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Using joint species distribution modelling to identify climatic and non-climatic drivers of Afrotropical ungulate distributions Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-21 Alex Cranston, Natalie Cooper, Jakob Bro-Jørgensen
The relative importance of the different processes that determine the distribution of species and the assembly of communities is a key question in ecology. The distribution of any individual species is affected by a wide range of environmental variables as well as through interactions with other species; the resulting distributions determine the pool of species available to form local communities at
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Dispersal limits poleward expansion of mangroves on the west coast of North America Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-07 Kyle C. Cavanaugh, Dustin Carroll, Rémi Bardou, Tom Van der Stocken
While much attention has been paid to the climatic controls of species' range limits, other factors such as dispersal limitation are also important. Temperature is an important control of the distribution of coastal mangrove forests, and mangrove expansion at multiple poleward range limits has been linked to increasing temperatures. However, mangrove abundances at other poleward range limits have been
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Limitations to fungal diversity in forest soil during secondary succession Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 James M. Doonan
The Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory of the microbial world that ‘everything is everywhere but the environment selects' has provided a basis to test microbial ecological theory for almost a century. Applying theory to the apparent chaos of the microbial world is arduous, and applying rules that guide our understanding is difficult. The Bass Becking and Beijerinck theory attempts to explain microbial
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Optimising occurrence data in species distribution models: sample size, positional uncertainty, and sampling bias matter Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Vítězslav Moudrý, Manuele Bazzichetto, Ruben Remelgado, Rodolphe Devillers, Jonathan Lenoir, Rubén G. Mateo, Jonas J. Lembrechts, Neftalí Sillero, Vincent Lecours, Anna F. Cord, Vojtěch Barták, Petr Balej, Duccio Rocchini, Michele Torresani, Salvador Arenas‐Castro, Matěj Man, Dominika Prajzlerová, Kateřina Gdulová, Jiří Prošek, Elisa Marchetto, Alejandra Zarzo‐Arias, Lukáš Gábor, François Leroy, Matilde
Species distribution models (SDMs) have proven valuable in filling gaps in our knowledge of species occurrences. However, despite their broad applicability, SDMs exhibit critical shortcomings due to limitations in species occurrence data. These limitations include, in particular, issues related to sample size, positional uncertainty, and sampling bias. In addition, it is widely recognised that the
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Human activity drives establishment, but not invasion, of non‐native plants on islands Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-08-01 William G. Pfadenhauer, Graziella V. DiRenzo, Bethany A. Bradley
Island ecosystems are particularly susceptible to the impacts of invasive species. Many rare and endangered species that are endemic to islands are negatively affected by invasions. Past studies have shown that the establishment of non‐native species on islands is related to native plant richness, habitat heterogeneity, island age, human activity, and climate. However, it is unclear whether the factors
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Nocturnal avian migration drives high daily turnover but limited change in abundance on the ground Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-26 Raphaël Nussbaumer, Benjamin M. Van Doren, Wesley M. Hochachka, Andrew Farnsworth, Frank A. La Sorte, Alison Johnston, Adriaan M. Dokter
Every night during spring and autumn, the mass movement of migratory birds redistributes bird abundances found on the ground during the day. However, the connection between the magnitude of nocturnal migration and the resulting change in diurnal abundance remains poorly quantified. If departures and landings at the same location are balanced throughout the night, we expect high bird turnover but little
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KBAscope: key biodiversity area identification in R Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-23 Konstantina Spiliopoulou, François Rigal, Andrew J. Plumptre, Panayiotis Trigas, Kaloust Paragamian, Axel Hochkirch, Petros Lymberakis, Danae Portolou, Maria Th. Stoumboudi, Kostas A. Triantis
Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) represent the largest global network of sites critical to the persistence of biodiversity, which have been identified against standardised quantitative criteria. Sites that hold very high biodiversity value or potential are given specific attention on site‐based conservation targets of the Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), and KBAs are already used
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Long‐term changes in taxonomic and functional composition of European marine fish communities Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Aurore Receveur, Fabien Leprieur, Kari E. Ellingsen, David Keith, Kristin M. Kleisner, Matthew McLean, Bastien Mérigot, Katherine E. Mills, David Mouillot, Marta Rufino, Isaac Trindade‐Santos, Gert Van Hoey, Camille Albouy, Arnaud Auber
