butterfly populations may track their climatic niche and stay ahead of advancing treelines by moving up mountain slopes. However, many O c ivallda populations already occur at or near mountain summits, limiting their potential for elevational shifts. On 2 July 2022, we observed a previously unrecorded O c ivallda population at the summit of Mount Whitney (4421 m). Popular data repositories (eg GBIF and iNaturalist) confirmed that no other butterflies have been observed here. Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in the conterminous US, and all higher summits in Canada and Alaska are—at least for the moment—permanently snow- or glacier-covered, unsuitable for butterfly occupancy. This observation therefore marks what we believe is the highest extant butterfly population in North America. Of the 12 O c ivallda individuals observed during a one-hour survey, three were collected for whole-genome resequencing as part of the California Conservation Genomics Project (CCGP; https://www.ccgproject.org/). Two individuals are pictured, one from the summit of Mount Whitney (above) and the other from the summit of Mount Dana (3981 m; below), approximately 170 km to the northwest of Whitney. In light of this observation, alpine butterflies in the Sierra Nevada are clearly exhausting their potential for elevational shifts in the face of warming temperatures. Preventing extinction may require proactive conservation practices, such as translocation and even assisted migration. Detailed population genomic data, such as those produced by the CCGP, will help inform these efforts.

This Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer) skull was found in Kruger National Park, South Africa. The distinctive projections on its horns are tubes made of silk and frass (excrement) created by larvae of the horn moth Ceratophaga vastella (family Tineidae).

An adult moth oviposits on the horn, perhaps placing its eggs in small cracks or holes on the horn's outer surface. Upon hatching, a larva begins to consume the horn, incorporating its frass into an enveloping tube. Eventually, the larva will pupate inside the tube, from which it will later emerge as an adult. Tubes with closed ends are occupied by individual larvae or pupae, while tubes with open ends are unoccupied. The exuviae (casts) of previously emerged moths might be seen protruding from a subset of the open-ended tubes.

Keratinophagy, the consumption of keratin as a substantial portion of the diet, is rare (New Zeal J Zool 2002; doi.org/10.1080/03014223.2002.9518285). Ceratophaga are the only tineids that feed exclusively on keratin. The tubes may protect subadults from predators and the physical environment. It would be interesting to learn how the larvae—inside their respective tubes—maintain their water balance, and what role the tubes play in that process. Because keratin is nitrogen-rich, horn consumption and processing by larvae could have important implications for nitrogen cycling and soil microbe communities at local scales.

These tubes have been documented on the horns of other bovids, such as the kob antelope (Kobus kob). Nevertheless, the output from an online image search suggests that there is a strong preference for horns of the Cape buffalo. If there is indeed such a predilection, might it be due to the relative thickness of the buffalo's horn sheath? Both the number of tubes per horn and the length of individual tubes vary, though the reasons for such differences are not understood. Relatedly, we have not found evidence of these larvae feeding on the keratin in hooves. Many questions arise in trying to understand these moths and their curious tubes.

Conserving migratory wildlife requires understanding how groups of individuals interact across seasons and landscapes. Telemetry reveals individual movements at large spatiotemporal scales; however, using movement data to define conservation units requires scaling up from individual movements to species- and community-level patterns. We developed a framework to define flyways and identify important sites from telemetry data and applied it to long-term, range-wide tracking data from three species (640 individuals) of sea ducks: namely, North American scoters (Melanitta spp). Our network of 88 nodes included both multispecies hotspots and areas uniquely important to individual species. We found limited spatial overlap between scoters wintering on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, with differing connectivity patterns between coasts. Finally, we identified four multispecies conservation units that did not correspond to traditional management flyways. From this approach, we show how individual movements can be used to quantify range-wide connectivity of migratory species and reveal gaps in conservation strategies.

Across the world, increasing urbanization is leading to more frequent encounters between humans and wildlife. The resulting cohabitation promotes new human–wildlife dynamics in cities and requires innovative approaches for coping with wildlife in habitats that are not conventionally considered as suitable. Here we examined how leopards (Panthera pardus) acclimate to the urban environment in Mumbai, India, and influence human politics through their presence, adaptability, and diverse relationships with humans and nonhumans. Building on perspectives from political ecology and more-than-human geography, we show how leopards may thwart the outcomes of wildlife conservation and management and also catalyze transitions toward approaches that foster coexistence. We reveal the political role that leopards play in Mumbai by examining the many ways in which they influence power dynamics among humans. Our analysis illustrates how including considerations about the political agency of wildlife in urban planning can improve nature conservation and social policies.

Entomophilous plants rely on insects for pollination and consequently for reproduction. However, insect pollinators are facing multiple human-driven pressures, from climate change to habitat loss to increased pesticide application. Anthropogenic activities have also led to critical increases in air pollution. A recent body of research focusing on the effects of air pollution on plant–pollinator interactions shows that air pollution might join the list of factors threatening insect pollination. Here, we examine the ways in which air pollution is thought to influence insect pollination, from potential mismatches between flowering and pollinator activity, to changes in pollinator attraction to flowers, to extensions in foraging periods. We consider the implications of these changes for plant reproduction and pollinator fitness and discuss how air pollutants are imperiling plant and pollinator communities. Finally, we define the questions that need to be addressed to better understand the impact of air pollution as a major driver of global change.

There are three common conceptualizations of resilience: persistence, recovery, and adaptability. While researchers apply all three in studies of forest ecosystems, the conceptualization used can have important empirical implications. We conducted a systematic literature review of empirical studies of forest resilience in the US from 2010 to 2020 to determine how researchers conceptualized, measured, and reflected the concept of resilience in reporting and interpreting their results. We determined that most studies defined resilience as recovery to the original state post-disturbance, focused on the state of individual species within the ecosystem rather than the state of the ecosystem itself, and measured the impacts of a single disturbance rather than impacts of multiple disturbances. As climate change and other stressors exacerbate impacts to ecosystems, it is important to move beyond the persistence of or recovery to the original state as the goal for resilient ecosystems and to focus instead on maintaining ecosystem functions and enhancing their adaptability.

Prayer animal release (PAR)—a traditional “compassion-based” religious practice of releasing captive animals into the wild to improve the karma of the releaser—has been regarded as a major anthropogenic pathway facilitating species invasions worldwide. However, comprehensive, quantitative assessments of PAR-related invasion risks, crucial for the development of mitigation strategies, are lacking. To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a literature review of the prevalence of PAR events and examined the overlap between PAR intensity across China and habitat suitability for non-native vertebrates released in these events. Our results revealed that 63% of the areas with high PAR intensity in China were also suitable for non-native vertebrate establishment, a degree of overlap that was greater than expected by chance. In addition, field surveys in China detected higher richness of non-native fishes at PAR sites than at non-PAR sites. These findings imply an overall high risk of biological invasions associated with PARs. We recommend interdisciplinary cooperation among scientists, religious groups, and government agencies to effectively manage PARs and reduce the associated bioinvasion risk.