The computational cost of dynamical downscaling limits ensemble sizes in regional downscaling efforts. We present a generative-AI approach to greatly expand the scope of such downscaling, enabling fine-scale future changes to be characterised including rare extremes that cannot be addressed by traditional approaches. We test this approach for New Zealand, where heterogenous regional climate effects are anticipated. End-of-cent...

Speciation is the ultimate source of biodiversity, yet because most species arise in spatial isolation (allopatry), it remains unclear how speciation history shapes patterns of sympatric species richness. Here, we examine how the timing of past speciation events influences the maximum sympatric species richness attained across 40 families of passerine birds. Using a phylogenetic model, we infer that the average waiting time fo...

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) adversely impact Aotearoa New Zealand’s marine ecosystems and pose challenges for resource management. In this study, we evaluate forecast skill of monthly MHWs and sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies using a multi-model ensemble (MME) comprised of nine general circulation models and 206 members with a focus on Aotearoa New Zealand for the first time. Over the hindcast period (1993–2016), the MME ou...

The island species–area relationship (ISAR) describes how larger islands support more species. ISARs of isolated oceanic archipelagos, assembled over millions of years, typically show positive relationships, steep slopes, and species richness equilibrium. However, it remains unclear how quickly such characteristics emerge. We compiled a dataset for fish communities of 79 postglacial peri‐Alpine lakes and report an ISAR, formed...

Plant-plant interactions are well-known drivers of plant community dynamics and plant traits. Less well known is to what extent these interactions and their effects change along stress gradients. To study this, we assessed the local spatial association of the annual grass species Brachypodium hybridum and Brachypodium distachyon to perennial plants in ten sites along an aridity gradient in southeastern Spain and compared ten p...

Three ~12‐km reanalysis‐driven regional climate models (RCMs) are evaluated in terms of capturing climatologies and extremes of precipitation, temperature and surface wind over Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ). NZ provides an excellent case study for evaluating high‐resolution RCMs due to its coastal and complex terrain and isolated geographical position in the midlatitudes, exposed to both tropical and polar influences. Overall, we...

Dynamical downscaling provides physics-based high-resolution climate change projections across regional and local scales. This is particularly important for island nations characterized by complex terrain, where the coarse resolution of global climate model (GCM) output often prohibits direct use. One of the main motivations for dynamical downscaling is to reduce biases relative to the host GCM at the local scale, which can be...

Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to rapidly adjust to environmental changes. Cichlid fish inhabit a wide range of light environments and show a large diversity in visual system properties, which makes them a good model system to address the role of phenotypic plasticity in visual adaptation. Cichlid retinal cone pigments consist of opsin proteins bound to Vitamin A 1 or A 2 -derived chromophores. Plasticity in expression...

This study develops a novel approach to forecasting anomalies of meat yield from mussel aquaculture in Pelorus Sound, New Zealand, based on the relationships between non-local sea surface temperature (SST) and observations of mussel meat yield over 13 years. Overall, we found strong associations between lagged SSTs in the Tasman Sea region and mussel meat yield, with a noticeable seasonal cycle in these relationships. Results...

Background MacArthur and Wilson's theory of island biogeography has been a foundation for obtaining testable predictions from models of community assembly and for developing models that integrate across scales and disciplines. Historically, however, these developments have focused on integration across ecological and macroevolutionary scales and on predicting patterns of species richness, abundance distributions, trait data an...

Aim Biodiversity on islands is influenced by geophysical processes and sea‐level fluctuations. Oceanic islands (never connected to a landmass) are initially vacant with diversity accumulating via colonisation and speciation, and then declining as islands shrink. Continental islands have species upon disconnection from the mainland and may have transient land‐bridge connections. Theoretical predictions for the effects of these...

Adaptation to heterogeneous sensory environments has been implicated as a key parameter in speciation. Cichlid fish are a textbook example of divergent visual adaptation, mediated by variation in the sequences and expression levels of cone opsin genes (encoding the protein component of visual pigments). In some vertebrates including fish, visual sensitivity is also tuned by the ratio of vitamin A 1 /A 2 –derived chromophores (...

Classical ecological theory posits that species partition resources such that each species occupies a unique resource niche. In general, the availability of more resources allows more species to co‐occur. Thus, a strong relationship between communities of consumers and their resources is expected. However, correlations may be influenced by other layers in the food web, or by the environment. Here we show, by studying the relat...

We study the response of the Lagrangian sea ice model neXtSIM to the uncertainty in sea surface wind and sea ice cohesion. The ice mechanics in neXtSIM are based on a brittle-like rheological framework. The study considers short-term ensemble forecasts of Arctic sea ice from January to April 2008. Ensembles are generated by perturbing the wind inputs and ice cohesion field both separately and jointly. The resulting uncertainty...

Aim Rates of colonization, speciation and extinction determine species richness and endemism in insular systems. The general dynamic model of island biogeography (GDM) predicts that speciation and extinction rates depend on island area and elevation via their control on ecological limits to diversification and therefore covary with an island's geological history. Additionally, the colonization rate may increase with area and e...