Peggy A. Bevan, Guilherme Braga Ferreira, Daniel J. Ingram, Marcus Rowcliffe, Lucy Young, Robin Freeman, Kate E. Jones
Biogeographic context, such as biome type, has a critical influence on ecological resilience, as climatic and environmental conditions impact how communities respond to anthropogenic threats. For example, land-use change causes a greater loss of biodiversity in tropical biomes compared to temperate biomes. Furthermore, the nature of threats impacting ecosystems varies geographically. Therefore, monitoring the state of biodiversity at a high spatial resolution is crucial to capture variation in threat–responses caused by biogeographical context. However such fine-scale ecological data collection could be prohibitively resource intensive. In this study, we aim to find the spatial scale that could best capture variation in community-level threat responses whilst keeping data collection requirements feasible. Using a database of biodiversity records with extensive global coverage, we modelled species richness and total abundance (the responses) across land-use types (reflecting threats), considering three different spatial scales: biomes, biogeographical realms, and regional biomes (the interaction between realm and biome). We then modelled data from three highly sampled biomes to ask how responses to threat differ between regional biomes and taxonomic group. We found strong support for regional biomes in explaining variation in species richness and total abundance compared to biomes or realms alone. Our biome case studies demonstrate that there is variation in magnitude and direction of threat responses across both regional biomes and taxonomic group, although the interpretation is limited by sampling bias in the literature. All groups in tropical forest showed a consistently negative response, whilst many taxon-regional biome groups showed no clear response to threat in temperate forest and tropical grassland. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that the taxon-regional biome unit has potential as a reasonable spatial unit for monitoring how ecological communities respond to threats and designing effective conservation interventions to bend the curve on biodiversity loss.
{"title":"Regional Biomes outperform broader spatial units in capturing biodiversity responses to land-use change","authors":"Peggy A. Bevan, Guilherme Braga Ferreira, Daniel J. Ingram, Marcus Rowcliffe, Lucy Young, Robin Freeman, Kate E. Jones","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07318","url":null,"abstract":"Biogeographic context, such as biome type, has a critical influence on ecological resilience, as climatic and environmental conditions impact how communities respond to anthropogenic threats. For example, land-use change causes a greater loss of biodiversity in tropical biomes compared to temperate biomes. Furthermore, the nature of threats impacting ecosystems varies geographically. Therefore, monitoring the state of biodiversity at a high spatial resolution is crucial to capture variation in threat–responses caused by biogeographical context. However such fine-scale ecological data collection could be prohibitively resource intensive. In this study, we aim to find the spatial scale that could best capture variation in community-level threat responses whilst keeping data collection requirements feasible. Using a database of biodiversity records with extensive global coverage, we modelled species richness and total abundance (the responses) across land-use types (reflecting threats), considering three different spatial scales: biomes, biogeographical realms, and regional biomes (the interaction between realm and biome). We then modelled data from three highly sampled biomes to ask how responses to threat differ between regional biomes and taxonomic group. We found strong support for regional biomes in explaining variation in species richness and total abundance compared to biomes or realms alone. Our biome case studies demonstrate that there is variation in magnitude and direction of threat responses across both regional biomes and taxonomic group, although the interpretation is limited by sampling bias in the literature. All groups in tropical forest showed a consistently negative response, whilst many taxon-regional biome groups showed no clear response to threat in temperate forest and tropical grassland. Our results provide the first empirical evidence that the taxon-regional biome unit has potential as a reasonable spatial unit for monitoring how ecological communities respond to threats and designing effective conservation interventions to bend the curve on biodiversity loss.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"214 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142763491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Anne Baranger, Thomas Cordonnier, Guillaume Charrier, Sylvain Delzon, Maximilian Larter, Nicolas K. Martin-StPaul, Georges Kunstler
Species distribution models are key to evaluate how climate change threatens European forests and tree species distributions. However, current models struggle to integrate ecophysiological processes. Mechanistic models are complex and have high parameter requirements. Some correlative species distribution models have tried to include traits but so far have struggled to directly connect to ecophysiological processes. Here, we propose a new strategy in which species distributions are based on safety margins which represent species' proximity to their physiological thresholds. We derived frost and drought safety margins for 38 European tree species as the difference between physiological tolerance traits and local maximum stress. We used LT50 and Ψ50 as tolerance traits for frost and drought, respectively, and local minimum temperature and minimum soil water potential as maximum stress. We integrated these safety margins into a species distribution model, which tests if the probability of species presence declines rapidly when the safety margin reaches zero, when physiological stress exceeds the species' tolerance traits. Our results showed thaet 35 of the 38 studied species had their distribution explained by one or both safety margins. We demonstrated that safety-margins-based model can be efficiently transferred to species for which occurrence data are not available. The probability of presence dropped dramatically when the frost safety margin reached zero, whereas it was less sensitive to the drought safety margin. This differential sensitivity may be due to the more complex regulation of drought stress, especially as water is a shared resource, whereas frost is not. Our analysis provides a new approach to link species distributions to their physiological limits and shows that, in Europe, frost and drought safety margins are important determinants of species distributions.