Evidence of large‐scale biodiversity degradation in marine ecosystems has been reported worldwide, yet most research has focused on few species of interest or on limited spatiotemporal scales. Here we assessed the spatial and temporal changes in the taxonomic and functional composition of fish communities in European seas over the last 25 years (1994–2019). We then explored how these community changes
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Coastal connectivity of marine predators over the Patagonian Shelf during the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Javed Riaz, Rachael A. Orben, Amandine Gamble, Paulo Catry, José P. Granadeiro, Letizia Campioni, Megan Tierney, Alastair M. M. Baylis
Animal movement and population connectivity are key areas of uncertainty in efforts to understand and predict the spread of infectious disease. The emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in South America poses a significant threat to globally significant populations of colonial breeding marine predators in the South Atlantic. Yet, there is a poor understanding of which species or migratory
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Investigating the relative role of dispersal and demographic traits in predictive phylogeography Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Rilquer Mascarenhas, Ana Carolina Carnaval
Many studies suggest that aside from environmental variables, such as topography and climate, species‐specific ecological traits are relevant to explain the geographic distribution of intraspecific genetic lineages. Here, we investigated whether and to what extent incorporating such traits systematically improves the accuracy of random forest models in predicting genetic differentiation among pairs
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Feedbacks: a new synthesis of causal loops across ecology Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Donald DeAngelis, Linhao Xu
Feedbacks are the basic linkages of living systems. In organisms, they regulate the processes of growth and homeostasis, as well as their interactions with their world. Feedback, which Judson (1980) called ‘one of the chief themes of scientific understanding,' is equally important in ecological systems. The ecological literature is rich in papers dealing with the role of feedback in various phenomena
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Forecasting animal distribution through individual habitat selection: insights for population inference and transferable predictions Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-22 Veronica A. Winter, Brian J. Smith, Danielle J. Berger, Ronan B. Hart, John Huang, Kezia Manlove, Frances E. Buderman, Tal Avgar
Habitat selection models frequently use data collected from a small geographic area over a short window of time to extrapolate patterns of relative abundance into unobserved areas or periods of time. However, such models often poorly predict the distribution of animal space‐use intensity beyond the place and time of data collection, presumably because space‐use behaviors vary between individuals and
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Elevated human impact on islands increases the introduction and extinction status of native insular reptiles Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-16 Wendy A. M. Jesse, Jacintha Ellers, Jocelyn E. Behm, Gabriel C. Costa, S. Blair Hedges, Matthew R. Helmus
In the Anthropocene, the ranges of introduced species are expanding, while extinction-prone species are contracting. Introductions and extinctions are caused by how species respond to human impacts, but it is unknown why the ranges of some species expand and some contract. Here, we test whether this opposite response of human impact is due to introduced and extinction-prone species falling at opposite
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Biodiversity promotes urban ecosystem functioning Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-18 Sarah R. Weiskopf, Susannah B. Lerman, Forest Isbell, Toni Lyn Morelli
The proportion of people living in urban areas is growing globally. Understanding how to manage urban biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services is becoming more important. Biodiversity can increase ecosystem functioning in non‐urban systems. However, few studies have reviewed the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in urban areas, which differ in species compositions
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Untangling the plant reproductive success of changing community composition and pollinator foraging choices Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-18 Alfonso Allen‐Perkins, Maddi Artamendi, Daniel Montoya, Encarnación Rubio, Ainhoa Magrach
Pollinator choices when selecting flowers for nectar or pollen collection are crucial in determining the effectiveness of pollination services provided to plants. From the plant's perspective, this effectiveness is a phenomenon shaped by factors at both the species‐ (e.g. pollinator density and flower morphology) and community‐level, including pollinator diversity and plant competition for pollinators
