Article
Soil Science
Yulian Ren, Wei Ge, Chunbo Dong, Haiyan Wang, Shui Zhao, Chenglong Li, Jinhui Xu, Zongqi Liang, Yanfeng Han
Summary: This study investigates the soil microbial communities in near-urban farmlands and finds that the intermediate group has the highest relative abundance. The geographic distance decay relationship is steeper for specialist bacteria compared to generalists and intermediates. Soil water content, C and N nutrients are the main factors driving changes in the community structure. The main functional groups of bacteria are chemoheterotrophy, while for fungi, it is saprophytic, pathotrophic and symbiotrophic nutritional types.
APPLIED SOIL ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Qicheng Xu, Gongwen Luo, Junjie Guo, Yan Xiao, Fengge Zhang, Shiwei Guo, Ning Ling, Qirong Shen
Summary: This study identified bacterial generalists and specialists in soils at a national scale based on niche breadth, and assessed the intraspecific variation in each species. Generalists exhibited higher intraspecific variation, wider niche breadth, and stability compared to specialists, indicating their ability to adapt to different environments and their independence from environmental filtering.
Article
Ecology
Colleen Smith, Simon Joly, Cecile Antoine, Batoule Hyjazie, Jessica R. K. Forrest
Summary: Specialist insect herbivores represent a significant portion of biodiversity on Earth, but they only exploit a small number of plant lineages. Researchers find that specialist bees prefer plants with low-quality pollen, potentially to escape competition or obtain protection from natural enemies. Additionally, the abundance of plant species strongly predicts which plant genera in the eastern United States host pollen-specialist bees.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Radek Michalko, Alastair T. Gibbons, Sara L. Goodacre, Stano Pekar
Summary: There is growing evidence that consistent interindividual differences in behavior, known as behavioral types, play an important role in key ecological processes like predator-prey interactions, which in turn affect biological control. This study found that foraging aggressiveness is a key factor influencing prey selection of generalist predators, with more aggressive individuals having wider trophic niches. The multivariate nature of behavior did not form a behavioral syndrome, and only foraging aggressiveness had a significant impact on the prey selection and trophic niche breadth of the generalist agrobiont spider Philodromus cespitum.
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Jackson A. Helms, Karl A. Roeder, Selassie E. Ijelu, Ian Ratcliff, Nick M. Haddad
Summary: This study examines how resource availability and nutritional requirements interact to determine an organism's trophic niche in the context of bioenergy production. Results show that increasing plant richness lengthens food chains and generalist ants' trophic position shifts with changes in plant richness.
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Plant Sciences
Caleb C. Butler, Kira E. Turnham, Allison M. Lewis, Matthew R. Nitschke, Mark E. Warner, Dustin W. Kemp, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, William K. Fitt, Madeleine J. H. van Oppen, Todd C. LaJeunesse
Summary: This study identified five new species in the genus Cladocopium, which are widespread and have diverse hosts. These findings are important for understanding ecological research, genetic research, and conservation efforts in the face of environmental changes.
JOURNAL OF PHYCOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Guillermo Aguilera, Laura Riggi, Kirsten Miller, Tomas Roslin, Riccardo Bommarco
Summary: Biological control by natural enemies, specifically predators, in crop fields is influenced by both local management practices (such as organic manure or inorganic mineral fertilization) and the composition of predator communities in the surrounding landscape. The study found that organic fertilization coupled with predator spillover had a synergistic effect on suppressing aphid growth, highlighting the importance of promoting both local and mobile predators for effective biological insect pest suppression in agricultural ecosystems.
JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Daniela de Angeli Dutra, Gabriel Moreira Felix, Robert Poulin
Summary: The geographical and environmental ranges of parasites are negatively associated with their host specificity and their local abundance. Local abundance restricts the geographical and environmental ranges of parasites, indicating a trade-off between these traits that becomes evident when considering heterogeneous host communities.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2021)
Article
Plant Sciences
Marco Antonio Chiminazzo, Aline Bertolosi Bombo, Tristan Charles-Dominique, Alessandra Fidelis
Summary: By considering the coexistence of fire-prone and fire-free ecosystems, this study tested whether bark production is influenced by fire frequencies and if it is related to aerial bud protection. The results showed that species from areas with higher fire frequencies have a faster bark production, and bark growth rate does not differ between trees and shrubs. Generalist species in savannas are able to produce bark above a certain threshold, but produce bark below the threshold in forests. Higher bark growth rate results in better aerial bud protection.
Article
Ecology
Jessamine Finch, Alexandra E. Seglias, Andrea T. Kramer, Kayri Havens
Summary: Seed-based restoration is an affordable and efficient approach for ecological restoration, but the establishment of seedlings has been a major challenge. This study investigates the relationship between seed germination niche breadth and seedling establishment and finds that different species have varied responses to seed sources and environmental conditions.
RESTORATION ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Entomology
Thayane Nogueira Araujo, Luis Paulo Pires, Desiree Ayume Lopes Meireles, Solange Cristina Augusto
Summary: The study found that the trophic niches of the two carpenter bee species moderately overlapped, with Xylocopa grisescens mainly using pollen from non-poricidal plants and X. frontalis using pollen from plants with poricidal anthers. The individual-resource networks of both species were weakly connected, highly specialized, and modular.
ECOLOGICAL ENTOMOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Agronomy
Paul E. Bergeron, Rebecca A. Schmidt-Jeffris
Summary: A new major predator, Amblydromella caudiglans, has been found in Washington apple orchards, but it is more sensitive to pesticides. Therefore, updates to pesticide selectivity recommendations are needed to conserve this 'new' key predator.
PEST MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Evolutionary Biology
Anna Skoracka, Alicja Laska, Jacek Radwan, Mateusz Konczal, Mariusz Lewandowski, Ewa Puchalska, Kamila Karpicka-Ignatowska, Anna Przychodzka, Jaroslaw Raubic, Lechoslaw Kuczynski
Summary: This study found that the niche breadth of the wheat curl mite evolved in response to the level of environmental variability, with fluctuating environments promoting flexible host-use generalist phenotypes. However, niche expansion resulted in costs expressed as reduced performances on both wheat and barley as compared to specialists. Stable host environments led to specialized phenotypes, with populations evolving in constant environments showing increased fitness on specific host plants without incurring costs on other host plants. Overall, environmental heterogeneity in agricultural systems affects pests' niche breadth evolution, potentially influencing their persistence in such systems.
EVOLUTIONARY APPLICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Evolutionary Biology
Gholam Hosein Yusefi, Raquel Godinho, Leili Khalatbari, Siamak Broomand, Hadi Fahimi, Fernando Martinez-Freiria, Francisco Alvares
Summary: Generalist species like the golden jackal in Iran exhibit high habitat plasticity, genetic diversity, and lack of population structure. They prefer mountainous areas with moderate climates and low human populations, avoiding hyper-arid regions.
JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMATICS AND EVOLUTIONARY RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Margaret Heinichen, Anne Innes-Gold, Joseph A. Langan, Tyler Richman, Jeremy Collie, Austin Humphries
Summary: This study aims to characterize the diet of striped searobins. The results showed that the diet of searobins varied ontogenetically, seasonally, and regionally. The flexible diet of searobins, which includes economically important prey species, provides evidence of their adaptability as generalist feeders.
ENVIRONMENTAL BIOLOGY OF FISHES
(2023)