{"title":"Living on the edge – physiological tolerance to frost and drought explains range limits of 35 European tree species","authors":"Anne Baranger, Thomas Cordonnier, Guillaume Charrier, Sylvain Delzon, Maximilian Larter, Nicolas K. Martin-StPaul, Georges Kunstler","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07528","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07528","url":null,"abstract":"Species distribution models are key to evaluate how climate change threatens European forests and tree species distributions. However, current models struggle to integrate ecophysiological processes. Mechanistic models are complex and have high parameter requirements. Some correlative species distribution models have tried to include traits but so far have struggled to directly connect to ecophysiological processes. Here, we propose a new strategy in which species distributions are based on safety margins which represent species' proximity to their physiological thresholds. We derived frost and drought safety margins for 38 European tree species as the difference between physiological tolerance traits and local maximum stress. We used <i>LT</i><sub>50</sub> and Ψ<sub>50</sub> as tolerance traits for frost and drought, respectively, and local minimum temperature and minimum soil water potential as maximum stress. We integrated these safety margins into a species distribution model, which tests if the probability of species presence declines rapidly when the safety margin reaches zero, when physiological stress exceeds the species' tolerance traits. Our results showed thaet 35 of the 38 studied species had their distribution explained by one or both safety margins. We demonstrated that safety-margins-based model can be efficiently transferred to species for which occurrence data are not available. The probability of presence dropped dramatically when the frost safety margin reached zero, whereas it was less sensitive to the drought safety margin. This differential sensitivity may be due to the more complex regulation of drought stress, especially as water is a shared resource, whereas frost is not. Our analysis provides a new approach to link species distributions to their physiological limits and shows that, in Europe, frost and drought safety margins are important determinants of species distributions.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"261 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142760668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rodolfo O. Anderson, Steven L. Chown, Rachel I. Leihy
Mosses play a key role in Antarctic ecosystems. Understanding of moss diversity and its likely drivers across Antarctica is, however, limited, as is the extent to which Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) represent this diversity. Both are important given changing climates and direct human impacts in the region. Here we investigate variation in moss diversity, the frequency distribution of their range sizes, and their continent-wide conservation. Richness is positively related to temperature, but negatively related to latitude, distance from bird colonies and geothermal sites; terrain roughness showed weak, yet positive, effects. Beta-diversity is similar to that found for assemblages separated by long distances, dominated by species turnover. Multi-site turnover (zeta diversity) suggests that niche-related mechanisms are likely more responsible for diversity patterns than neutral mechanisms, despite the significant role wind-driven dispersal is thought to play in structuring Antarctic biodiversity patterns. The frequency distribution of range sizes of mosses was right skewed, indicating that several moss species have very small range sizes, while a few species have larger ranges. Where ASPAs include mosses, richness varies between 1 and 41 species, with 65.1% (71 species) of the 109 species known from the continent included in the ASPA network. Twenty-four species lie within 25 km2 radius of an ASPA, and 14 species beyond this distance could be considered relatively more difficult to protect. These findings lend support to the proposal that changing temperatures and expanding ice-free areas will substantially increase Antarctica's diversity. Nonetheless, the mosses are reasonably well represented by the ASPA network, contrasting with other Antarctic taxa.
