Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America最新文献

These photographs illustrate the article “Climate change-associated declines in water clarity impair feeding by common loon” by Walter Piper, Max Glines, and Kevin Rose published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4291

Attending:

Council Speaker Emilie Graves Presiding; meeting called to order at 1:00 PM EST

Meeting adjourned at 3:02 PM EST

Respectfully submitted by:

Diogo B. Provete, Council Speaker-Elect

Use of camera traps has become common in many areas of wildlife ecology (Burton et al. 2015, Caravaggi et al. 2017, Agha et al. 2018, Wearn and Glover-Kapfer 2019). Despite their popularity for observations of medium-to-large animals, they are seldom used for observation of small cryptic animals such as mice or shrews. This is not surprising given that most of the cameras used were originally designed as “gamecams” for helping hunters identify fertile hunting locations, and few hunters are interested in species <1 kg in mass. Motion sensors capable of detecting small mammals at a distance would need to be so sensitive that their use would result in huge numbers of false detections caused by wind-shifted vegetation and changing shadows. Moreover, to avoid predators, small mammals are cryptic and typically make heavy use of available cover, so that they are difficult to photograph.

Several recent attempts have been made to improve camera traps for detecting small mammals with “face-on” photography. The “selfie trap” in which a camera modified for close focus is built into the end of a box, tube, or tunnel has been used to take face-on photos of small mammals under snow (Soininen et al. 2015), detect and distinguish woodland small mammal species (Gracanin et al. 2019), compare rodent and shrew occurrence in different patches of a peatland landscape (Littlewood et al. 2021), document overlap and seasonal variation in diel activity of 10 species of arboreal and semi-arboreal mammal species (Gracanin and Mikac 2022a), estimate home range and movement patterns of four species of arboreal small mammals (Gracanin and Mikac 2022b), and monitor populations of two boreal vole species across a network of live-trapping grids (Kleiven et al. 2023). The “face-on” images were most useful for identifying taxa for which species distinctions are easily made from that perspective. In each of these cases the selfie trap design produced photos in which species could be identified and, in some cases, individual animals could be distinguished.

For species reliably identified from a “top-down” perspective, McCleery et al. (2014) introduced the innovative “bucket trap” design, which used an inverted bucket fitted with a customized (for close focus) Reconyx wildlife camera. Holes in the sides of the bucket restricted entry to the camera field of view to animals the size of small mammals. The simplified background (Taillie et al. 2021) provided images of sufficient quality to identify species, and in some cases, individuals. However, the relatively high cost (estimated $400–500 per station) poses a challenge for wide application.

We have adapted and simplified the McCleery et al. (2014) design to produce a “MouseCam” that provides top-down images of small-mammals suitable

Following the 1982 protests of Warren County, North Carolina, USA, which have been deemed the birth of modern environmental justice (EJ; Bullard 2020), many of the research efforts for EJ have focused on race/class disparities in environmental quality and health (see Cushing et al. 2015; Agyeman et al. 2016; Swope et al. 2022 for example). This research has highlighted the many disparities in environmental quality as well as human health, which is key for addressing and working toward the 17 principles of environmental justice (Mohai et al. 2009). Due to this, the understanding of EJ within ecology is often posited within the relationship between humans and environmental degradation. Yet, the “environment” is not just physical landscapes, it is “everything: where we live, work, play, go to school, as well as the physical and natural world,” as described by Robert Bullard, the father of the modern EJ movement (Schweizer 1999, Bullard 2020). Moreover, the first EJ principle states, “Environmental justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction” (Mohai et al. 2009), meaning that research should necessarily integrate non-human animals into the work of EJ (Agyeman et al. 2016). Our symposium, “Justice First: Interdisciplinary Approaches in Environmental Justice Research” brings together speakers who examine not as a people-free biophysical system but as the ambient and immediate surroundings of everyday life, people, and wildlife. This is essential for advancing EJ and recognizing that environmental injustices can occur beyond physical landscapes.

