Although there is abundant evidence of climate change impacts on distributions, population growth, and the phenology of individual species, our understanding of how climate change alters species interactions is more limited. Interactions between ectothermic predators and prey are likely to be especially sensitive to temperature due to these organisms' temperature‐dependent metabolism, performance, and behavior. We used three d...

Environmental pathogen reservoirs exist for many globally important diseases and can fuel epidemics, influence pathogen evolution, and increase the threat of host extinction. Species composition can be an important factor that shapes reservoir dynamics and ultimately determines the outcome of a disease outbreak. However, disease‐induced mortality can change species communities, indicating that species responsible for environme...

Although anthropogenic change is often gradual, the impacts on animal populations may be precipitous if physiological processes create tipping points between energy gain, reproduction or survival. We use 25 years of behavioural, diet and demographic data from elephant seals to characterise their relationships with lifetime fitness. Survival and reproduction increased with mass gain during long foraging trips preceding the pupp...

Two controversial tenets of metapopulation biology are whether patch quality and the surrounding matrix are more important to turnover (colonisation and extinction) than biogeography (patch area and isolation) and whether factors governing turnover during equilibrium also dominate nonequilibrium dynamics. We tested both tenets using 18 years of surveys for two secretive wetland birds, black and Virginia rails, during (1) a per...

The introduction of nonnative species and reductions in native biodiversity have resulted in substantial changes in vector and host communities globally, but the consequences for pathogen transmission are poorly understood. In lowland Hawaii, bird communities are composed of primarily introduced species, with scattered populations of abundant native species. We examined the influence of avian host community composition, specif...

Understanding how metapopulations persist in dynamic working landscapes requires assessing the behaviors of key actors that change patches as well as intrinsic factors driving turnover. Coupled human and natural systems ( CHANS ) research uses a multidisciplinary approach to identify the key actors, processes, and feedbacks that drive metapopulation and landscape dynamics. We describe a framework for modeling metapopulations i...

Disease dynamics during pathogen invasion and establishment determine the impacts of disease on host populations and determine the mechanisms of host persistence. Temporal progression of prevalence and infection intensity illustrate whether tolerance, resistance, reduced transmission, or demographic compensation allow initially declining populations to persist. We measured infection dynamics of the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoa...

Aim We investigated the effects of disease on the local abundances and distributions of species at continental scales by examining the impacts of white‐nose syndrome, an infectious disease of hibernating bats, which has recently emerged in N orth A merica. Location N orth A merica and E urope. Methods We used four decades of population counts from 1108 populations to compare the local abundances of bats in N orth A merica befo...

Disease has caused striking declines in wildlife and threatens numerous species with extinction. Theory suggests that the ecology and density‐dependence of transmission dynamics can determine the probability of disease‐caused extinction, but few empirical studies have simultaneously examined multiple factors influencing disease impact. We show, in hibernating bats infected with Geomyces destructans , that impacts of disease on...

Emerging infectious diseases are a key threat to conservation and public health, yet predicting and preventing their emergence is notoriously difficult. We devised a predictive model for the introduction of a zoonotic vector‐borne pathogen by considering each of the pathways by which it may be introduced to a new area and comparing the relative risk of each pathway. This framework is an adaptation of pest introduction models a...