Population outbreaks are characterized by irruptive changes in population density and connectivity resulting in rapid demographic and spatial expansion, often at the landscape scale. Outbreaks are common across multiple taxa, many of which inhabit northern ecosystems. Outbreaks of Lepidopteran defoliators in forest ecosystems are a particularly compelling example of this phenomenon, given the massive

Changes in phenology are a conspicuous fingerprint of climate change, leading to fears that phenological mismatches among interacting species will be a leading cause of population declines and extinction. We used quantile regression to analyze museum collection data and estimate changes in the phenological overlap of Baltimore checkerspot butterflies and 12 common nectar plant species over several

Predicting animal population trajectories into the future has become a central exercise in both applied and fundamental ecology. Because demographic models classically assume population closure, they tend to provide inaccurate predictions when applied locally to interconnected subpopulations that are part of a larger metapopulation. Ideally, one should explicitly model dispersal among subpopulations

COVER PHOTO: Tide pools at Corona del Mar State Beach, California, USA, are pictured on the cover. Declines in biodiversity in marine systems are occurring at unprecedented rates and it is essential to evaluate the complexities of the resulting transformations on ecosystems. Bracken et al. used tide pools on the southern California shoreline to experimentally manipulate grazer abundance and quantify

Like alien plant invasion, range expansion of native plants may threaten biodiversity and economies, rendering them native invaders. Variation in abiotic and biotic conditions across a large geographic scale greatly affects variation in traits and interactions with herbivores of native plant invaders, which is an interesting yet mostly unexplored issue. We used a common garden experiment to compare

Insectivorous predators, including birds and bats, play crucial roles in trophic cascades. However, previous research on these cascades has often relied on permanent predator exclosures, which prevent the isolation of specific effects of birds and bats, given their different activity patterns throughout the day. Moreover, limited knowledge exists regarding the variations in individual effects of these

Data integration, the joint statistical analysis of data from different observation platforms, is pivotal for data‐hungry disciplines such as spatial ecology. Pooled data types obtained from the same underlying process, analyzed jointly, can improve both precision and accuracy in models of species distributions and species–habitat associations. However, the integration of telemetry and spatial survey

The replacement of grasses by shrubs or bare ground (xerification) is a primary form of landscape change in drylands globally with consequences for ecosystem services. The potential for wild herbivores to trigger or reinforce shrubland states may be underappreciated, however, and comparative analyses across herbivore taxa are sparse. We sought to clarify the relative effects of domestic cattle, native

Predators regulate communities through top‐down control in many ecosystems. Because most studies of top‐down control last less than a year and focus on only a subset of the community, they may miss predator effects that manifest at longer timescales or across whole food webs. In southeastern US salt marshes, short‐term and small‐scale experiments indicate that nektonic predators (e.g., blue crab, fish

Predator–prey interactions are crucial components of populations and communities. Their dynamics depend on the covariation of traits of the interacting organisms, and there is increasing evidence that intraspecific trade‐off relationships between defense and competitive traits are important drivers of trophic interactions. However, quantifying the relevant traits forming defense–competitiveness trade‐offs

Human‐caused global change produces biotic and abiotic conditions that increase the uncertainty and risk of failure of restoration efforts. A focus of managing for resiliency, that is, the ability of the system to respond to disturbance, has the potential to reduce this uncertainty and risk. However, identifying what drives resiliency might depend on how one measures it. An example of a system where

Deciphering the linkage between ecological stoichiometry and ecosystem functioning under anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition is critical for understanding the impact of afforestation on terrestrial carbon (C) sequestration. However, the specific changes in above‐ versus belowground stoichiometric asymmetry with stand age in response to long‐term N addition remain poorly understood. In this study

In partial migrant systems, where residents and migrants coexist within a population, residents are commonly predicted to gain a reproductive advantage over migrants through priority access to high‐quality territories and an earlier breeding start. Annual variation in reproductive benefits has been suggested to be important for the coexistence of both strategies in a population, as differences in wintering

The availability and quality of food resources can alter the intensity of competition and predation pressure within communities. Understanding species capacity to respond to global change‐driven shifts in resource distribution is therefore crucial for biodiversity conservation. Small mammal communities are often structured by competition for food resources, but understanding and monitoring these processes

One of the most reliable features of natural systems is that they change through time. Theory predicts that temporally fluctuating conditions shape community composition, species distribution patterns, and life history variation, yet features of temporal variability are rarely incorporated into studies of species–environment associations. In this study, we evaluated how two components of temporal environmental

The dataset contains leaf venation architecture and functional traits for a phylogenetically diverse set of 122 plant species (including ferns, basal angiosperms, monocots, basal eudicots, asterids, and rosids) collected from the living collections of the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley (37.87° N, 122.23° W; CA, USA) from February to September 2021. The sampled species originated

