The role of three‐dimensional structural complexity in shaping communities has been increasingly studied, and evidence indicates that vertical stratification favors coexistence through niche partitioning. Despite the clear relationship between three‐dimensional structure and community assemblages, its role in shaping metacommunity processes is still unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we carried out a translocation experim...

Sea level rise threatens ecosystem function in coastal lakes by increasing salinity and altering community composition. As mobile generalists, fish have considerable influence on the stability of a system by impacting trophic network structure. Understanding their diet across abiotic gradients, including salinity, can show key characteristics of their ecological role, and predator diet shifts may serve as warning signs of food...

Inanga ( Galaxias maculatus ) are found in a range of freshwater habitats around much of the Southern Hemisphere. Although they are reasonably well studied within New Zealand, little is known about the populations found in coastal pond systems. This study focussed on inanga diet and population dynamics within a shallow pond complex in coastal Southland, investigating age, growth, distribution, and diet of juvenile inanga over...

Aim The primary drivers of species and population extirpations have been habitat loss, overexploitation and invasive species, but human‐mediated climate change is expected to be a major driver in future. To minimise biodiversity loss, conservation managers should identify species vulnerable to climate change and prioritise their protection. Here, we estimate climatic suitability for two species‐rich taxonomic groups, then use...

Wetland restoration or re‐establishment is a common conservation goal, and the ability of a wetland community to recover from events such as drought are key to its long‐term success. At the mouth of the Waiau River in Southland, New Zealand, a series of wetland ponds have been created by diverting water from the river. A period of particularly low river flows resulted in the wetland drying out entirely, except for a few deep c...

Alpine ecosystems are frequently characterized by an abundance of wing‐reduced insect species, but the drivers of this biodiversity remain poorly understood. Insect wing reduction in these environments has variously been attributed to altitude, temperature, isolation, habitat stability or decreased habitat size. We used fine‐scale ecotypic and genomic analyses, along with broad‐scale distributional analyses of ecotypes, to unr...

The inherently multidimensional nature of the niche has not yet been integrated into the investigation of individual niche specialization within populations. We propose a framework for modeling the between‐ and within‐individual components of the population niche as a set of variance‐covariance matrices, which can be visualized with ellipses or ellipsoids. These niche components can be inferred using multiple response mixed mo...

If natural communities are assembled according to deterministic rules, coexisting species will represent a nonrandom subset of the potential species pool. We tested for signatures of assembly rules in the distribution of species' traits in Pacific rockfish ( Sebastes spp.) assemblages. We used morphology, dietary niche (estimated with stable nitrogen isotopes), and distribution data to identify traits that relate to local‐scal...