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Tracking shifts in forest structural complexity through space and time in human-modified tropical landscapes Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-16 Alice Rosen, Fabian Jörg Fischer, David A. Coomes, Toby D. Jackson, Gregory P. Asner, Tommaso Jucker
Habitat structural complexity is an emergent property of ecosystems that directly shapes their biodiversity, functioning and resilience to disturbance. Yet despite its importance, we continue to lack consensus on how best to define structural complexity, nor do we have a generalised approach to measure habitat complexity across ecosystems. To bridge this gap, here we adapt a geometric framework developed
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Common ant species dominate morphospace: unraveling the morphological diversity in the Brazilian Amazon Basin Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-10 Joudellys Andrade-Silva, Fabrício B. Baccaro, Lívia P. Prado, Benoit Guénard, Jamie M. Kass, Dan L. Warren, Evan P. Economo, Rogério R. Silva
Rare plant and vertebrate species have been documented to contribute disproportionately to the total morphological structure of species assemblages. These species often possess morphologically extreme traits and occupy the boundaries of morphological space. As rare species are at greater risk of extinction than more widely distributed species, human-induced disturbances can strongly affect ecosystem
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Shifts in elevational distributions of montane birds in an arid ecosystem Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-10 Martha W. Zillig, Wesley Brooks, Erica Fleishman
Montane species are generally predicted to respond to climate change via upslope movement. Elevational range shifts of birds rarely have been examined in arid regions. Here, we examine shifts in the elevational distributions of breeding birds from two regions of the Great Basin, a desert in the western USA, over 10 to 20 years. We collected data annually from 2001 to 2020, a relatively long and consistent
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Continental‐scale identification and prioritisation of potential refugee species; a case study for rodents in Australia Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-05 Kiarrah J. Smith, Jennifer C. Pierson, Maldwyn J. Evans, Iain J. Gordon, Adrian D. Manning
A species is expected to be most resilient to environmental change when it occurs across a broad diversity of habitats. However, there is often no visual representation of the past (i.e. prehistoric and historical) context for a species in the range maps published by national and global authorities. Therefore, it is easy to overlook the fact that many species once occupied a broader geographic range
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Defoliator outbreaks track with warming across the Pacific coastal temperate rainforest of North America Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-03 Michael Howe, Elizabeth E. Graham, Kellen N. Nelson
The biogeography of irruptive insect herbivores is determined by host availability and climate conditions. As such, outbreak distributions are sensitive to climatic change, especially across large latitudinal gradients. Here, we investigate the outbreak distributions of two understudied defoliators, hemlock sawfly Neodiprion tsugae (Hymenoptera) and western blackheaded budworm Acleris gloverana (Lepidoptera)
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Integrating genomic data and simulations to evaluate alternative species distribution models and improve predictions of glacial refugia and future responses to climate change Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Sarah R. Naughtin, Antonio R. Castilla, Adam B. Smith, Allan E. Strand, Andria Dawson, Sean Hoban, Everett Andrew Abhainn, Jeanne Romero‐Severson, John D. Robinson
Climate change poses a threat to biodiversity, and it is unclear whether species can adapt to or tolerate new conditions, or migrate to areas with suitable habitats. Reconstructions of range shifts that occurred in response to environmental changes since the last glacial maximum (LGM) from species distribution models (SDMs) can provide useful data to inform conservation efforts. However, different
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Historical and contemporary climate jointly determine angiosperm plant diversity patterns across east Eurasia Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Wenqi Song, Yichao Li, Ao Luo, Xiangyan Su, Qinggang Wang, Yunpeng Liu, Tong Lyu, Yongsheng Chen, Shijia Peng, Denis Sandanov, Zhiheng Wang
Mechanisms underlying large‐scale spatial patterns of species richness are one of the central issues in ecology. Although contemporary climate, evolutionary history, and historical climate change have been proposed as drivers of species richness patterns, variation in the relative importance of different factors remains a major challenge. Here, using newly compiled distribution data with a spatial
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Climatic conditions and landscape diversity predict plant–bee interactions and pollen deposition in bee‐pollinated plants Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Markus A. K. Sydenham, Yoko L. Dupont, Anders Nielsen, Jens M. Olesen, Henning B. Madsen, Astrid B. Skrindo, Claus Rasmussen, Megan S. Nowell, Zander S. Venter, Stein Joar Hegland, Anders G. Helle, Daniel I. J. Skoog, Marianne S. Torvanger, Kaj‐Andreas Hanevik, Sven Emil Hinderaker, Thorstein Paulsen, Katrine Eldegard, Trond Reitan, Graciela M. Rusch