Symbiotic mutualisms provide critical ecosystem services throughout the world. Anthropogenic stressors, however, may disrupt mutualistic interactions and impact ecosystem health. The plant‐rhizobia symbiosis promotes plant growth and contributes to the nitrogen (N) cycle. While off‐target herbicide exposure is recognized as a significant stressor impacting wild plants, we lack knowledge about how it

Pollinator‐mediated reproductive interactions among co‐flowering plant species provide a canonical example of how biotic factors may contribute to species coexistence, yet we lack understanding of the exact mechanisms. Flowering‐dominant and unusually attractive “magnet species” with disproportionate contributions to pollination may play key roles in such reproductive interactions, but their relative

Predator hunting strategies, such as stalking versus coursing behaviors, are hypothesized to influence antipredator behaviors of prey and can describe the movement behaviors of predators themselves. Predators and prey may alter their movement in relation to predator hunting modes, yet few studies have evaluated how these strategies influence movement behaviors of free‐ranging animals in a multiple‐predator

Mutualistic interactions between species underpin biodiversity and ecosystem function, but may be lost when partners respond differently to abiotic conditions. Except for a few prominent examples, effects of global anthropogenic change on mutualisms are poorly understood. Here we assess the effects of urbanization on a symbiosis in which the plant Cordia nodosa house ants in hollow structures (domatia)

In the Northern Hemisphere, anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition contributed to the enhancement of the global terrestrial carbon (C) sink, partially offsetting CO2 emissions. Across several long‐term field experiments, this ecosystem‐level response was determined to be driven, in part, by the suppression of microbial activity associated with the breakdown of soil organic matter. However, since the

Above–belowground insect herbivore interactions and plant compensatory growth are crucial for reshaping the fitness of invasive plants, and it is likely that climate warming, nitrogen (N) deposition, and plant provenance influence this interaction and growth in a complex way. We performed an experiment with Solidago canadensis from home and introduced ranges, leaf‐chewing Spodoptera litura, and root‐feeding

Canopy gaps are widely recognized as being crucial for maintaining the diversity of forest tree communities. But empirical studies have found mixed results because the differences in diversity between individual gaps and non‐gaps are often small and statistically undetectable. One overlooked factor, however, is how small individual gap versus non‐gap differences may accumulate across sites and potentially

Why nonnative invasive plant species commonly co‐occur, despite their competitive superiority and propensity to displace native species, remains a paradox in invasion biology. Negative interactions among competitively dominant invaders are potentially alleviated by two understudied mechanisms: seasonal priority effects, where phenological separation weakens the effect of competition on species with

One strand of modern coexistence theory (MCT) partitions invader growth rates (IGR) to quantify how different mechanisms contribute to species coexistence, highlighting fluctuation‐dependent mechanisms. A general conclusion from the classical analytic MCT theory is that coexistence mechanisms relying on temporal variation (such as the temporal storage effect) are generally less effective at promoting

Anthropogenic climate warming affects plant communities by changing community structure and function. Studies on climate warming have primarily focused on individual effects of warming, but the interactive effects of warming with biotic factors could be at least as important in community responses to climate change. In addition, climate change experiments spanning multiple years are necessary to capture

Understanding the mechanisms behind biodiversity dynamics is central to assessing and forecasting anthropogenic impacts on ecological communities. However, the manner in which external environmental drivers act in concert with intrinsic ecological processes to influence local temporal turnover is currently largely unexplored. Here, we determine how human impacts affect multiple metrics of bird community

The loss of consumers threatens the integrity of ecological systems, but the mechanisms underlying the effects on communities and ecosystems remain difficult to predict. This is, in part, due to the complex roles that consumers play in those systems. Here, we highlight this complexity by quantifying two mechanisms by which molluscan grazers—typically thought of as consumers of their algal resources—facilitate

Ecological forecasting models play an increasingly important role for managing natural resources and assessing our fundamental knowledge of processes driving ecological dynamics. As global environmental change pushes ecosystems beyond their historical conditions, the utility of these models may depend on their transferability to novel conditions. Because species interactions can alter resource use

A soil seed bank is the collective name for viable seeds that are stored naturally in the soil. At the species or population level, the ability to form a seed bank represents a strategy for (re)colonization following a disturbance or other change in the local environmental conditions. At the community level, seed banks are thought to buffer local diversity during periods of environmental change and

Topographic heterogeneity sets the stage for community assembly, but its effects on ecosystem functioning remain poorly understood. Here, we test the hypothesis that topographic heterogeneity underpins multiple cascading species interactions and functional pathways that indirectly control multifunctionality. To do so, we combined experimental manipulation of a form of topographic heterogeneity on rocky

