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Practical considerations for trace DNA recovery and detection of an invasive reptile across different deposition scenariosNARA Subscribed
Trace DNA detection methods are increasingly applied to biomonitoring, in conservation, biosecurity, and wildlife forensic sciences. Reptiles are high risk invasive alien species that can cause damaging environmental impacts, yet the dynamics around terrestrial reptile DNA deposition and subsequent detection are poorly understood. Concerns around the role of the pet trade in introducing key reptile pests have resulted in calls...
Motivation Here, we make available a second version of the BioTIME database, which compiles records of abundance estimates for species in sample events of ecological assemblages through time. The updated version expands version 1.0 of the database by doubling the number of studies and includes substantial additional curation to the taxonomic accuracy of the records, as well as the metadata. Moreover, we now provide an R packag...
LandFrag : A Dataset to Investigate the Effects of Forest Loss and Fragmentation on BiodiversityNARA Subscribed
Motivation The accelerated and widespread conversion of once continuous ecosystems into fragmented landscapes has driven ecological research to understand the response of biodiversity to local (fragment size) and landscape (forest cover and fragmentation) changes. This information has important theoretical and applied implications, but is still far from complete. We compiled the most comprehensive and updated database to inves...
Quantification of age-related changes in the structure and mechanical function of skin with multiscale imagingNARA Subscribed
The mechanical properties of skin change during aging but the relationships between structure and mechanical function remain poorly understood. Previous work has shown that young skin exhibits a substantial decrease in tissue volume, a large macro-scale Poisson’s ratio, and an increase in micro-scale collagen fiber alignment during mechanical stretch. In this study, label-free multiphoton microscopy was used to quantify how th...
Temperature‐driven homogenization of an ant community over 60 years in a montane ecosystemNARA Subscribed
Identifying the mechanisms underlying the changes in the distribution of species is critical to accurately predict how species have responded and will respond to climate change. Here, we take advantage of a late‐1950s study on ant assemblages in a canyon near Boulder, Colorado, USA, to understand how and why species distributions have changed over a 60‐year period. Community composition changed over 60 years with increasing co...
Nutrient use by tropical ant communities varies among three extensive elevational gradients: A cross‐continental comparisonNARA Subscribed
Aim Many studies demonstrate that climate limits invertebrates along tropical elevational gradients, but we have only a rudimentary understanding of the role of nutrient limitation and climatic seasonality. Here we examined the relationships between ant community structure, nutrient use and season along three undisturbed elevational gradients, each from a different continent. Location Ecuador (South America), Papua New Guinea...
The influence of aboveground and belowground species composition on spatial turnover in nutrient pools in alpine grasslandsNARA Subscribed
Aim An important research question in ecology is how climate and the biodiversity of aboveground plants and belowground microbiomes affect ecosystem functions such as nutrient pools. However, little is studied on the concurrent role of above‐ and belowground species composition in shaping the spatial distribution patterns of ecosystem functions across environmental gradients. Here, we investigated the relationships between the...
Plant removal across an elevational gradient marginally reduces rates, substantially reduces variation in mineralizationNARA Subscribed
The loss of aboveground plant diversity alters belowground ecosystem function; yet, the mechanisms underpinning this relationship and the degree to which plant community structure and climate mediate the effects of plant species loss remain unclear. Here, we explored how plant species loss through experimental removal shaped belowground function in ecosystems characterized by different climatic regimes and edaphic properties....
Multiyear drought exacerbates long‐term effects of climate on an invasive ant speciesNARA Subscribed
Invasive species threaten biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human health, but the long‐term drivers of invasion dynamics remain poorly understood. We use data from a 28‐yr ongoing survey of a Northern California ant community invaded by the Argentine ant ( Linepithema humile ) to investigate the influence of abiotic and biotic factors on invasion dynamics. We found that the distribution of L . humile retracted following an...
A multiscale framework for disentangling the roles of evenness, density, and aggregation on diversity gradientsNARA Subscribed
Disentangling the drivers of diversity gradients can be challenging. The Measurement of Biodiversity (MoB) framework decomposes scale‐dependent changes in species diversity into three components of community structure: species abundance distribution (SAD), total community abundance, and within‐species spatial aggregation. Here we extend MoB from categorical treatment comparisons to quantify variation along continuous geographi...
Growing‐season warming and winter soil freeze/thaw cycles increase transpiration in a northern hardwood forestNARA Subscribed
Climate models project higher growing‐season temperatures and a decline in the depth and duration of winter snowpack throughout many north temperate ecosystems over the next century. A smaller snowpack is projected to induce more frequent soil freeze/thaw cycles in winter in northern hardwood forests of the northeastern United States. We measured the combined effects of warmer growing‐season soil temperatures and increased win...
Aim Ant communities are believed to be structured by competition, with dominant species competitively excluding subordinates (the dominance–impoverishment rule). However, a high number of seemingly similar species coexist, possibly due to interspecific trade‐offs. Here, we examine the evidence for the dominance–impoverishment rule across a broad latitudinal gradient and explore whether trade‐offs explain coexistence within and...
Salty, mild, and low plant biomass grasslands increase top‐heaviness of invertebrate trophic pyramidsNARA Subscribed
Aim Multiple hypotheses predict how gradients of nutrient availability, plant biomass, and temperature shape trophic pyramids. We aim to disentangle the simultaneous influence of those factors and their indirect effects on trophic structure and individual trophic levels. Location United States. Time period 2017. Major taxa studied Invertebrates. Methods To examine differences in trophic pyramid shape and abundance within troph...
Understanding the likely future impacts of biological invasions is crucial yet highly challenging given the multiple relevant environmental, socio‐economic and societal contexts and drivers. In the absence of quantitative models, methods based on expert knowledge are the best option for assessing future invasion trajectories. Here, we present an expert assessment of the drivers of potential alien species impacts under contrast...
Alpine grassland plants grow earlier and faster but biomass remains unchanged over 35 years of climate changeNARA Subscribed
Satellite data indicate significant advancement in alpine spring phenology over decades of climate warming, but corresponding field evidence is scarce. It is also unknown whether this advancement results from an earlier shift of phenological events, or enhancement of plant growth under unchanged phenological pattern. By analyzing a 35‐year dataset of seasonal biomass dynamics of a Tibetan alpine grassland, we show that climate...
A distributed experiment demonstrates widespread sodium limitation in grassland food websNARA Subscribed
Sodium (Na) has a unique role in food webs as a nutrient primarily limiting for plant consumers, but not other trophic levels. Environmental Na levels vary with proximity to coasts, local geomorphology, climate, and with anthropogenic inputs (e.g., road salt). We tested two key predictions across 54 grasslands in North America: Na shortfall commonly limits herbivore abundance, and the magnitude of this limitation varies invers...
What would you do about those wasps?NARA Subscribed