Climate change, landscape homogenization, and the decline of beneficial insects threaten pollination services to wild plants and crops. Understanding how pollination potential (i.e. the capacity of ecosystems to support pollination of plants) is affected by climate change and landscape homogenization is fundamental for our ability to predict how such anthropogenic stressors affect plant biodiversity
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Consequences of repeated sarcoptic mange outbreaks in an endangered mammal population Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-07-02 Johan Wallén, Rasmus Erlandsson, Malin Larm, Tomas Meijer, Karin Norén, Anders Angerbjörn
Diseases and parasites are important drivers of population dynamics in wild mammal populations. Small and endangered populations that overlap with larger, reservoir populations are particularly vulnerable to diseases and parasites, especially in ecosystems highly influenced by climate change. Sarcoptic mange, caused by a parasitic mite Sarcoptes scabiei, constitutes a severe threat to many wildlife
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Habitat quality or quantity? Niche marginality across 21 plants and animals suggests differential responses between highland and lowland species to past climatic changes Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Raúl Araya-Donoso, Austin Biddy, Adrián Munguía-Vega, Andrés Lira-Noriega, Greer A. Dolby
Climatic changes can affect species distributions, population abundance, and evolution. Such organismal responses could be determined by the amount and quality of available habitats, which can vary independently. In this study, we assessed changes in habitat quantity and quality independently to generate explicit predictions of the species' responses to climatic changes between Last Glacial Maximum
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Species–environment sorting explains latitudinal patterns in spatiotemporal β‐diversity for freshwater macroinvertebrates Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-28 Siwen He, Beixin Wang, Kai Chen, Ning Li, Janne Soininen
Understanding how and why β‐diversity varies along latitude is a long‐standing challenge in community ecology and rarely addressed in both space and time. We aimed to explore the spatiotemporal variations in macroinvertebrate β‐diversity and their underlying drivers in eight biogeographic regions covering a substantial latitudinal gradient of more than 40 degrees. By combining β‐diversity partitioning
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Climate change is aggravating dengue and yellow fever transmission risk Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Alisa Aliaga‐Samanez, David Romero, Kris Murray, Marina Cobos‐Mayo, Marina Segura, Raimundo Real, Jesús Olivero
Dengue and yellow fever have complex cycles, involving urban and sylvatic mosquitoes, and non‐human primate hosts. To date, efforts to assess the effect of climate change on these diseases have neglected the combination of such crucial factors. Recent studies only considered urban vectors. This is the first study to include them together with sylvatic vectors and the distribution of primates to analyse
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climetrics: an R package to quantify multiple dimensions of climate change Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Shirin Taheri, Babak Naimi, Miguel B. Araújo
Climate change affects biodiversity in a variety of ways, necessitating the exploration of multiple climate dimensions using appropriate metrics. Despite the existence of several climate change metrics tools for comparing alternative climate change metrics on the same footing are lacking. To address this gap, we developed ‘climetrics' which is an extensible and reproducible R package to spatially quantify
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Plant functional group interactions intensify with warming in alpine grasslands Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Francesca Jaroszynska, Siri Lie Olsen, Ragnhild Gya, Kari Klanderud, Richard Telford, Vigdis Vandvik
Plant–plant interactions regulate plant community structure and function. Shifts in these interactions due to global climate change, mediated through disproportional increases of certain species or functional groups, may strongly affect plant community properties. Still, we lack knowledge of community‐level effects of climate‐driven changes in biotic interactions. We examined plant community interactions
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A tree's view of the terrain: downscaling bioclimate variables to high resolution using a novel multi‐level species distribution model Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-25 Matthew M. Kling, Kathryn C. Baer, David D. Ackerly
Fine‐scale spatial climate variation fosters biodiversity and buffers it from climate change, but ecological studies are constrained by the limited accessibility of relevant fine‐scale climate data. In this paper we introduce a novel form of species distribution model that uses species occurrences to predict high‐resolution climate variation. This new category of ‘bioclimate' data, representing micro‐scale
