| 1. |
- Ismail, Rashid O., 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Effects of calcification on air-water CO2 fluxes in tropical seagrass meadows : A mesocosm experiment
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-0981 .- 1879-1697. ; 561
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Seagrass meadows deliver a range of ecosystem services, where one of the more important is the capacity to store carbon and serve as sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide. The capacity of seagrass meadows for carbon storage might, however, be modified and complicated by several factors; one important factor is the possible effects of calcification within the meadows. In tropical areas, seagrass meadows can contain high proportions of calcareous organisms, which through their calcification may cause release of CO2. To study this aspect of the CO2 balance within tropical seagrass systems, we investigated the air-water CO2 flux in seagrass mesocosms with different plant community compositions, i.e. mixtures of seagrass and calcifying macroalgae, having similar overall photosynthetic oxygen evolution rates. The measured CO2 fluxes changed both in rate and direction over the day and were significantly related to plant community composition. Downward fluxes of CO2 were found only over vegetation with high proportion of seagrass and in the afternoon, whereas occurrence of calcifying algae appeared to reverse the flow. A partial least squares (PLS) regression model indicated that pH, pCO2 and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) were the primary environmental variables predicting the CO2 fluxes. Our findings show that algal calcification might partly counteract the carbon sequestration in seagrass meadows.
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| 2. |
- Hostens, Lore, et al.
(författare)
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The drivers of dark diversity in the Scandinavian mountains are metric-dependent
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Vegetation Science. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1100-9233 .- 1654-1103. ; 34:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Question: Dark diversity refers to the set of species that are not observed in an area but could potentially occur based on suitable local environmental conditions. In this paper, we applied both niche-based and co-occurrence-based methods to estimate the dark diversity of vascular plant species in the subarctic mountains. We then aimed to unravel the drivers explaining (a) why some locations were missing relatively more suitable species than others, and (b) why certain plant species were more often absent from suitable locations than others.Location: The Scandinavian mountains around Abisko, northern Sweden.Methods: We calculated the dark diversity in 107 plots spread out across four mountain trails using four different methods: two co-occurrence-based (Beals’ index and the hypergeometric method) and two niche-based (the climatic niche model and climatic niche model followed by species-specific threshold). We then applied multiple Generalized Linear Mixed-Effects Models and General Linear Models to determine which habitat characteristics and species traits contributed the most to dark diversity.Results: The study showed a notable divergence in the predicted drivers of dark diversity depending on the method used. Nevertheless, we can conclude that plot-level dark diversity was generally 17% higher in areas at low elevations and 31% higher in areas with a low species richness.Conclusion: Our findings call for caution when interpreting statistical findings of dark-diversity estimates. Even so, all analyses point toward an important role for natural processes such as competitive dominance as the main driver of the spatial patterns found in dark diversity in the northern Scandes.
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| 3. |
- Sigmund, G., et al.
(författare)
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Addressing chemical pollution in biodiversity research
- 2023
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 29:12, s. 3240-3255
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution are planetary-scale emergencies requiring urgent mitigation actions. As these "triple crises" are deeply interlinked, they need to be tackled in an integrative manner. However, while climate change and biodiversity are often studied together, chemical pollution as a global change factor contributing to worldwide biodiversity loss has received much less attention in biodiversity research so far. Here, we review evidence showing that the multifaceted effects of anthropogenic chemicals in the environment are posing a growing threat to biodiversity and ecosystems. Therefore, failure to account for pollution effects may significantly undermine the success of biodiversity protection efforts. We argue that progress in understanding and counteracting the negative impact of chemical pollution on biodiversity requires collective efforts of scientists from different disciplines, including but not limited to ecology, ecotoxicology, and environmental chemistry. Importantly, recent developments in these fields have now enabled comprehensive studies that could efficiently address the manifold interactions between chemicals and ecosystems. Based on their experience with intricate studies of biodiversity, ecologists are well equipped to embrace the additional challenge of chemical complexity through interdisciplinary collaborations. This offers a unique opportunity to jointly advance a seminal frontier in pollution ecology and facilitate the development of innovative solutions for environmental protection.
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| 4. |
- Hollister, R. D., et al.
