The northern Humboldt Current System (nHCS) has high environmental variability that impacts key demographic and community‐scale processes. Understanding the role and ecological implications of these interannual or long‐term events is crucial in describing the dynamics of the nHCS community. Using catch data from pelagic assessment surveys from 1983 to 2019 and the community trajectory analysis framework, we tested and characte...

We set out to characterize the fine‐scale processes acting on interannual dynamics of deep‐sea vent fauna by using a novel approach involving a 5‐yr time series of 3D photogrammetry models acquired at the Eiffel Tower sulfide edifice (Lucky Strike vent field, Mid‐Atlantic Ridge). Consistently, with the overall stability of the vent edifice, total mussel cover did not undergo drastic changes, suggesting that they have been at a...

Human activities are causing a sustained increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The resulting harmful effects on Earth’s climate require decarbonizing the economy and, given the slow pace and inherent limitations of decarbonization of some industries such as aviation, also the active removal and safe sequestration of CO2 away from the atmosphere (i.e., carbon dioxide...

An analysis of sediment records from two lakes located along the southeastern shore of the Fury and Hecla Strait (Nunavut, Canada) allowed us to reconstruct the regional environmental history since deglaciation. Multiproxy profiles, namely particle‐size distribution, elemental geochemistry (based on X‐ray fluorescence) and diatom assemblages, revealed a regional deglaciation and marine inundation around 8200 cal a bp. This sug...

Several temperate tree species are expected to migrate northward and colonize boreal forests in response to climate change. Tree migrations could lead to transitions in forest types, but these could be influenced by several non‐climatic factors, such as disturbances and soil conditions. We analysed over 10,000 forest inventory plots, sampled from 1970 to 2018 in meridional Québec, Canada, to identify what environmental conditi...

Aim Niche‐based models often ignore spatial variation in the climatic niche of a species across its occupied range and the related variation in the response to changing climate conditions. This assumption may lead to inaccurate predictions of species distribution shifts under climate change. Models have been developed to address this issue, but most of them depend upon prior knowledge on evolutionary lineages, phenotypic trait...

Aim Community variation (i.e. beta diversity) along geographical gradients is of substantial interest in ecology and biodiversity reserves in the face of global changes. However, the generality in beta diversity patterns and underlying processes remains less studied across trophic levels and geographical regions. We documented beta diversity patterns and underlying ecological processes of stream bacteria, diatoms and macroinve...

Plant spectral diversity – how plants differentially interact with solar radiation – is an integrator of plant chemical, structural, and taxonomic diversity that can be remotely sensed. We propose to measure spectral diversity as spectral variance, which allows the partitioning of the spectral diversity of a region, called spectral gamma (γ) diversity, into additive alpha (α; within communities) and beta (β; among communities)...

Aim Climate change causes major shifts in species distributions, reshuffling community composition and favouring warm‐adapted species (“thermophilization”). The tree community response is likely to be affected by major disturbances, such as fire and harvest. Here, we quantify the relative contributions of climate change and disturbances to temporal shifts in tree composition over the last decades and evaluate whether disturban...

Aim Community phylogenetic studies use information about the evolutionary relationships of species to understand the ecological processes of community assembly. A central premise of the field is that the evolution of species maps onto ecological patterns, and phylogeny reveals something more than species traits alone about the ecological mechanisms structuring communities, such as environmental filtering, competition, and faci...

Aim In response to climate change, species distribution shifts resulting from local extinctions, colonizations and variations in population abundances potentially lead to community‐level reorganizations. Here, we assess changes over time in stream fish communities, quantify the extent to which these changes are attributable to population declines or increases and identify their main drivers. Location France. Time period 1980–2...

Aim Understanding the magnitude and drivers of freshwater diversity over the last 150 years provides essential insights for developing scenarios of future change. Here, we quantify and identify drivers of spatial and temporal beta diversity in diatom assemblages between historical and modern times. Location United States of America. Major Taxa Studied Diatoms. Tim Period pre‐AD 1850 and c. 2007. Methods Using sedimentary genus...

The most documented response of organisms to climate warming is a change in the average timing of seasonal activities (phenology). Although we know that these average changes can differ among species and populations, we do not know whether climate warming impacts within‐population variation in phenology. Using data from five study sites collected during a 13‐year survey, we found that the increase in spring temperatures is ass...

Aim Although there is a vast body of literature on the causes of variation in species composition in ecological communities, less effort has been invested in understanding how interactions between these species vary. Given that interactions are crucial to the structure and functioning of ecological communities, we need to develop a better understanding of their spatial distribution. Here, we investigate whether species interac...

Aim Scientists, governments and non‐governmental organizations are increasingly moving towards the collection of large, open‐access data. In aquatic sciences, this effort is expanding the scope of questions and analyses that can be performed to further our knowledge of the global drivers of water quality. Cyanotoxin concentration is one variable that has received considerable attention, and although strong local‐scale models h...

Aim The variation in species composition among sites, or beta diversity, can be decomposed into replacement and richness difference. A debate is ongoing in the literature concerning the best ways of computing and interpreting these indices. This paper first reviews the historical development of the formulae for decomposing dissimilarities into replacement, richness difference and nestedness indices. These formulae are presente...

Beta diversity can be measured in different ways. Among these, the total variance of the community data table Y can be used as an estimate of beta diversity. We show how the total variance of Y can be calculated either directly or through a dissimilarity matrix obtained using any dissimilarity index deemed appropriate for pairwise comparisons of community composition data. We addressed the question of which index to use by cod...