Ecosystem models are increasingly central to the decision‐making for environmental policy, conservation planning, and climate‐related investments. Yet, the growing reliance on Multi‐Model Ensembles (MMEs) of ecosystem models by practitioners and policymakers, sometimes under tight timelines and imperfect information, has frequently outpaced the scientific rigor required to ensure ensemble reliability. Here, MMEs refer to appro...

Wildfires are often a natural part of many European ecosystems, but human activities through land use, other socio‐economic factors and climate change have significantly changed how fires behave. Anthropogenic climate change is already intensifying fire‐prone weather and increasing wildfire risk across Europe with risk expected to grow sharply in coming decades. Past experience suggests that human action, such as fuel manageme...

Although climate suitability is often thought to be the most important determinant of species ranges, non‐climate variables such as biotic interactions, dispersal abilities, and habitat quality may play equally important roles as range‐limiting factors. For some organisms, the constraints imposed by these non‐climate variables may explain their failure to establish in novel habitats that appear suitable with respect to climate...

Molecular phylogenetic markers used to be ubiquitously obtained by Sanger sequencing, while recently, next generation sequencing (NGS) approaches have become popular alternatives. In this study, a pipeline utilizing Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) amplicon sequencing (amplicon‐seq) was examined as an alternative to Sanger sequencing, with nine loci [11 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products], in Aeschynanthus (Gesneriacea...

Spring ecosystems in arid regions often serve as crucial biodiversity hotspots by providing some of the only reliable sources of surface water. However, anthropogenic activities and climate change have severely degraded spring ecosystems worldwide, emphasizing the need for large‐scale multidisciplinary studies informing conservation efforts. Here, we analyzed characteristics of 1121 widely dispersed springs within the Great Ba...

Wild bees play indispensable ecological roles in many ecosystems, yet declines in many species have been documented in recent years. These declines have been linked to numerous anthropogenic pressures, including climate change, which can influence bee populations directly (i.e., via physiological mechanisms) and indirectly (e.g., through changes to floral resource quantity and quality). Widespread changes in the distributions...

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α‐diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e., γ‐diversity), either due to reduced β‐diversity amplifying diversity loss or increased β‐diversity dampening diversity loss. Additionally, studies often focus on taxo...

Plants produce an array of defensive compounds with toxic or deterrent effects on insect herbivores. Pollen can contain relatively high concentrations of such defense compounds, but the causes and consequences of this enigmatic phenomenon remain mostly unknown. These compounds could potentially protect pollen against antagonists but could also reduce flower attractiveness to pollinators. We combined field observations of the p...

Timely detection and understanding of causes for population decline are essential for effective wildlife management and conservation. Assessing trends in population size has been the standard approach, but we propose that monitoring population health could prove more effective. We collated data from 7 bottlenose dolphin ( Tursiops trun catus) populations in the southeastern United States to develop a method for estimating surv...

Specialist insect herbivores make up a substantial fraction of Earth's biodiversity; however, they exploit a minority of plant lineages. For instance, in the eastern United States and Canada, ~25% of bee species are pollen specialists, but they are hosted by a small fraction of the native, animal‐pollinated angiosperms in the region: Only 6% of plant genera and 3% of families support pollen‐specialist bees. It is unclear why s...

The Deepwater Horizon (DWH) disaster resulted in large-scale contamination of bays, sounds, and estuaries in the northern Gulf of Mexico, home to multiple stocks of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Inhalation, aspiration, ingestion, and dermal absorption of oil and its toxic components were all considered possible routes of exposure for dolphins living within the oil spill footprint. To determine if dolphins we...

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill exposed common bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ) in Barataria Bay, Louisiana to heavy oiling that caused increased mortality and chronic disease and impaired reproduction in surviving dolphins. We conducted photographic surveys and veterinary assessments in the decade following the spill. We assigned a prognostic score (good, fair, guarded, poor, or grave) for each dolphin to...

In an era of rapid global change, our ability to understand and predict Earth's natural systems is lagging behind our ability to monitor and measure changes in the biosphere. Bottlenecks to informing models with observations have reduced our capacity to fully exploit the growing volume and variety of available data. Here, we take a critical look at the information infrastructure that connects ecosystem modeling and measurement...

Evolutionary ecologists seek to explain the processes that maintain variation within populations. In plants, petal color variation can affect pollinator visitation, environmental tolerance, and herbivore deterrence. Variation in sexual organs may similarly affect plant performance. Within‐population variation in pollen color, as occurs in the eastern North American spring ephemeral Erythronium americanum , provides an excellen...