(författare)
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A review of open top chamber (OTC) performance across the ITEX Network
- 2023
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Ingår i: Arctic Science. - : Canadian Science Publishing. - 2368-7460. ; 9:2, s. 331-344
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Open top chambers (OTCs) were adopted as the recommended warming mechanism by the International Tundra Experiment network in the early 1990s. Since then, OTCs have been deployed across the globe. Hundreds of papers have reported the im-pacts of OTCs on the abiotic environment and the biota. Here, we review the impacts of the OTC on the physical environment, with comments on the appropriateness of using OTCs to characterize the response of biota to warming. The purpose of this review is to guide readers to previously published work and to provide recommendations for continued use of OTCs to under -stand the implications of warming on low stature ecosystems. In short, the OTC is a useful tool to experimentally manipulate temperature; however, the characteristics and magnitude of warming varies greatly in different environments; therefore, it is important to document chamber performance to maximize the interpretation of biotic response. When coupled with long-term monitoring, warming experiments are a valuable means to understand the impacts of climate change on natural ecosystems.
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| 5. |
- Tedersoo, L., et al.
(författare)
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Towards a co-crediting system for carbon and biodiversity
- 2023
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Ingår i: Plants People Planet. - 2572-2611. ; 6:1, s. 18-28
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Societal Impact StatementHumankind is facing both climate and biodiversity crises. This article proposes the foundations of a scheme that offers tradable credits for combined aboveground and soil carbon and biodiversity. Multidiversity-as estimated based on high-throughput molecular identification of soil meiofauna, fungi, bacteria, protists, plants and other organisms shedding DNA into soil, complemented by acoustic and video analyses of aboveground macrobiota-offers a cost-effective method that captures much of the terrestrial biodiversity. Such a voluntary crediting system would increase the quality of carbon projects and contribute funding for delivering the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Carbon crediting and land offsets for biodiversity protection have been developed to tackle the challenges of increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the loss of global biodiversity. Unfortunately, these two mechanisms are not optimal when considered separately. Focusing solely on carbon capture-the primary goal of most carbon-focused crediting and offsetting commitments-often results in the establishment of non-native, fast-growing monocultures that negatively affect biodiversity and soil-related ecosystem services. Soil contributes a vast proportion of global biodiversity and contains traces of aboveground organisms. Here, we outline a carbon and biodiversity co-crediting scheme based on the multi-kingdom molecular and carbon analyses of soil samples, along with remote sensing estimation of aboveground carbon as well as video and acoustic analyses-based monitoring of aboveground macroorganisms. Combined, such a co-crediting scheme could help halt biodiversity loss by incentivising industry and governments to account for biodiversity in carbon sequestration projects more rigorously, explicitly and equitably than they currently do. In most cases, this would help prioritise protection before restoration and help promote more socially and environmentally sustainable land stewardship towards a 'nature positive' future.
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| 6. |
- Fridley, Jason D., et al.
(författare)
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Perspectives on the scientific legacy of J. Philip Grime
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Ecology. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0022-0477 .- 1365-2745. ; 111:9, s. 1814-1831
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Perhaps as much as any other scientist in the 20th century, J.P. Grime transformed the study of plant ecology and helped shepherd the field toward international prominence as a nexus of ideas related to global environmental change. Editors at the Journal of Ecology asked a group of senior plant ecologists to comment on Grime's scientific legacy. This commentary piece includes individual responses of 14 scientists from around the world attesting to Grime's foundational role in plant functional ecology, including his knack for sparking controversy, his unique approach to theory formulation involving clever experiments and standardized trait measurements of large numbers of species, and the continued impact of his work on ecological science and policy.
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| 7. |
- Klinger, Yves P., et al.
(författare)
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iPhenology : Using open-access citizen science photos to track phenology at continental scale
- 2023
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Ingår i: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2041-210X. ; 14:6, s. 1424-1431
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photo observations are a highly valuable but rarely used source of citizen science (CS) data. Recently, the number of publicly available photo observations has increased strongly, for example, due to the use of smartphone applications for species identification. This has enabled the raising of ecological insights in poorly studied subjects. One of the fields with the highest potential to benefit from the use of photo observations is phenology. We propose a workflow for iPhenology, the use of publicly available photo observations to track phenological events at large scales. The workflow comprises data acquisition, cleaning of observations, phenological classification and modelling spatiotemporal patterns of phenology. We explore the suitability of iPhenology to observe key phenological stages in the plant reproductive cycle of a model species and discuss limitations and future prospects of the approach using the example of an invasive species in Europe. We show that iPhenology is suitable to track key phenological events of widespread species. However, the number and quality of available observations may differ among species and phenological stages. Overall, publicly available CS photo observations are suitable to track key phenological events and can thus significantly advance the knowledge on the timing and drivers of plant phenology. In future, integrating the workflow with automated image processing and analysis may enable real-time tracking of plant phenology.
