Microplastics have been identified in hundreds of species, with evidence of trophic transfer via contaminated prey. Sarasota Bay common bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ) serve as sentinels of coastal pollution, including plastics and chemical plasticizers. Previous research confirmed microplastic ingestion in these dolphins (100.0%, n = 7) and extensive contamination in 11 common prey species (96.5%, n = 86). This stu...

Under the current global biodiversity crisis, there is a need for automated and noninvasive monitoring techniques that can gather large amounts of data cost‐effectively at various ecological scales, from local to large spatial scales. These data can then be analyzed to inform stakeholders and decision‐makers. One such technique is passive acoustic monitoring, which is commonly coupled with automatic identification of animal sp...

Microplastic ingestion was reported for common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) inhabiting Sarasota Bay, FL, USA, a community that also has prevalent exposure to plasticizers (i.e., phthalates) at concentrations higher than human reference populations. Exposure sources are currently unknown, but plastic-contaminated prey could be a vector. To explore the potential for trophic exposure, prey fish muscle and gastrointest...

Participatory approaches to science and decision making, including stakeholder engagement, are increasingly common for managing complex socio-ecological challenges in working landscapes. However, critical questions about stakeholder engagement in this space remain. These include normative, political, and ethical questions concerning who participates, who benefits and loses, what good can be accomplished, and for what, whom, an...

Marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly large MPAs, are increasing in number and size around the globe in part to facilitate the conservation of marine megafauna under the assumption that large-scale MPAs better align with vagile life histories; however, this alignment is not well established. Using a global tracking dataset from 36 species across five taxa, chosen to reflect the span of home range size in highly mobile ma...

Aim Comprehensive, global information on species' occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species' only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroecology. We provide global range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal spec...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a “Green List of Species” (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species’ progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 separate but interlinked components: a standardized method (i.e., measurement aga...

Caprella mutica (Crustacea, Amphipoda) has been widely introduced to non‐native regions in the last 40 years. Its native habitat is sub‐boreal northeast Asia, but in the Northern Hemisphere, it is now found on both coasts of North America, and North Atlantic coastlines of Europe. Direct sequencing of mitochondrial DNA (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene) was used to compare genetic variation in native and non‐native populatio...

The theory of metabolic ecology predicts specific relationships among tree stem diameter, biomass, height, growth and mortality. As demographic rates are important to estimates of carbon fluxes in forests, this theory might offer important insights into the global carbon budget, and deserves careful assessment. We assembled data from 10 old‐growth tropical forests encompassing censuses of 367 ha and > 1.7 million trees to test...

Tropical forests vary substantially in the densities of trees of different sizes and thus in above‐ground biomass and carbon stores. However, these tree size distributions show fundamental similarities suggestive of underlying general principles. The theory of metabolic ecology predicts that tree abundances will scale as the −2 power of diameter. Demographic equilibrium theory explains tree abundances in terms of the scaling o...

Atmospheric CO 2 concentrations are predicted to double within the next century. Despite this trend, the extent and mechanisms through which elevated CO 2 affects plant diseases remain uncertain. In this study, we assessed how elevated CO 2 affects a foliar fungal pathogen, Phyllosticta minima , of Acer rubrum growing in the understory at the Duke Forest free‐air CO 2 enrichment experiment in Durham, North Carolina. Surveys of...