Ecology

Journal: Ecology

Abbreviation

Ecol.

Publisher

Wiley

ISSN

0012-9658
1939-9170

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Publications1 - 10 of 46

Evolutionary trade-offs under conditions of resource abundance and scarcity: Experiments with bacteria
Velicer, Gregory J.; Lenski, Richard E. (1999)
Ecology
Species associations overwhelm abiotic conditions to dictate the structure and function of wood-decay fungal communities
Maynard, Daniel S.; Covey, Kristofer R.; Crowther, Thomas W.; et al. (2018)
Ecology
An experimental approach to assessing the impact of ecosystem engineers on biodiversity and ecosystem functions
Losapio, Gianalberto; Schmid, Bernhard; Bascompte, Jordi; et al. (2021)
Ecology
Plants acting as ecosystem engineers create habitats and facilitate biodiversity maintenance within plant communities. Furthermore, biodiversity research has demonstrated that plant diversity enhances the productivity and functioning of ecosystems. However, these two fields of research developed in parallel and independent from one another, with the consequence that little is known about the role of ecosystem engineers in the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across trophic levels. Here, we present an experimental framework to study this relationship. We combine facilitation by plants acting as ecosystem engineers with plant–insect interaction analysis and variance partitioning of biodiversity effects. We present a case‐study experiment in which facilitation by a cushion‐plant species and a dwarf‐shrub species as ecosystem engineers increases positive effects of plant functional diversity (ecosystem engineers and associated plants) on ecosystem functioning (flower visitation rate). The experiment, conducted in the field during a single alpine flowering season, included the following treatments: (1) removal of plant species associated with ecosystem engineers, (2) exclusion (covering) of ecosystem engineer flowers, and (3) control, i.e., natural patches of ecosystem engineers and associated plant species. We found both positive and negative associational effects between plants depending on ecosystem engineer identity, indicating both pollination facilitation and interference. In both cases, patches supported by ecosystem engineers increased phylogenetic and functional diversity of flower visitors. Furthermore, complementarity effects between engineers and associated plants were positive for flower visitation rates. Our study reveals that plant facilitation can enhance the strength of biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships, with complementarity between plants for attracting more and diverse flower visitors being the likely driver. A potential mechanism is that synergy and complementarity between engineers and associated plants increase attractiveness for shared visitors and widen pollination niches. In synthesis, facilitation among plants can scale up to a full network, supporting ecosystem functioning both directly via microhabitat amelioration and indirectly via diversity effects.
RecruitNet: A global database of plant recruitment networks
Verdú, Miguel; Garrido, Jose L.; Alcántara, Julio M.; et al. (2023)
Ecology
Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., what recruits under what) shape the composition, diversity, and structure of plant communities. Despite the huge body of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying recruitment interactions among species, we still know little about the structure of the recruitment networks emerging in ecological communities. Modeling and analyzing the community-level structure of plant recruitment interactions as a complex network can provide relevant information on ecological and evolutionary processes acting both at the species and ecosystem levels. We report a data set containing 143 plant recruitment networks in 23 countries across five continents, including temperate and tropical ecosystems. Each network identifies the species under which another species recruits. All networks report the number of recruits (i.e., individuals) per species. The data set includes > 850,000 recruiting individuals involved in 118,411 paired interactions among 3318 vascular plant species across the globe. The cover of canopy species and open ground is also provided. Three sampling protocols were used: (1) The Recruitment Network (RN) protocol (106 networks) focuses on interactions among established plants ( "canopy species ") and plants in their early stages of recruitment ( "recruit species "). A series of plots was delimited within a locality, and all the individuals recruiting and their canopy species were identified; (2) The paired Canopy-Open (pCO) protocol (26 networks) consists in locating a potential canopy plant and identifying recruiting individuals under the canopy and in a nearby open space of the same area; (3) The Georeferenced plot (GP) protocol (11 networks) consists in using information from georeferenced individual plants in large plots to infer canopy-recruit interactions. Some networks incorporate data for both herbs and woody species, whereas others focus exclusively on woody species. The location of each study site, geographical coordinates, country, locality, responsible author, sampling dates, sampling method, and life habits of both canopy and recruit species are provided. This database will allow researchers to test ecological, biogeographical, and evolutionary hypotheses related to plant recruitment interactions. There are no copyright restrictions on the data set; please cite this data paper when using these data in publications.
Changes in species composition and community structure during plant–pollinator community assembly
Palumbo Gaiarsa, Marilia; Bramon Mora, Bernat; Kremen, Claire; et al. (2025)
Ecology
The assembly of plant–pollinator communities has traditionally been explored from the perspective of species composition, often overlooking how interaction structure and the roles species play in their communities can change even when species composition remains constant. Here, we use 10 years of data to investigate the assembly of plant–pollinator networks in an intensively managed agricultural landscape. We compare the characteristics of assembling communities to those of mature and unrestored communities to explore if and how changes are reflected in species composition, network structure, and species' roles therein. Unexpectedly, we found that although species' composition of mature communities became increasingly dissimilar over time, the overall community structure and individual species' roles in assembling communities remained unchanged. Yet, the network structure of assembling communities gradually converged toward that of mature communities. Our results suggest that even when traditional diversity measures remain relatively invariant, network structure can uncover the dynamic nature of ecological communities, rendering interaction networks an important component of community assembly studies. Our findings advance the understanding of essential ecological processes underlying community assembly and provide insights into the mechanisms shaping species' roles within ecological networks.