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Variable species establishment in response to microhabitat indicates different likelihoods of climate-driven range shifts Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-19 Nathalie Isabelle Chardon, Lauren McBurnie, Katie J. A. Goodwin, Kavya Pradhan, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, Amy L. Angert
Climate change is causing geographic range shifts globally, and understanding the factors that influence species' range expansions is crucial for predicting future biodiversity changes. A common, yet untested, assumption in forecasting approaches is that species will shift beyond current range edges into new habitats as they become macroclimatically suitable, even though microhabitat variability could
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Southern breeding populations drive declining migration distances in Arctic and subarctic geese Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-19 Shannon R. Curley, José R. Ramírez-Garofalo, Michael C. Allen
Migration is a prevalent strategy among birds used to track seasonal resources throughout the year. Individual and population-level migratory movements provide insight to life-history variation, carry-over effects, and impacts of climate change. Our understanding of how geographic variation in a species' breeding or wintering grounds can impact migration distances is limited. However, changes in migration
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Measuring metrics: what diversity indicators are most appropriate for different forms of data bias? Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-17 Huijie Qiao, Michael C. Orr, Alice C. Hughes
Biodiversity metrics have become a ubiquitous component of conservation assessments across scales. However, whilst indices have become increasingly widely used, their ability to perform in the face of different biases has remained largely untested under realistic conditions. Citizen science data are increasingly available, but present new challenges and biases, thus understanding how to use them effectively
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Pronounced changes of subterranean biodiversity patterns along a Late Pleistocene glaciation gradient Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-14 Mara Knüsel, Roman Alther, Florian Altermatt
Understanding spatial patterns of biodiversity within the context of long-term climatic shifts is of high importance, particularly in the face of contemporary climate change. In comparison to aboveground taxa, subterranean organisms respond to changing climates with generally much lower dispersal and recolonization potential, yet possible persistence in refugial groundwater habitats under ice-shields
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Ecological scales of effect vary across space and time Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-14 Brent S. Pease
The spatial scale at which an environmental variable is summarized can have considerable impacts on ecological inference of species distribution and abundance. While several analytical approaches have emerged to determine biologically relevant spatial scales – the spatial scale that most strongly influences the ecological patterns observed – identifying key ecological drivers of scale of effect is
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Changes of Chinese forest-grassland ecotone in geographical scope and landscape structure from 1990 to 2020 Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-10 Jia Guo, Yuehui Li, Wang Ma, Qinghua Guo, Kai Cheng, Jun Ma, Zhengwen Wang
Forest–grassland ecotone (FGE) has essential ecological and economic value. Unfortunately, it is impacted greatly by environmental changes and anthropogenic disturbance, and is considered one of the most severely threatened biomes in China. To protect Chinese FGE, identifying its exact boundary and exploring its landscape structure dynamic are badly needed, especially on nationwide scale at one-year
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Habitat opening fostered diversity: impact of dispersal and habitat-shifts in the evolutionary history of a speciose afrotropical insect group Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-10 Noémie M.-C. Hévin, Paul Z. Goldstein, Kwaku Aduse-Poku, Jérôme Barbut, Andrew Mitchell, Alberto Zilli, Anne-Laure Clamens, Claire Capdevielle-Dulac, Niklas Wahlberg, Bruno P. Le Ru, Gael J. Kergoat
The opening of habitats associated with the emergence of C4 grasslands during the Neogene had a massive influence on the evolution of plant and animal communities. Strikingly, the impacts of grassland expansion on species diversification in Africa, where the largest surface of grasslands and savannas in the world is located, are not well understood. To explore the impact of habitat opening, we investigate
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Choice of predictors and complexity for ecosystem distribution models: effects on performance and transferability Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-10 Adam Eindride Naas, Lasse Torben Keetz, Rune Halvorsen, Peter Horvath, Ida Marielle Mienna, Trond Simensen, Anders Bryn
