Accurate prediction of community assembly is a central goal in ecology but is challenging because assembly is governed by numerous mechanisms. Few theoretical models explicitly incorporate or test multiple mechanisms at once. We empirically tested the predictive performance of a plant community assembly model built using all possible combinations of four ‘mechanisms’ (soil resource competition, dispersal and colonisation, spat...

The feasibility of using unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs, ‘drones’) to collect high-resolution still and video imagery of dugongs ( Dugong dugon ) for photo-identification (photo-ID) in the Sindalah Archipelago, NEOM (area ~ 84 km 2 ), within the northeast Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, was evaluated during opportunistic marine megafauna searches. Drone searches were conducted whenever possible over one year (January 2024 to January...

Darwin's theory of natural selection provides two seemingly contradictory hypotheses for explaining the success of biological invasions: (1) the pre‐adaptation hypothesis posits that introduced species that are closely related to native species will be more likely to succeed due to shared advantageous characteristics; (2) the limiting similarity hypothesis posits that invaders that are more similar to resident species will be...

Purpose Accurately measuring sweat sodium concentration ([Na + ]) in the field is advantageous for coaches, scientists, and dieticians looking to tailor hydration strategies. The MX3 hydration testing system is a new portable analyser that uses pre-calibrated biosensors to measure sweat [Na + ]. This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of the MX3 hydration testing system. Methods Thirty-one (11 females) recreati...

Agriculture directly contributes about 10%–12% of current global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from livestock. However, such percentage estimates are based on global warming potentials (GWPs), which do not measure the actual warming caused by emissions and ignore the fact that methane does not accumulate in the atmosphere in the same way as CO 2 . Here, we employ a simple carbon cycle‐climate model, historical...

Feeding 9–10 billion people by 2050 and preventing dangerous climate change are two of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Both challenges must be met while reducing the impact of land management on ecosystem services that deliver vital goods and services, and support human health and well‐being. Few studies to date have considered the interactions between these challenges. In this study we briefly outline the challenges,...

Herbivory by domestic and wild ungulates is a major driver of global vegetation dynamics. However, grazing is not considered in dynamic global vegetation models, or more generally in studies of the effects of environmental change on ecosystems at regional to global scale. An obstacle to this is a lack of empirical tests of several hypotheses linking plant traits with grazing. We, therefore, set out to test whether some widely...

In pastures grazed by large herbivores, nutrients cycle both through litter and animal excreta. We compared nitrogen (N) returns from sheep grazing a temperate pasture exposed to ambient or elevated CO 2 (475 μmol mol −1 ) in a FACE (Free Air CO 2 Enrichment) experiment established in the spring of 1997. In the spring of 2000 and 2001, we measured the chemical composition of the diet, sheep faeces and of individual plant speci...