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| 8. |
- Roth, Nina, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Experimental warming outside the growing season and exclusion of grazing has a mild effect on upland grassland plant communities in the short term
- 2023
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Ingår i: Plant Ecology & Diversity. - 1755-0874 .- 1755-1668. ; 16:5-6, s. 189-201
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Winters are expected to warm more than summers in central and northern Europe, with largely unknown effects on grassland plant communities.Aims: By studying the interactions between winter warming and summer grazing, we aimed to disentangle their effects and give recommendations for future grassland management.Methods: Our study area Upper Teesdale, England has winter temperatures close to 0°C and a well-studied vegetation, known for its arctic-alpine species growing at their climatic warm range limits. We set up a winter warming experiment using open top chambers (ca. +0.5°C) from mid-September until mid-May 2019 to 2022 and excluded sheep grazing during summer in a fully factorial design.Results: Graminoid biomass increased, and bryophyte biomass decreased with winter warming. There was little to no evidence that winter warming affected any of the other plant response variables we measured, neither did grazing nor the interaction between winter warming and grazing.Conclusions: Our experiment was relatively short in duration and treatments were realistic in magnitude, therefore the plant communities responded only slightly. Nevertheless, our data suggest a change towards more dominant vascular species and less bryophytes with winter warming, which might lead to lasting changes in the plant communities in the longer-term if not buffered by suitable grazing management.
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| 9. |
- Wirta, Helena, et al.
(författare)
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The role of seasonality in shaping the interactions of honeybees with other taxa
- 2023
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - 2045-7758. ; 13:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Eltonian niche of a species is defined as its set of interactions with other taxa. How this set varies with biotic, abiotic and human influences is a core question of modern ecology. In seasonal environments, the realized Eltonian niche is likely to vary due to periodic changes in the occurrence and abundance of interaction partners and changes in species behavior and preferences. Also, human management decisions may leave strong imprints on species interactions. To compare the impact of seasonality to that of management effects, honeybees provide an excellent model system. Based on DNA traces of interaction partners archived in honey, we can infer honeybee interactions with floral resources and microbes in the surrounding habitats, their hives, and themselves. Here, we resolved seasonal and management-based impacts on honeybee interactions by sampling beehives repeatedly during the honey-storing period of honeybees in Finland. We then use a genome-skimming approach to identify the taxonomic contents of the DNA in the samples. To compare the effects of the season to the effects of location, management, and the colony itself in shaping honeybee interactions, we used joint species distribution modeling. We found that honeybee interactions with other taxa varied greatly among taxonomic and functional groups. Against a backdrop of wide variation in the interactions documented in the DNA content of honey from bees from different hives, regions, and beekeepers, the imprint of the season remained relatively small. Overall, a honey-based approach offers unique insights into seasonal variation in the identity and abundance of interaction partners among honeybees. During the summer, the availability and use of different interaction partners changed substantially, but hive- and taxon-specific patterns were largely idiosyncratic as modified by hive management. Thus, the beekeeper and colony identity are as important determinants of the honeybee's realized Eltonian niche as is seasonality.
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| 10. |
- Anderson, Bruce, et al.
(författare)
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Opposing effects of plant traits on diversification
- 2023
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Ingår i: iScience. - : Cell Press. - 2589-0042. ; 26:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Species diversity can vary dramatically across lineages due to differences in speciation and extinction rates. Here, we explore the effects of several plant traits on diversification, finding that most traits have opposing effects on diversification. For example, outcrossing may increase the efficacy of selection and adaptation but also decrease mate availability, two processes with contrasting effects on lineage persistence. Such opposing trait effects can manifest as differences in diversification rates that depend on ecological context, spatiotemporal scale, and associations with other traits. The complexity of pathways linking traits to diversification suggests that the mechanistic underpinnings behind their correlations may be difficult to interpret with any certainty, and context dependence means that the effects of specific traits on diversification are likely to differ across multiple lineages and timescales. This calls for taxonomically and context-controlled approaches to studies that correlate traits and diversification.
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