{"title":"Continent-wide analysis of moss diversity in Antarctica","authors":"Rodolfo O. Anderson, Steven L. Chown, Rachel I. Leihy","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07353","url":null,"abstract":"Mosses play a key role in Antarctic ecosystems. Understanding of moss diversity and its likely drivers across Antarctica is, however, limited, as is the extent to which Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) represent this diversity. Both are important given changing climates and direct human impacts in the region. Here we investigate variation in moss diversity, the frequency distribution of their range sizes, and their continent-wide conservation. Richness is positively related to temperature, but negatively related to latitude, distance from bird colonies and geothermal sites; terrain roughness showed weak, yet positive, effects. Beta-diversity is similar to that found for assemblages separated by long distances, dominated by species turnover. Multi-site turnover (zeta diversity) suggests that niche-related mechanisms are likely more responsible for diversity patterns than neutral mechanisms, despite the significant role wind-driven dispersal is thought to play in structuring Antarctic biodiversity patterns. The frequency distribution of range sizes of mosses was right skewed, indicating that several moss species have very small range sizes, while a few species have larger ranges. Where ASPAs include mosses, richness varies between 1 and 41 species, with 65.1% (71 species) of the 109 species known from the continent included in the ASPA network. Twenty-four species lie within 25 km<sup>2</sup> radius of an ASPA, and 14 species beyond this distance could be considered relatively more difficult to protect. These findings lend support to the proposal that changing temperatures and expanding ice-free areas will substantially increase Antarctica's diversity. Nonetheless, the mosses are reasonably well represented by the ASPA network, contrasting with other Antarctic taxa.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142760715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Benjamin R. Goldstein, Abigail G. Keller, Kendall L. Calhoun, Kristin J. Barker, Felipe Montealegre-Mora, Mitchell W. Serota, Amy Van Scoyoc, Phoebe Parker-Shames, Chelsea L. Andreozzi, Perry de Valpine
Over 20 years ago, ecologists were introduced to the site occupancy model (SOM) for estimating occupancy rates from detection-nondetection data. In the ensuing decades, the SOM and its hierarchical modeling extensions have become mainstays of quantitative ecology, and estimating occupancy rates has become one of the most common applications of ecological field data. Here, we review 364 peer-reviewed articles published between 2019–2021 that estimated occupancy. We first document broad patterns in study design and statistical methods to provide educators, developers of methodology and software, and ecologists with a clear picture of the landscape of methodologies used to estimate animal occupancy. Second, we conduct a focused review of a subset of 98 papers that applied the hierarchical SOM, drawing from methodological literature to identify discrepancies between SOM applications and methodological best practices. We discuss limits to statistical power, issues with model checking and model selection procedures, potential problems arising from unmodeled non-independence, and reproducibility. We highlight areas of rapid advancement in interpreting animal occupancy related to animal movement, imperfect detection, and the occupancy–density relationship. We aim to help readers understand the landscape of methods available, motivate shifts toward robust and reproducible science, and inspire new software and methodological research.
{"title":"How do ecologists estimate occupancy in practice?","authors":"Benjamin R. Goldstein, Abigail G. Keller, Kendall L. Calhoun, Kristin J. Barker, Felipe Montealegre-Mora, Mitchell W. Serota, Amy Van Scoyoc, Phoebe Parker-Shames, Chelsea L. Andreozzi, Perry de Valpine","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07402","url":null,"abstract":"Over 20 years ago, ecologists were introduced to the site occupancy model (SOM) for estimating occupancy rates from detection-nondetection data. In the ensuing decades, the SOM and its hierarchical modeling extensions have become mainstays of quantitative ecology, and estimating occupancy rates has become one of the most common applications of ecological field data. Here, we review 364 peer-reviewed articles published between 2019–2021 that estimated occupancy. We first document broad patterns in study design and statistical methods to provide educators, developers of methodology and software, and ecologists with a clear picture of the landscape of methodologies used to estimate animal occupancy. Second, we conduct a focused review of a subset of 98 papers that applied the hierarchical SOM, drawing from methodological literature to identify discrepancies between SOM applications and methodological best practices. We discuss limits to statistical power, issues with model checking and model selection procedures, potential problems arising from unmodeled non-independence, and reproducibility. We highlight areas of rapid advancement in interpreting animal occupancy related to animal movement, imperfect detection, and the occupancy–density relationship. We aim to help readers understand the landscape of methods available, motivate shifts toward robust and reproducible science, and inspire new software and methodological research.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142760722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Erik A. Beever, Marie L. Westover, Adam B. Smith, Francis D. Gerraty, Peter D. Billman, Felisa A. Smith
