Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Egg predation on native fish by invasive round goby revealed by species-specific gut content DNA analyses
Published: 2019-09-12
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Conservation of riverine fish typically aims at improving access to spawning grounds and the restoration of longitudinal connectivity requires substantial investments. However, the removal of migration barriers also enables the upstream invasion of non-native species into spawning areas, with potential negative effects on recruitment of threatened freshwater fish through egg or fry predation. [...]
Structure of past and present food webs from a semiarid wetland subjected to species invasion and environmental degradation
Published: 2019-09-09
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Species invasion and habitat degradation very often result in local species loss, which may result in a cascade of secondary extinctions that typically end up disrupting whole ecological netwroks. Herein, we used historical records and the natural abundance of stable isotopes (13C and 15N) of primary producers, aquatic animals and sediment/detritus to derive the past and present structure of food [...]
Main carbon sources supporting primary and secondary production in a disturbed semiarid wetland from central Spain
Published: 2019-09-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Approximately 95% of the total carbon (C) in wetlands is typically found as particulate organic matter (POM). In this study, we evaluated the main C sources of a semiarid floodplain wetland in central Spain under disturbance. For this, we used stable isotopes (13C and 15N) and the Bayesian mixing model SISUS. We show that the allochthonous C derived from wastewater discharges have distinctive [...]
Effects of anthropogenic disturbance on 13C and 15N of aquatic plants from a semiarid wetland
Published: 2019-09-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Wetlands provide a great variety of environmental services to society, but they are currently globally threatened by human activities. We evaluated the effects of anthropogenic disturbances on the ecological quality of semiarid wetlands from central Spain (La Mancha Húmeda) through the natural abundance of isotopes (13C and 15N) of aquatic plants. We measured water quality and also compiled [...]
How to build a biodiverse city: environmental determinants of bird diversity within and among 1,581 cities
Published: 2019-08-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Cities are novel environments compared with the evolutionary history of the species that reside within them. Collectively, cities and their fauna can be thought of as ecosystems, recognized as playing a critical role in supporting global biodiversity, but they are fundamentally a combination of old species surviving or thriving in a new environment, and the mechanisms and underlying processes [...]
Ecosystem services of a functionally diverse riparian zone in the Amazon–Cerrado agricultural frontier
Published: 2019-08-21
Subjects: Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Biochemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biodiversity, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
The ecological services provided by protected riparian zones in human-altered landscapes are widely acknowledged, yet little is known about them. In this study, we assess ecosystem properties that a protected riparian zone maintains in contrast to environmental changes in its surroundings caused by agro-industrial activities in the northwestern fringe of the Brazilian Cerrado on the [...]
Experimentally altered rainfall regimes and host root traits affect grassland arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities
Published: 2019-07-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Future climate scenarios predict changes in rainfall regimes. These changes are expected to affect plants via effects on the expression of root traits associated with water and nutrient uptake. Associated microorganisms may also respond to these new precipitation regimes, either directly in response to changes in the soil environment or indirectly in response to altered root trait expression. We [...]
Temporal dynamics of mycorrhizal fungal communities and co-associations with grassland plant communities following experimental manipulation of rainfall
Published: 2019-07-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Climate models project overall a reduction in rainfall amounts and shifts in the timing of rainfall events in mid-latitudes and sub-tropical dry regions, which threatens the productivity and diversity of grasslands. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi may help plants to cope with expected changes but may also be impacted by changing rainfall, either via the direct effects of low soil moisture on [...]
Little difference in average fish growth and maximum size across temperatures
Published: 2019-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ectotherms typically increase growth and reduce body size when temperature increases. This physiological response to temperature, termed the temperature-size rule (TSR), is often used to predict how rising temperatures with climate change will affect higher levels of organization, i.e. guilds, communities and ecosystems. Here we study whether faster growth and reduction in adult body size are [...]
A future without stocking? The importance of harvest and river regulation for long-term population viability of migratory salmonids
Published: 2019-05-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
1. Humans are influencing animal and plant populations both directly (e.g. through harvest) and indirectly by altering environments. For many exploited species, stocking with captive-bred individuals is a common strategy to mitigate negative human impacts and sustain populations over time. However, accumulating knowledge of negative side effects of stocking calls for quantification of [...]
Disentangling chronic regeneration failure in endangered woodland ecosystems
Published: 2019-04-14
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems requires the facilitation of natural regeneration by plants, often augmented by large-scale active revegetation. The success of such projects is highly variable. Risk factors may be readily identifiable in a general sense, but it is rarely clear how they play out individually, or in combination. We addressed this problem with a field experiment on the [...]
Models of spatiotemporal variation in rabbit abundance reveal management hotspots for an invasive species
Published: 2019-03-26
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Aim: The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a notorious economic and environmental pest species in its invasive range. To better understand the population and range dynamics of this species, long-term abundance data has been collected across a broad range of climatic and environmental condition in Australia. We analysed this time series data to determine whether inter-annual variation in [...]
Ice-free area expansion compounds the non-native species threat to Antarctic terrestrial biodiversity
Published: 2019-02-18
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Warming across ice-covered regions will result in changes to both the physical and climatic environment, revealing new ice-free habitat and new climatically suitable habitats for non-native species establishment. Recent studies have independently quantified each of these aspects in Antarctica, where ice-free areas form crucial habitat for the majority of terrestrial biodiversity. Here we [...]
Dominance determines fish community biomass in a temperate seagrass ecosystem
Published: 2019-01-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Biodiversity and ecosystem function are often correlated, but there are multiple hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Ecosystem functions such as primary or secondary production may be maximized by species richness, evenness in species abundances, or the presence or dominance of species with certain traits. Here, we combined surveys of natural fish communities (conducted [...]
Local forest structure variability increases resilience to wildfire in dry western U.S. coniferous forests
Published: 2019-01-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
A “resilient” forest endures disturbance and is likely to persist. Resilience to wildfire may arise from feedback between fire behavior and forest structure in dry forest systems. Frequent fire creates fine-scale variability in forest structure, which may then interrupt fuel continuity and prevent future fires from killing overstory trees. Testing the generality and scale of this phenomenon is [...]