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...

Studies of the resident community of bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ) of Sarasota Bay, Florida, have been conducted for more than 50 years. Detailed histories have been collected for resident individuals through integrated observations, systematic photographic identification surveys, tagging and tracking, catch-and-release health assessments, remote biopsy sampling, and stranding response. This has produced a unique...

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...

Wildfire activity is increasing globally. The resulting smoke plumes can travel hundreds to thousands of kilometers, reflecting or scattering sunlight and depositing particles within ecosystems. Several key physical, chemical, and biological processes in lakes are controlled by factors affected by smoke. The spatial and temporal scales of lake exposure to smoke are extensive and under‐recognized. We introduce the concept of th...

Urban forests have long been understudied, resulting in a scarcity of long-term data to guide future management. The New York Botanical Garden in New York City has been stewarding the 20 ha Thain Family Forest since 1895. Using inventory data between 1937 and 2021, we document how structure, diversity, and composition of the forest have changed over the past century. Our results show an increase in the proportion and diversity...

Clear Lake, a medium-sized hypereutrophic, polymictic lake in northern California, has had recurring harmful cyanobacteria blooms (HCBs) for over a century despite reductions in external phosphorus (P) loadings. Internal P loading can alter nutrient availability and limitation supporting HCBs but is rarely quantified or compared with external loads. We have quantified external P loads from 2019 to 2021 for the three main tribu...

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have begun to receive overdue attention for their regulatory roles in gene expression and other cellular processes. Although most lncRNAs are lowly expressed and tissue-specific, notable exceptions include MALAT1 and its genomic neighbor NEAT1, two highly and ubiquitously expressed oncogenes with roles in transcriptional regulation and RNA splicing. Previous studies have suggested that NEAT1 is f...

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...

Our primary aim was to assess the hypothesis that distinctive features of the patterns of vegetation change during successive Quaternary glacial–interglacial cycles reflect climatic differences arising from forcing differences. We addressed this hypothesis using 207 half‐degree resolution global biome pattern simulations, for time slices between 800 and 2 ka, made using the LPJ‐GUESS dynamic global vegetation model. Simulation...

Long‐distance movements are hypothesized to positively influence population size and stability of mobile species. We tested this hypothesis with a novel modeling approach in which moving herbivores interact with the environment created by a dynamic global vegetation model using highly mobile Mongolian gazelles in the eastern Mongolian grasslands as a case study. Gazelle population dynamics were modeled from 1901 to 2018 under...

Multiple techniques have been used for estimating age in bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus ). The longest established technique is via counts of growth later groups (GLGs) in the longitudinal section of an extracted mandibular tooth. Previous studies to validate GLGs have primarily used younger dolphins (less than 16yrs old) due to the limited number of known age older animals. This study assessed the accuracy of age es...