Many organisms leave evidence of their former occurrence, such as scat, abandoned burrows, middens, ancient eDNA or fossils, which indicate areas from which a species has since disappeared. However, combining this evidence with contemporary occurrences within a single modeling framework remains challenging. Traditional binary species‐distribution modeling reduces occurrence to two temporally coarse states (present/absent), so thus cannot leverage the information inherent in temporal sequences of evidence of past occurrence. In contrast, ordinal modeling can use the natural time‐varying order of states (e.g. never occupied versus previously occupied versus currently occupied) to provide greater insights into range shifts. We demonstrate the power of ordinal modeling for identifying the major influences of biogeographic and climatic variables on current and past occupancy of the American pika Ochotona princeps, a climate‐sensitive mammal. Sampling over five years across the species' southernmost, warm‐edge range limit, we tested the effects of these variables at 570 habitat patches where occurrence was classified either as binary or ordinal. The two analyses produced different top models and predictors – ordinal modeling highlighted chronic cold as the most‐important predictor of occurrence, whereas binary modeling indicated primacy of average summer‐long temperatures. Colder wintertime temperatures were associated in ordinal models with higher likelihood of occurrence, which we hypothesize reflect longer retention of insulative and meltwater‐provisioning snowpacks. Our binary results mirrored those of other past pika investigations employing binary analysis, wherein warmer temperatures decrease likelihood of occurrence. Because both ordinal‐ and binary‐analysis top models included climatic and biogeographic factors, results constitute important considerations for climate‐adaptation planning. Cross‐time evidences of species occurrences remain underutilized for assessing responses to climate change. Compared to multi‐state occupancy modeling, which presumes all states occur in the same time period, ordinal models enable use of historical evidence of species' occurrence to identify factors driving species' distributions more finely across time.
{"title":"Combining past and contemporary species occurrences with ordinal species distribution modeling to investigate responses to climate change","authors":"Erik A. Beever, Marie L. Westover, Adam B. Smith, Francis D. Gerraty, Peter D. Billman, Felisa A. Smith","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07382","url":null,"abstract":"Many organisms leave evidence of their former occurrence, such as scat, abandoned burrows, middens, ancient eDNA or fossils, which indicate areas from which a species has since disappeared. However, combining this evidence with contemporary occurrences within a single modeling framework remains challenging. Traditional binary species‐distribution modeling reduces occurrence to two temporally coarse states (present/absent), so thus cannot leverage the information inherent in temporal sequences of evidence of past occurrence. In contrast, ordinal modeling can use the natural time‐varying order of states (e.g. never occupied versus previously occupied versus currently occupied) to provide greater insights into range shifts. We demonstrate the power of ordinal modeling for identifying the major influences of biogeographic and climatic variables on current and past occupancy of the American pika <jats:italic>Ochotona princeps</jats:italic>, a climate‐sensitive mammal. Sampling over five years across the species' southernmost, warm‐edge range limit, we tested the effects of these variables at 570 habitat patches where occurrence was classified either as binary or ordinal. The two analyses produced different top models and predictors – ordinal modeling highlighted chronic cold as the most‐important predictor of occurrence, whereas binary modeling indicated primacy of average summer‐long temperatures. Colder wintertime temperatures were associated in ordinal models with higher likelihood of occurrence, which we hypothesize reflect longer retention of insulative and meltwater‐provisioning snowpacks. Our binary results mirrored those of other past pika investigations employing binary analysis, wherein warmer temperatures decrease likelihood of occurrence. Because both ordinal‐ and binary‐analysis top models included climatic and biogeographic factors, results constitute important considerations for climate‐adaptation planning. Cross‐time evidences of species occurrences remain underutilized for assessing responses to climate change. Compared to multi‐state occupancy modeling, which presumes all states occur in the same time period, ordinal models enable use of historical evidence of species' occurrence to identify factors driving species' distributions more finely across time.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"115 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142753116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ditte Marie Christiansen, Johan Ehrlén, Kristoffer Hylander
As the climate is changing, species respond by changing their distributions and abundances. The effects of climate are not only direct, but also occur via changes in biotic interactions, such as competition. Yet, the role of competition in mediating the effects of climate is still largely unclear. To examine how climate influences species performance, directly and via competition with other species, we transplanted two moss species differing in climate niches, alone and together at 59 sites along a climate gradient. Growth was monitored over three growing seasons. In the absence of competition, both species performed better under warmer conditions. Yet, when transplanted together, a warmer climate had negative effects on the northern moss, while the effects remained positive for the southern species. The negative effect of a cold climate on the southern species was larger when both species were transplanted together. Over three growing seasons, the southern species almost outcompeted the northern in warmer climates. Our results illustrate how competitive interactions can modify, and even reverse, the direct effects of climate on organism performance. A broader implication of our results is that species interactions can have important effects on how environmental and climate change influence performance and abundance.
