Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Daniel L. Appleby, Joy S. Tripovich, Naomi E. Langmore, Robert Heinsohn, Benjamin J. Pitcher, Ross Crates
Summary: Understanding the factors affecting animal reintroduction success is crucial for endangered species recovery. Assortative mating due to cultural differences can impede the assimilation of zoo-bred individuals into the wild population, highlighting the need to quantify this risk for effective conservation management. Mate choice experiments on zoo-bred female regent honeyeaters revealed a preference for familiar, if abnormal, zoo-bred songs over wild songs, indicating the potential risk of assortative mating in reintroduced populations. This study demonstrates the importance of small-scale experiments within zoobreeding settings for refining husbandry techniques and bridging cultural divides between wild and reintroduced populations.
BIOLOGICAL CONSERVATION
(2023)
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Ana S. L. Rodrigues, Marie-Morgane Rouyer
Summary: A global analysis provides evidence that protected areas are slowing down global biodiversity declines, although the effects vary across different groups of species, and what happens outside protected areas also matters.
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Virginia M. Weis
Summary: Biologists have found through careful analysis of nutrient cycling that corals can rely on an unexpected food source to survive in times of food scarcity.
Article
Ecology
Montague H. C. Neate-Clegg, J. David Blount, Cagan H. Sekercioglu
Summary: The study found that taxonomic agreement was higher for easier-to-study species, such as large, temperate birds, and lower for lineages that are more likely to undergo cryptic divergence, such as island endemics with intermediate forest dependency and mobility. Taxonomic agreement was lowest for species in Southeast Asia/Australasia and the Southern Ocean, and highest in the temperate Northern Hemisphere.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2021)
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Mark R. Payne
Summary: A recent analysis of fish population data in Europe and North America has revealed an alarming increase in the occurrence of marine heatwaves, challenging our previous understanding of their ecological implications.
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Robert Nasi
Summary: The cultivation of oil palm is a permanent practice, but a five-year study shows that incorporating native trees into the monoculture can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functioning without significantly reducing crop yields. The presence of native trees benefits the plantation ecosystem while maintaining crop productivity.
News Item
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Sara Phillips
Summary: By assessing the unique traits of traded animals and their role in ecosystems, researchers can evaluate the potential impact of losses.
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Eric Allan
Summary: A field experiment offers a new approach to explore the mechanisms through which grazing, fertilizer use, and light availability can influence the biodiversity of a grassland plant community.
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Emiliano Donadio, Sebastian Di Martino, Sofia Heinonen
Summary: A foundation is reintroducing native species to restore ecosystems and develop ecotourism.
Editorial Material
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Antonin Machac
Summary: To understand the differences in global biodiversity, it is important to shift the focus from geographical space to climatic space and examine the interplay of climate, area, and isolation.
Article
Ecology
Paul R. Martin, Kevin W. Burke, Frances Bonier
Summary: Habitat partitioning in urban environments among closely related species is influenced by both plasticity and evolutionary divergence, with behaviorally dominant congeners leading to a reduction in subordinate species occurrence in cities, and increased range-wide overlap with dominant congeners also associated with reduced occurrence of subordinates in urban habitats.
AMERICAN NATURALIST
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Susan Kennedy, Jerilyn Calaor, Yazmin Zurapiti, Julian Hans, Masashi Yoshimura, Juanita Choo, Jeremy C. Andersen, Jackson Callaghan, George K. Roderick, Henrik Krehenwinkel, Haldre Rogers, Rosemary G. Gillespie, Evan P. Economo
Summary: Islands, as a significant part of Earth's biodiversity, are highly sensitive to environmental changes. This study uses DNA metabarcoding and statistical modelling to investigate the diversity patterns and non-native species invasion in three Pacific archipelagos. The results largely support the predictions of island biogeography theory and show that forest habitats in the oldest archipelago, the Ryukyus, are more resilient to non-native species invasion compared to the less taxonomically rich archipelagos.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Lucas M. Leveau
Summary: This study examines the impact of urbanization on raptor communities in urban green spaces of Neotropical cities. The results show that raptor species richness increases in tropical regions and decreases with increasing altitude. Species composition varies with altitude and the geographic location of cities, and is primarily influenced by species turnover. The functional traits of raptors are affected by macrogeographical factors and green area size, suggesting that urbanization may alter ecosystem processes provided by these birds.
PERSPECTIVES IN ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Daniel M. Griffith, Kristin B. Byrd, Leander D. L. Anderegg, Elijah Allan, Demetrios Gatziolis, Dar Roberts, Rosie Yacoub, Ramakrishna R. Nemani
Summary: The biogeographic history of vegetation communities can determine their climate responses, and these responses can be captured by the reflectance properties of vegetation in the visible-to-short wavelength infrared range. This study investigates the potential of incorporating evolutionary thinking into landcover classification using airborne hyperspectral data and vegetation plot data. The results show that lineage-based methods can be a promising way to leverage new-generation hyperspectral data with existing ground-based ecological data.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Emma Gibson, Naupaka B. Zimmerman
Summary: The composition of fungal communities associated with living leaves of the common sidewalk tree, Metrosideros excelsa, in San Francisco was characterized. The results suggest that urban environmental factors may potentially influence the composition of these fungal communities.