Overall, the speakers in this symposium highlighted that engaging with urban health, environmental injustices, and education means addressing the inequalities in our society. To do so, speakers engaged with a wide range of scholars both in the private and public sectors, unknowingly emphasizing the need for de-siloing knowledge production in ecology. The primary goals of this symposium are to learn from Black scholars who have lived experience with systems of oppression that create environmental injustices and to highlight that work that engages EJ with communities rather than on EJ communities. Speakers showed that accomplishing EJ requires building new structures centered around placing humans as a part of the natural world rather than apart from it, and that incorporating EJ into a field requires a holistic approach that can produce transformative work. This symposium was moderated by Brandon Quintana at California State University, with talks given by, and open discussion with attendees amongst, Cesar Estien (Ph.D. Candidate – University of California Berkeley), Alycia Ellington (Ph.D. Student – University of California, Santa Cruz), Gabriel Gadsden (Ph.D. Candidate – Yale

The narratives and metaphors that ecologists use to describe natural phenomena influence what we study and how we do it (Larson 2011, Craver and Darden 2013, Otto and Rosales 2020). Stories about ecological processes and patterns are told through particular frames and are laden with assumptions arising from their framing. For example, the tubercle bacillus became the cause of tuberculosis, rather than unregulated industrial capitalism, through storytelling: the framing of the story was biomedical, and as a result the assumption for how to treat tuberculosis was through individual medical intervention, rather than (for example) a social revolution (Levins and Lewontin 1985). More recently, a commonly cited solution to rising CO₂ emissions is to plant trees, which conveniently elides the social and economic roots of global warming.

The responsible use of particular frames, narratives, and analogies for understanding nature requires that we reflect on our choices: Which stories do we tell? How do we tell them? And how do they structure the way we study the natural world? To make room for this kind of reflection, we organized and participated in an Inspire session entitled “When the window is a mirror: how do dominant theories limit our understanding of nature?” at the ESA 2023 meeting. This session was an attempt to explore the limitations of current theory and their consequences for understanding what we observe in the natural world. In a set of case studies, we examined existing “mirrors”: examples in which ecological models are built on assumptions that constrain the research process, and in doing so reveal something about ourselves and the narratives we privilege.

Our speakers described the limits of theory on topics ranging from sexual behavior to plant–microbe interactions to genetic polymorphism. This allowed us to look for uniting themes across subdisciplines of ecology. In bringing these subdisciplines together, we attempted to highlight such limitations not as isolated exceptions, but rather as recurring consequences of singular, dominant ways of approaching ecological questions. Our session emphasized the importance of creativity and wonderment in scientific research and the power of pluralistic approaches for confronting theoretical limitations brought on by societal assumptions.

COVER PHOTO: This photograph shows an alpine meadow in the northeastern region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China. In the related Ecology article, Zhang et al. (doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4254) uncover the crucial and distinct roles played by fungal and oomycete pathogens in modulating the effects of nitrogen enrichment and winter grazing on the biomass dynamics of the plant community in such alpine meadows. Additional images appear in this issue of the Bulletin's Photo Gallery Photo credit: Peng Zhang.

This photograph illustrates the article “Recolonization of secondary forests by a locally extinct Caribbean anole through the lens of range expansion theory” by M.A. Acevedo, C. Fankhauser, L. Gonzalez, M. Quigg, B. Gonzalez, and R. Papa published in Ecological Applications. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2960

These photographs illustrate the article “Social foraging and the associated benefits of group-living in Cliff Swallows decrease over 40 years” by Charles R. Brown, Mary B. Brown, Stacey L. Hannebaum, Gigi S. Wagnon, Olivia M. Pletcher, Catherine E. Page, Amy C. West, and Valerie A. O'Brien, published in Ecological Monographs, https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1602

These photographs illustrate the article “A marine heatwave changes the stabilizing effects of biodiversity in kelp forests” by Maowei Liang, Thomas Lamy, Daniel C. Reuman, Shaopeng Wang, Tom W. Bell, Kyle C. Cavanaugh, and Max C. N. Castorani published in Ecology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4288.

These photographs illustrate the article “Brown bear digging decreases tree growth: Implication for ecological role of top predators in anthropogenic landscapes” by Kanji M. Tomita, and Tsutom Hiura published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4266