Leaf litter in coastal wetlands lays the foundation for carbon storage, and the creation of coastal wetland soils. As climate change alters the biogeochemical conditions and macrophyte composition of coastal wetlands, a better understanding of the interactions between microbial communities, changing chemistry, and leaf litter is required to understand the dynamics of coastal litter breakdown in changing

COVER PHOTO: A mother toad‐headed agama (Phrynocephalus vlangalii) with her children. P. vlangalii is a species of viviparous agamid lizard endemic to the Qinghai‐Tibet Plateau in China. This lizard lives in burrows at high elevations of 2,000 to 4,600 meters. They need to adapt to a series of harsh environments, including low oxygen levels, low temperatures, and strong ultraviolet radiation. Jiang

Canopy gaps are foundational features of rainforest biodiversity and successional processes. The bais of Central Africa are among the world's largest natural forest clearings and thought to be critically important islands of open‐canopy habitat in an ocean of closed‐canopy rainforest. However, while frequently denoted as a conservation priority, there are no published studies on the abundance or distribution

Defensive traits are hypothesized to benefit prey by reducing predation risk from a focal predator but come at a cost to the fitness of the prey. Variation in the expression of defensive traits is seen among individuals within the same population, and in the same individual in response to changes in the environment (i.e., phenotypically plastic responses). It is the relative magnitude of the cost and

Ecotones are the transition zones between ecosystems and can exhibit steep gradients in ecosystem properties controlling flows of energy and organisms between them. Ecotones are understood to be sensitive to climate and environmental changes, but the potential for spatiotemporal dynamics of ecotones to act as indicators of such changes is limited by methodological and logistical constraints. Here,

The seasonal timing of life history transitions is often critical to fitness, and many organisms rely upon environmental cues to match life cycle events with favorable conditions. In plants, the timing of seed germination is mediated by seasonal cues such as rainfall and temperature. Variation in cue responses among species can reflect evolutionary processes and adaptation to local climate and can

The evolutionary processes that underlie variation in plant genome size have been much debated. Abiotic factors are thought to have played an important role, with negative and positive correlations between genome size and seasonal or stressful climatic conditions being reported in several systems. In turn, variation in genome size may influence plant traits which affect interactions with other organisms

Mosquito‐borne diseases contribute substantially to the global burden of disease, and are strongly influenced by environmental conditions. Ongoing and rapid environmental change necessitates improved understanding of the response of mosquito‐borne diseases to environmental factors like temperature, and novel approaches to mapping and monitoring risk. Recent development of trait‐based mechanistic models

Plant resource allocation strategies are thought to be largely a consequence of changing abiotic conditions and evolutionary history. However, biotic interactions also influence how a plant allocates resources. As a result, plants mediate indirect interactions between organisms above‐ and belowground through resource allocation. Neighboring plants can influence plant fitness directly through competition

Ecological interactions are a key component of biodiversity, essential for understanding ecosystem services and functioning. Recording and quantifying ecological interactions is challenging, frequently requiring complex logistics and substantial effort in the field. Camera traps are routinely used in ecology for various applications, and have proven to be an excellent method for passive and non‐invasive

Soil microbes have long been recognized to substantially affect the coexistence of pairwise plant species across terrestrial ecosystems. However, projecting their impacts on the coexistence of multispecies plant systems remains a pressing challenge. To address this challenge, we conducted a greenhouse experiment with 540 seedlings of five tree species in a subtropical forest in China and evaluated

Animals spend a considerable proportion of their life span at rest. However, resting status has often been overlooked when investigating how species respond to environmental conditions. This may induce a large bias in understanding the local adaptation of species across environmental gradients and their vulnerability to potential environmental change. Here, we conducted an empirical study on montane

Global change is affecting the distribution and population dynamics of plant species across the planet, leading to trends such as shifts in distribution toward the poles and to higher elevations. Yet, we poorly understand why individual species respond differently to warming and other environmental changes, or how the trait composition of communities responds. Here we ask two questions regarding plant

Common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs) can link multiple plants and distribute nutrients among them. However, how parasitic plants regulate the carbon and nutrient exchange between CMNs and the linked plants is unknown. Thus, we conducted a container experiment with two Trifolium pratense grown in two plastic cores and connected only by CMNs using a 25‐μm nylon fabric in each container. Host T. pratense

Conservation of species requires the protection of the associated suitable habitat. However, it is usually not known how much habitat is required to detect a single rare species. This problem is important, and it is related directly to the success and optimization of conservation planning. However, to date, no statistical methods have been developed to address this problem adequately. In this study