{"title":"Competitive interactions modify the direct effects of climate","authors":"Ditte Marie Christiansen, Johan Ehrlén, Kristoffer Hylander","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07322","url":null,"abstract":"As the climate is changing, species respond by changing their distributions and abundances. The effects of climate are not only direct, but also occur via changes in biotic interactions, such as competition. Yet, the role of competition in mediating the effects of climate is still largely unclear. To examine how climate influences species performance, directly and via competition with other species, we transplanted two moss species differing in climate niches, alone and together at 59 sites along a climate gradient. Growth was monitored over three growing seasons. In the absence of competition, both species performed better under warmer conditions. Yet, when transplanted together, a warmer climate had negative effects on the northern moss, while the effects remained positive for the southern species. The negative effect of a cold climate on the southern species was larger when both species were transplanted together. Over three growing seasons, the southern species almost outcompeted the northern in warmer climates. Our results illustrate how competitive interactions can modify, and even reverse, the direct effects of climate on organism performance. A broader implication of our results is that species interactions can have important effects on how environmental and climate change influence performance and abundance.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"176 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142672926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Martin Philippe-Lesaffre, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Irene Castañeda, John Llewelyn, Christopher R. Dickman, Christopher A. Lepczyk, Jean Fantle-Lepczyk, Clara Marino, Franck Courchamp, Elsa Bonnaud
Co-evolutionary relationships associated with biogeographical context mediate the response of native prey to introduced predators, but this effect has not yet been demonstrated for domestic cats. We investigated the main factors influencing the vulnerability of prey species to domestic cat Felis catus predation across Australia, Europe and North America, where domestic cats are introduced. In addition to prey data from empirical records, we used machine-learning models to compensate for unobserved prey in the diet of cats. We found continent-specific patterns of predation: birds were more frequently depredated by cats in Europe and North America, while mammals were favoured in Australia. Bird prey traits were consistent across continents, but those of mammalian prey diverged, notably in Australia. Differences between prey and non-prey species included mass, distribution, and reproductive traits, except in Australian mammals where there was no evidence for a relationship between mass and the probability of being prey. Many Australian mammal prey also have a high extinction risk, emphasizing their vulnerability compared to European and North American counterparts. Our findings highlight the role of eco-evolutionary context in assessing predation impacts and also demonstrate the potential for machine learning to identify at-risk species, thereby aiding global conservation efforts to reduce the negative impacts of introduced predators.
{"title":"Differential predation patterns of free-ranging cats among continents","authors":"Martin Philippe-Lesaffre, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Irene Castañeda, John Llewelyn, Christopher R. Dickman, Christopher A. Lepczyk, Jean Fantle-Lepczyk, Clara Marino, Franck Courchamp, Elsa Bonnaud","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07169","url":null,"abstract":"Co-evolutionary relationships associated with biogeographical context mediate the response of native prey to introduced predators, but this effect has not yet been demonstrated for domestic cats. We investigated the main factors influencing the vulnerability of prey species to domestic cat <i>Felis catus</i> predation across Australia, Europe and North America, where domestic cats are introduced. In addition to prey data from empirical records, we used machine-learning models to compensate for unobserved prey in the diet of cats. We found continent-specific patterns of predation: birds were more frequently depredated by cats in Europe and North America, while mammals were favoured in Australia. Bird prey traits were consistent across continents, but those of mammalian prey diverged, notably in Australia. Differences between prey and non-prey species included mass, distribution, and reproductive traits, except in Australian mammals where there was no evidence for a relationship between mass and the probability of being prey. Many Australian mammal prey also have a high extinction risk, emphasizing their vulnerability compared to European and North American counterparts. Our findings highlight the role of eco-evolutionary context in assessing predation impacts and also demonstrate the potential for machine learning to identify at-risk species, thereby aiding global conservation efforts to reduce the negative impacts of introduced predators.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142672925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Billur Bektaş, Chelsea Chisholm, Dagmar Egelkraut, Joshua Lynn, Sebastián Block, Thomas Deola, Fanny Dommanget, Brian J. Enquist, Deborah E. Goldberg, Sylvia Haider, Aud H. Halbritter, Yongtao He, Renaud Jaunatre, Anke Jentsch, Kari Klanderud, Paul Kardol, Susanne Lachmuth, Gregory Loucougaray, Tamara Münkemüller, Georg Niedrist, Hanna Nomoto, Lorah Seltzer, Joachim Paul Töpper, Lisa J. Rew, Tim Seipel, Manzoor A. Shah, Richard James Telford, Tom W.N. Walker, Shiping Wang, David A. Wardle, Peter Wolff, Yan Yang, Vigdis Vandvik, Jake M. Alexander