There is an increasing need for ecosystem-level distribution models (EDMs) and a better understanding of which factors affect their quality. We investigated how the performance and transferability of EDMs are influenced by 1) the choice of predictors and 2) model complexity. We modelled the distribution of 15 pre-classified ecosystem types in Norway using 252 predictors gridded to 100 × 100 m resolution
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Macroecological patterns of functional and phylogenetic diversity vary between ground and arboreal assemblages in Neotropical savanna ants Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-06-04 Karen C. Neves, Alan N. Andersen, Ted R. Schultz, Heraldo L. Vasconcelos
Macroscale environmental gradients can have contrasting effects on organisms that occupy different vertical niches, but we have little understanding of how this might result in different macroscale diversity patterns in ground and arboreal communities. We also have little understanding of how different dimensions of diversity, such as functional and phylogenetic diversity, vary along macroscale environmental
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Habitat suitability models reveal the spatial signal of environmental DNA in riverine networks Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-30 Jeanine Brantschen, Fabian Fopp, Antoine Adde, François Keck, Antoine Guisan, Loïc Pellissier, Florian Altermatt
The rapid loss of biodiversity in freshwater systems asks for a robust and spatially explicit understanding of species' occurrences. As two complementing approaches, habitat suitability models provide information about species' potential occurrence, while environmental DNA (eDNA) based assessments provide indication of species' actual occurrence. Individually, both approaches are used in ecological
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Big data, big problems? How to circumvent problems in biodiversity mapping and ensure meaningful results Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-30 Alice C. Hughes, James B. Dorey, Silas Bossert, Huijie Qiao, Michael C. Orr
Our knowledge of biodiversity hinges on sufficient data, reliable methods, and realistic models. Without an accurate assessment of species distributions, we cannot effectively target and stem biodiversity loss. Species range maps are the foundation of such efforts, but countless studies have failed to account for the most basic assumptions of reliable species mapping practices, undermining the credibility
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Evaluating the influence of neighborhood connectivity and habitat effects in dynamic occupancy species distribution models Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-30 Oriol Solà, Núria Aquilué, Sara Fraixedas, Lluís Brotons
Exploring new approaches and methodologies to characterize species distribution dynamics, instead of solely relying on static spatial patterns, should be a priority for species distribution modelling research. Dynamic occupancy models (here, ‘dynocc models') are a promising tool to capture temporal patterns of distribution change but their spatial accuracy has been shown to be limited. In this study
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Biogeography of larches in eastern Siberia – using single nucleotide polymorphisms derived by genotyping by sequencing Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-27 Sarah Haupt, Nadine Bernhardt, Stefanie Killing, Stefano Meucci, Ulrike Herzschuh, Evgenii S. Zakharov, Dörte Harpke, Luidmila A. Pestryakova, Stefan Kruse
The present distribution of Siberian boreal forests that are dominated by larches (Larix spp.) is influenced, to an unknown extent, by glacial history. Knowing the past treeline dynamics can improve our understanding of future treeline shifts under changing climate. Here, we study patterns in the genetic variability of Siberian Larix to help unravel biogeographic migration routes since the Last Glacial
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Spatially‐nested hierarchical species distribution models to overcome niche truncation in national‐scale studies Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-21 Teresa Goicolea, Antoine Adde, Olivier Broennimann, Juan Ignacio García‐Viñas, Aitor Gastón, María José Aroca‐Fernández, Antoine Guisan, Rubén G. Mateo
Spatial truncation in species distribution models (SDMs) might cause niche truncation and model transferability issues, particularly when extrapolating models to non‐analog environmental conditions. While broad calibration extents reduce truncation issues, they usually overlook local ecological factors driving species distributions at finer resolution. Spatially‐nested hierarchical SDMs (HSDMs) address
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Small but connected islands can maintain populations and genetic diversity under climate change Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 Matthew M. Smith, Jonathan N. Pauli
In response to the striking effects of environmental change, conservation strategies often include the identification of conservation areas that can effectively maintain vulnerable species. Consequently, identifying system-specific conditions that maintain the demographic and genetic viability of species of conservation concern is essential. Connectivity plays a critical role in the persistence of
