Ecosystems worldwide have been impacted by multiple anthropogenic stressors, yet efforts to understand and manage these impacts have been hindered by difficulties in disentangling relative stressor effects. Theoretically, the actions of individual stressors can be delineated based on associated changes in functional traits and these relationships should be generalizable across communities comprised of different species. Thus,...

Accurate ground‐based estimation of the carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems is critical to quantifying the global carbon budget. Allometric models provide cost‐effective methods for biomass prediction. But do such models vary with ecoregion or plant functional type? We compiled 15 054 measurements of individual tree or shrub biomass from across Australia to examine the generality of allometric models for above‐ground bioma...

Aim The Red Sea is characterised by a unique fauna and historical periods of desiccation, hypersalinity and intermittent isolation. The origin and contemporary composition of reef‐associated taxa in this region can illuminate biogeographical principles about vicariance and the establishment (or local extirpation) of existing species. Here we aim to: (1) outline the distribution of shallow water fauna between the Red Sea and ad...

Aim Tropical forests store 25% of global carbon and harbour 96% of the world's tree species, but it is not clear whether this high biodiversity matters for carbon storage. Few studies have teased apart the relative importance of forest attributes and environmental drivers for ecosystem functioning, and no such study exists for the tropics. Location Neotropics. Methods We relate aboveground biomass ( AGB ) to forest attributes...

In widespread and genetically structured populations, temperature variation may lead to among‐population differentiation of thermal biology. The New Zealand stick insect genus Micrarchus contains four species that inhabit different thermal environments, two of which are geographically widespread. RNA ‐Seq and quantitative PCR were used to investigate the transcriptional responses to cold shock among lowland and alpine species...

Packer et al . reported that fenced lion populations attain densities closer to carrying capacity than unfenced populations. However, fenced populations are often maintained above carrying capacity, and most are small. Many more lions are conserved per dollar invested in unfenced ecosystems, which avoid the ecological and economic costs of fencing.

Species persistence can be threatened by substantial temporal variation in food resources over time. On the other hand, spatial heterogeneity in resources at the landscape scale might allow mobile consumers to compensate for temporal variability in resource availability at the local scale. We evaluated this hypothesis, using an extensive data set on foraging, grass growth, and movement by Thomson's gazelles living on the Seren...

The geographical structure of mitochondrial (mt)DNA variants (mitotypes) was investigated in 38 western European populations of Scots pine Pinus sylvestris using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of total DNA and a homologous cox1 probe. Three major mitotypes (designated a, b and d ) were detected. Within Spain all three major mitotypes were found, gene diversity was high, H T = 0.586, and this diversity...