Global warming is changing plant communities due to the arrival of new species from warmer regions and declining abundance of cold-adapted species. However, experimentally testing predictions about trajectories and rates of community change is challenging because we normally lack an expectation for future community composition, and most warming experiments fail to incorporate colonization by novel species. To address these issues, we analyzed data from 44 whole-community transplant experiments along 22 elevational gradients across the Northern Hemisphere. In these experiments, high-elevation communities were transplanted to lower elevations to simulate warming, while also removing dispersal barriers for lower-elevation species to establish. We quantified the extent and pace at which warmed high-elevation communities shifted towards the taxonomic composition of lower elevation communities. High-elevation plant communities converged towards the composition of low-elevation communities, with higher rates under stronger experimental warming. Strong community shifts occurred in the first year after transplantation then slowed over time, such that communities remained distinct from both origin and destination control by the end of the experimental periods (3-9 years). Changes were driven to a similar extent by both new species colonization and abundance shifts of high-elevation species, but with substantial variation across experiments that could be partly explained by the magnitude and duration of experimental warming, plot size and functional traits. Our macroecological approach reveals that while warmed high-elevation communities increasingly resemble communities at lower elevations today, the slow pace of taxonomic shifts implies considerable colonization and extinction lags, where a novel taxonomic composition of both low- and high-elevation species could coexist for long periods of time. The important contribution of the colonizing species to community change also indicates that once dispersal barriers are overcome, warmed high-elevation communities are vulnerable to encroachment from lower elevation species.
{"title":"Colonization and extinction lags drive non-linear responses to warming in mountain plant communities across the Northern Hemisphere","authors":"Billur Bektaş, Chelsea Chisholm, Dagmar Egelkraut, Joshua Lynn, Sebastián Block, Thomas Deola, Fanny Dommanget, Brian J. Enquist, Deborah E. Goldberg, Sylvia Haider, Aud H. Halbritter, Yongtao He, Renaud Jaunatre, Anke Jentsch, Kari Klanderud, Paul Kardol, Susanne Lachmuth, Gregory Loucougaray, Tamara Münkemüller, Georg Niedrist, Hanna Nomoto, Lorah Seltzer, Joachim Paul Töpper, Lisa J. Rew, Tim Seipel, Manzoor A. Shah, Richard James Telford, Tom W.N. Walker, Shiping Wang, David A. Wardle, Peter Wolff, Yan Yang, Vigdis Vandvik, Jake M. Alexander","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07378","url":null,"abstract":"Global warming is changing plant communities due to the arrival of new species from warmer regions and declining abundance of cold-adapted species. However, experimentally testing predictions about trajectories and rates of community change is challenging because we normally lack an expectation for future community composition, and most warming experiments fail to incorporate colonization by novel species. To address these issues, we analyzed data from 44 whole-community transplant experiments along 22 elevational gradients across the Northern Hemisphere. In these experiments, high-elevation communities were transplanted to lower elevations to simulate warming, while also removing dispersal barriers for lower-elevation species to establish. We quantified the extent and pace at which warmed high-elevation communities shifted towards the taxonomic composition of lower elevation communities. High-elevation plant communities converged towards the composition of low-elevation communities, with higher rates under stronger experimental warming. Strong community shifts occurred in the first year after transplantation then slowed over time, such that communities remained distinct from both origin and destination control by the end of the experimental periods (3-9 years). Changes were driven to a similar extent by both new species colonization and abundance shifts of high-elevation species, but with substantial variation across experiments that could be partly explained by the magnitude and duration of experimental warming, plot size and functional traits. Our macroecological approach reveals that while warmed high-elevation communities increasingly resemble communities at lower elevations today, the slow pace of taxonomic shifts implies considerable colonization and extinction lags, where a novel taxonomic composition of both low- and high-elevation species could coexist for long periods of time. The important contribution of the colonizing species to community change also indicates that once dispersal barriers are overcome, warmed high-elevation communities are vulnerable to encroachment from lower elevation species.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142672924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jacob Socolar, Batbayar Galtbalt, Alison Johnston, Frank A. La Sorte, Orin J. Robinson, Kenneth V. Rosenberg, Adriaan M. Dokter