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Can we accurately predict the distribution of soil microorganism presence and relative abundance? Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-17 Valentin Verdon, Lucie Malard, Flavien Collart, Antoine Adde, Erika Yashiro, Enrique Lara Pandi, Heidi Mod, David Singer, Hélène Niculita‐Hirzel, Nicolas Guex, Antoine Guisan
Soil microbes play a key role in shaping terrestrial ecosystems. It is therefore essential to understand what drives their distribution. While multivariate analyses have been used to characterise microbial communities and drivers of their spatial patterns, few studies have focused on predicting the distribution of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs). Here, we evaluate the potential of species distribution
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Soil and climate-dependent ingrowth inference: broadleaves on their slow way to conquer Swiss forests Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Roman Flury, Jeanne Portier, Brigitte Rohner, Andri Baltensweiler, Katrin Di Bella Meusburger, Daniel Scherrer, Esther Thürig, Golo Stadelmann
Forests provide essential ecosystem services that range from the production of timber to the mitigation of natural hazards. Rapid environmental changes, such as climate warming or the intensification of disturbance regimes, threaten forests and endanger forest ecosystem services. In light of these challenges, it is essential to understand forests' demographic processes of regeneration, growth, and
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Climate-competition tradeoffs shape the range limits of European beech and Norway spruce along elevational gradients across the Carpathian Mountains Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Jonathan Schurman, Pavel Janda, Myloš Rydval, Martin Mikolaš, Miroslav Svoboda, Flurin Babst
Basic ecological theory suggests that a tradeoff between competitiveness and stress tolerance dictates species range limits at regional extents. However, empirical support for this key theory remains deficient because the necessary spatial and temporal coverage and scalability of field observations has rarely been achieved. We harnessed an extensive dendroecological network (> 22 000 tree-ring samples
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Global variation in ecoregion flammability thresholds Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Todd M. Ellis, David M. J. S. Bowman, Grant J. Williamson
Anthropogenic climate change is altering the state of worldwide fire regimes, including by increasing the number of days per year when vegetation is dry enough to burn. Indices representing the percent moisture content of dead fine fuels as derived from meteorological data have been used to assess geographic patterns and temporal trends in vegetation flammability. To date, this approach has assumed
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Evaluating the predictors of habitat use and successful reproduction in a model bird species using a large‐scale automated acoustic array Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Lauren M. Chronister, Jeffery T. Larkin, Tessa A. Rhinehart, David King, Jeffery L. Larkin, Justin Kitzes
The emergence of continental to global scale biodiversity data has led to growing understanding of patterns in species distributions, and the determinants of these distributions, at large spatial scales. However, identifying the specific mechanisms, including demographic processes, determining species distributions remains difficult, as large‐scale data are typically restricted to observations of only
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‘cito': an R package for training neural networks using ‘torch' Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-06 Christian Amesöder, Florian Hartig, Maximilian Pichler
Deep neural networks (DNN) have become a central method in ecology. To build and train DNNs in deep learning (DL) applications, most users rely on one of the major deep learning frameworks, in particular PyTorch or TensorFlow. Using these frameworks, however, requires substantial experience and time. Here, we present ‘cito', a user-friendly R package for DL that allows specifying DNNs in the familiar
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Major axes of variation in tree demography across global forests Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-06 Melina de Souza Leite, Sean M. McMahon, Paulo Inácio Prado, Stuart J. Davies, Alexandre Adalardo de Oliveira, Hannes P. De Deurwaerder, Salomón Aguilar, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Nurfarah Aqilah, Norman A. Bourg, Warren Y. Brockelman, Nicolas Castaño, Chia-Hao Chang-Yang, Yu-Yun Chen, George Chuyong, Keith Clay, Álvaro Duque, Sisira Ediriweera, Corneille E. N. Ewango, Gregory Gilbert, I. A. U
The future trajectory of global forests is closely intertwined with tree demography, and a major fundamental goal in ecology is to understand the key mechanisms governing spatio-temporal patterns in tree population dynamics. While previous research has made substantial progress in identifying the mechanisms individually, their relative importance among forests remains unclear mainly due to practical
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Improving distribution models of sparsely documented disease vectors by incorporating information on related species via joint modeling Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-03 Stacy Mowry, Sean Moore, Nicole L. Achee, Benedicte Fustec, T. Alex Perkins