Experimental evidence that density dependence strongly influences plant invasions through fragmented landscapes
Williams, Jennifer L.; Levine, Jonathan (2018)
Ecology
The misuse of ratios in ecological stoichiometry
Isles, Peter D.F. (2020)
Ecology
Abstract Ecological stoichiometry is concerned with the ratios of different elements, particularly carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Ratios by their nature do not respond symmetrically to changes in the numerator and denominator and do not follow normal distributions; however, researchers frequently fail to consider these properties in their analyses, which has biased reported results. Calculating means, variance, or linear slopes based on untransformed ratios results in biased results. I demonstrate the consequences of these errors for inferences from stoichiometric analyses using simple examples and several large monitoring data sets. I then review 100 studies in ecological stoichiometry and find that misuse of ratio data is common, with 93% of studies containing at least one error. These errors may be problematic, particularly in large-scale meta-analyses summarizing data over large ranges. Fortunately, most of these mistakes can be easily avoided by first log transforming elemental ratios. I therefore recommend that, to ensure robust and reproducible results, researchers in ecological stoichiometry should adopt a convention of presenting stoichiometric ratio data as the logarithm of molar ratios in the future. The widespread use of untransformed nitrogen to phosphorus ratio as an indicator of nutrient limitation has likely exaggerated the importance of phosphorus limitation, particularly in freshwater systems.
Sensitivity of bipartite network analyses to incomplete sampling and taxonomic uncertainty
Llopis-Belenguer, Cristina; Balbuena, Juan Antonio; Blasco-Costa, Isabel; et al. (2023)
Ecology
Bipartite network analysis is a powerful tool to study the processes structuring interactions in ecological communities. In applying the method, it is assumed that the sampled interactions provide an accurate representation of the actual community. However, acquiring a representative sample may be difficult as not all species are equally abundant or easily identifiable. Two potential sampling issues can compromise the conclusions of bipartite network analyses: failure to capture the full range of interactions (sampling completeness) and use of a taxonomic level higher than species to evaluate the network (taxonomic resolution). We asked how commonly used descriptors of bipartite antagonistic communities (modularity, nestedness, connectance, and specialization [H2′]) are affected by reduced host sampling completeness, parasite taxonomic resolution, and their crossed effect, as they are likely to co-occur. We used a quantitative niche model to generate weighted bipartite networks that resembled natural host–parasite communities. The descriptors were more sensitive to uncertainty in parasite taxonomic resolution than to host sampling completeness. When only 10% of parasite taxonomic resolution was retained, modularity and specialization decreased by ~76% and ~12%, respectively, and nestedness and connectance increased by ~114% and ~345% respectively. The loss of taxonomic resolution led to a wide range of possible communities, which made it difficult to predict its effects on a given network. With regards to host sampling completeness, standardized nestedness, connectance, and specialization were robust, whereas modularity was sensitive (~30% decrease). The combination of both sampling issues had an additive effect on modularity. In communities with low effort for both sampling issues (50%–10% of sampling completeness and taxonomic resolution), estimators of modularity, and nestedness could not be distinguished from those of random assemblages. Thus, the categorical description of communities with low sampling effort (e.g., if a community is modular or not) should be done with caution. We recommend evaluating both sampling completeness and taxonomic certainty when conducting bipartite network analyses. Care should also be exercised when using nonrobust descriptors (the four descriptors for parasite taxonomic resolution; modularity for host sampling completeness) when sampling issues are likely to affect a dataset.
The importance of species identity and interactions for multifunctionality depends on how ecosystem functions are valued
Slade, Eleanor M.; Kirwan, Laura; Bell, Thomas; et al. (2017)
Ecology
Density constrains cascading consequences of warming and nitrogen from invertebrate growth to litter decomposition
Hines, Jes; Reyes, Marta; Gessner, Mark O. (2016)
Ecology
Smaller invertebrate body mass is claimed to be a universal response to climate warming. It has been suggested that body mass could also predict consumer influences on ecosystem processes in a warmer world because generalized rules describe relationships between body mass, temperature, and metabolism. However, the utility of this suggestion remains tenuous because the nutritional and physiological constraints underlying relationships between body mass and consumer‐driven processes are highly variable in realistic settings. Here we test, using a generalist invertebrate detritivore, fungi, and leaf litter, the limitations imposed by nutrition on growth and decomposition in response to global change. Strong competition for fungal food resources limited invertebrate growth and reduced body mass plasticity in response to warming and nitrogen pollution scenarios. When competition was relaxed by experimentally reducing invertebrate density, consumption of fungi promoted rapid invertebrate growth and enhanced invertebrate sensitivity to the global change scenarios, especially warming and nitrogen pollution together. Accordingly, fungi promoted invertebrate body mass plasticity and mediated consumer effects on decomposition causing the relative influence of warming and nitrogen pollution to vary across trophic levels. An important implication is that managing nitrogen pollution may alter which trophic level is most sensitive to warming.

Publications1 - 10 of 46

Journal: Ecology

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