Avian population sizes fluctuate and change over vast spatial scales, but the mechanistic underpinnings remain poorly understood. A key question is whether spatial and annual variation in avian population dynamics is driven primarily by variation in breeding season recruitment or by variation in overwinter survival. We present a method using large-scale volunteer-collected data from project eBird to develop species-specific indices of net population change as proxies for survival and recruitment, based on twice-annual, rangewide snapshots of relative abundance in spring and fall. We demonstrate the use of these indices by examining spatially explicit annual variation in survival and recruitment in two well-surveyed nonmigratory North American species, Carolina wren Thryothorus ludovicianus and northern cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis. We show that, while interannual variation in both survival and recruitment is slight for northern cardinal, eBird abundance data reveal strong and geographically coherent signals of interannual variation in the overwinter survival of Carolina wren. As predicted, variation in wintertime survival dominates overall interannual population fluctuations of wrens and is correlated with winter temperature and snowfall in the northeastern United States, but not the southern United States. This study demonstrates the potential of participatory science (also known as citizen science) datasets like eBird for inferring variation in demographic rates and introduces a new complementary approach towards illuminating the macrodemography of North American birds at comprehensive continental extents.
{"title":"Seasonal macro-demography of North American bird populations revealed through participatory science","authors":"Jacob Socolar, Batbayar Galtbalt, Alison Johnston, Frank A. La Sorte, Orin J. Robinson, Kenneth V. Rosenberg, Adriaan M. Dokter","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07349","url":null,"abstract":"Avian population sizes fluctuate and change over vast spatial scales, but the mechanistic underpinnings remain poorly understood. A key question is whether spatial and annual variation in avian population dynamics is driven primarily by variation in breeding season recruitment or by variation in overwinter survival. We present a method using large-scale volunteer-collected data from project eBird to develop species-specific indices of net population change as proxies for survival and recruitment, based on twice-annual, rangewide snapshots of relative abundance in spring and fall. We demonstrate the use of these indices by examining spatially explicit annual variation in survival and recruitment in two well-surveyed nonmigratory North American species, Carolina wren <i>Thryothorus ludovicianus</i> and northern cardinal <i>Cardinalis cardinali</i>s. We show that, while interannual variation in both survival and recruitment is slight for northern cardinal, eBird abundance data reveal strong and geographically coherent signals of interannual variation in the overwinter survival of Carolina wren. As predicted, variation in wintertime survival dominates overall interannual population fluctuations of wrens and is correlated with winter temperature and snowfall in the northeastern United States, but not the southern United States. This study demonstrates the potential of participatory science (also known as citizen science) datasets like eBird for inferring variation in demographic rates and introduces a new complementary approach towards illuminating the macrodemography of North American birds at comprehensive continental extents.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"80 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142670413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shubhi Sharma, Kevin Winner, Jussi Mäkinen, Walter Jetz
The study of species' environmental niches underpins numerous questions in ecology and evolution and has increasing relevance in a rapidly changing world. Environmental niches, characterized by observations of organisms, inform about a species' specialization in multivariate environment space and help assess their exposure and sensitivity to changing conditions. Environmental niches are also the central concept behind species distribution models (SDMs), which quantify and predict the geographic variation in environmental suitability. Despite the clear role of past evolutionary processes in shaping contemporary biodiversity distribution, the assessment of multivariate or n-dimensional (where n is the number of environmental axes) niches in a phylogenetic framework has remained limited and constrained by restrictive assumptions. This hampers important existing and emerging applications, such as assessments of niche conservatism, estimates of species' adaptive potential under changing climates, and prediction of niches in less-studied parts of the tree of life. Here, we introduce a framework that extends SDMs to estimate n-dimensional environmental niches jointly with underlying evolutionary processes. Specifically, we fit the relationship between niche similarity and phylogenetic distance as a latent Gaussian process across all species in a clade. We demonstrate mathematically how the parameters of the Gaussian process can be linked to existing traditional evolutionary models. Simulations indicate that the approach successfully recovers niche and evolutionary parameters. Applied to two clades of hummingbirds, the presented joint framework uncovers the relationships among species' niches in phylogenetic space and supports the quantification and hypothesis testing of niche evolution. A key advantage of the presented framework is its joint estimation of the evolutionary process alongside niches directly from species observations with uncertainty propagated to evolutionary model parameters. The proposed approach has the potential to increase the robustness of inference about niche evolution and improve understanding of how the processes of niche formation and evolution interact.