A necessary component of understanding vector‐borne disease risk is accurate characterization of the distributions of their vectors. Species distribution models have been successfully applied to data‐rich species but may produce inaccurate results for sparsely documented vectors. In light of global change, vectors that are currently not well‐documented could become increasingly important, requiring
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Modelling 21st century refugia and impact of climate change on Amazonia's largest primates Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-05-03 Thiago Cavalcante, Adrian A. Barnett, Jasper Van doninck, Hanna Tuomisto
Edaphic and vegetation conditions can render climatically suitable sites inadequate for a species to persist, constraining the amount of suitable habitat and the possibilities of tracking preferred climatic conditions as they shift in response to climate change. We combined climatic and remotely sensed data to model current and future distributions of nine extant taxa of ateline primates across the
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Integrating ecological feedbacks across scales and levels of organization Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-30 Benoît Pichon, Sonia Kéfi, Nicolas Loeuille, Ismaël Lajaaiti, Isabelle Gounand
In ecosystems, species interact in various ways with other species, and with their local environment. In addition, ecosystems are coupled in space by diverse types of flows. From these links connecting different ecological entities can emerge circular pathways of indirect effects: feedback loops. This contributes to creating a nested set of ecological feedbacks operating at different organizational
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Evaluating the impact of historical climate and early human groups in the Araucaria Forest of eastern South America Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-30 Mariana M. Vasconcellos, Sara Varela, Marcelo Reginato, Marcelo Gehara, Ana C. Carnaval, Fabián A. Michelangeli
It has been hypothesized that the Araucaria Forest in southern Brazil underwent expansions in the past, driven either by human groups or by climate fluctuations of the Holocene and Pleistocene. Fossil pollen records of the Paraná pine Araucaria angustifolia, a dominant tree in that forest, provide some insights into when those may have occurred. Still, the timing of those expansions has never been
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Calculating functional diversity metrics using neighbor-joining trees Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-30 Pedro Cardoso, Thomas Guillerme, Stefano Mammola, Thomas J. Matthews, Francois Rigal, Caio Graco-Roza, Gunilla Stahls, Jose Carlos Carvalho
The study of functional diversity (FD) provides ways to understand phenomena as complex as community assembly or the dynamics of biodiversity change under multiple pressures. Different frameworks are used to quantify FD, either based on dissimilarity matrices (e.g. Rao entropy, functional dendrograms) or multidimensional spaces (e.g. convex hulls, kernel-density hypervolumes), each with their own strengths
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The combined effects of resource landscapes and herbivory on pollination services in agro-ecosystems Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Tal Shapira, Frank M. Schurr, Sonja Fischer, Neal Jeuken, Moshe Coll, Yael Mandelik
Pollinator activity is affected by landscape-scale flower availability, and by pollinator interactions with co-occurring organisms. Of special interest are potentially detrimental effects of herbivores on the attractiveness of plants to pollinators. While insect herbivores are abundant in natural and agro-ecosystems, the combined effect of herbivory and landscape floral resources on pollinator activity
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Reliability of presence-only data for assessing plant community responses to climate warming Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-18 L. Camila Pacheco-Riaño, Sabine Rumpf, Tuija Maliniemi, Suzette G. A. Flantua, John-Arvid Grytnes
Climate warming has triggered shifts in plant distributions, resulting in changes within communities, characterized by an increase in warm-demanding species and a decrease in cold-adapted species – referred to as thermophilization. Researchers conventionally rely on co-occurrence data from vegetation assemblages to examine these community dynamics. Despite the increasing availability of presence-only
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Fruit–frugivore dependencies are important in Ebolavirus outbreaks in Sub-Saharan Africa Ecography (IF 5.4) Pub Date : 2024-04-18 Mekala Sundaram, Mireya Dorado, Benedicta Akaribo, Antoine Filion, Barbara A. Han, Nicole L. Gottdenker, John P. Schmidt, John M. Drake, Patrick R. Stephens
Ebolaviruses have the ability to infect a wide variety of species, with many African mammals potentially serving either as primary reservoirs or secondary amplifying hosts. Previous work has shown that frugivorous bats and primates are often associated with spillover and outbreaks. Yet the role that patterns of biodiversity, either of mammalian hosts or of common fruiting species such as Ficus (figs