物种环境生态位研究是生态学和进化论众多问题的基础,在瞬息万变的世界中具有越来越重要的意义。环境生态位通过对生物体的观察来描述,可以了解物种在多元环境空间中的特化情况,并有助于评估物种对不断变化的环境条件的暴露程度和敏感性。环境龛位也是物种分布模型(SDM)背后的核心概念,该模型量化并预测环境适宜性的地理差异。尽管过去的进化过程在塑造当代生物多样性分布方面发挥了明显的作用,但在系统发育框架下对多变量或 n 维(n 为环境轴的数量)生态位的评估仍然受到限制,并受到一些限制性假设的制约。这阻碍了现有的和新出现的重要应用,如评估生态位保守性、估计物种在不断变化的气候条件下的适应潜力以及预测生命树中研究较少的部分的生态位。在这里,我们介绍了一个框架,该框架扩展了 SDMs,可与潜在的进化过程共同估算 n 维环境生态位。具体来说,我们将生态位相似性与系统发育距离之间的关系拟合为一个支系中所有物种的潜在高斯过程。我们用数学方法演示了如何将高斯过程的参数与现有的传统进化模型联系起来。模拟表明,该方法成功地恢复了生态位和进化参数。应用于蜂鸟的两个支系,所提出的联合框架揭示了系统发育空间中物种生态位之间的关系,并支持生态位进化的量化和假设检验。所提出的框架的一个主要优势是,它可以直接从物种观测结果中联合估计生态位的进化过程,并将不确定性传播到进化模型参数中。所提出的方法有可能提高生态位演化推断的稳健性,并加深对生态位形成和演化过程如何相互作用的理解。
{"title":"Measuring the evolution of n-dimensional environmental niches","authors":"Shubhi Sharma, Kevin Winner, Jussi Mäkinen, Walter Jetz","doi":"10.1111/ecog.07285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.07285","url":null,"abstract":"The study of species' environmental niches underpins numerous questions in ecology and evolution and has increasing relevance in a rapidly changing world. Environmental niches, characterized by observations of organisms, inform about a species' specialization in multivariate environment space and help assess their exposure and sensitivity to changing conditions. Environmental niches are also the central concept behind species distribution models (SDMs), which quantify and predict the geographic variation in environmental suitability. Despite the clear role of past evolutionary processes in shaping contemporary biodiversity distribution, the assessment of multivariate or <i>n</i>-dimensional (where <i>n</i> is the number of environmental axes) niches in a phylogenetic framework has remained limited and constrained by restrictive assumptions. This hampers important existing and emerging applications, such as assessments of niche conservatism, estimates of species' adaptive potential under changing climates, and prediction of niches in less-studied parts of the tree of life. Here, we introduce a framework that extends SDMs to estimate <i>n</i>-dimensional environmental niches jointly with underlying evolutionary processes. Specifically, we fit the relationship between niche similarity and phylogenetic distance as a latent Gaussian process across all species in a clade. We demonstrate mathematically how the parameters of the Gaussian process can be linked to existing traditional evolutionary models. Simulations indicate that the approach successfully recovers niche and evolutionary parameters. Applied to two clades of hummingbirds, the presented joint framework uncovers the relationships among species' niches in phylogenetic space and supports the quantification and hypothesis testing of niche evolution. A key advantage of the presented framework is its joint estimation of the evolutionary process alongside niches directly from species observations with uncertainty propagated to evolutionary model parameters. The proposed approach has the potential to increase the robustness of inference about niche evolution and improve understanding of how the processes of niche formation and evolution interact.","PeriodicalId":51026,"journal":{"name":"Ecography","volume":"112 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142672957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}