| 1. |
- Albrecht, Matthias, et al.
(författare)
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The effectiveness of flower strips and hedgerows on pest control, pollination services and crop yield : a quantitative synthesis
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 23:10, s. 1488-1498
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Floral plantings are promoted to foster ecological intensification of agriculture through provisioning of ecosystem services. However, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of different floral plantings, their characteristics and consequences for crop yield is lacking. Here we quantified the impacts of flower strips and hedgerows on pest control (18 studies) and pollination services (17 studies) in adjacent crops in North America, Europe and New Zealand. Flower strips, but not hedgerows, enhanced pest control services in adjacent fields by 16% on average. However, effects on crop pollination and yield were more variable. Our synthesis identifies several important drivers of variability in effectiveness of plantings: pollination services declined exponentially with distance from plantings, and perennial and older flower strips with higher flowering plant diversity enhanced pollination more effectively. These findings provide promising pathways to optimise floral plantings to more effectively contribute to ecosystem service delivery and ecological intensification of agriculture in the future.
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| 2. |
- Bahram, Mohammad
(författare)
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Towards revealing the global diversity and community assembly of soil eukaryotes
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 25
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Soil fungi, protists, and animals (i.e., the eukaryome) play a critical role in key ecosystem functions in terrestrial ecosystems. Yet, we lack a holistic understanding of the processes shaping the global distribution of the eukaryome. We conducted a molecular analysis of 193 composite soil samples spanning the world's major biomes. Our analysis showed that the importance of selection processes was higher in the community assemblage of smaller-bodied and wider niche breadth organisms. Soil pH and mean annual precipitation were the primary determinants of the community structure of eukaryotic microbes and animals, respectively. We further found contrasting latitudinal diversity patterns and strengths for soil eukaryotic microbes and animals. Our results point to a potential link between body size and niche breadth of soil eukaryotes and the relative effect of ecological processes and environmental factors in driving their biogeographic patterns.
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| 3. |
- Berger, David, et al.
(författare)
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Environmental complexity mitigates the demographic impact of sexual selection
- 2024
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 27:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sexual selection and the evolution of costly mating strategies can negatively impact population viability and adaptive potential. While laboratory studies have documented outcomes stemming from these processes, recent observations suggest that the demographic impact of sexual selection is contingent on the environment and therefore may have been overestimated in simple laboratory settings. Here we find support for this claim. We exposed copies of beetle populations, previously evolved with or without sexual selection, to a 10-generation heatwave while maintaining half of them in a simple environment and the other half in a complex environment. Populations with an evolutionary history of sexual selection maintained larger sizes and more stable growth rates in complex (relative to simple) environments, an effect not seen in populations evolved without sexual selection. These results have implications for evolutionary forecasting and suggest that the negative demographic impact of sexually selected mating strategies might be low in natural populations. Sexual selection can both aid and impede evolutionary rescue. This study shows that the complexity of the environment can play a central role in how sexual selection impacts population viability and adaptive potential, and suggests that complex environments may increase the net benefit of sexual selection.image
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| 4. |
- Boughman, Janette W., 1957-, et al.
(författare)
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The ecological stage maintains preference differentiation and promotes speciation
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 25:4, s. 926-938
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Influential models of speciation by sexual selection posit either a single sharedpreference for a universal display, expressed only when males are locally adaptedand hence in high condition, or that shared loci evolve population-specificallelesfor displays and preferences. However, many closely related species instead showsubstantial differences across categorically different traits. We present a modelof secondary contact whereby females maintain preferences for distinct displaysthat indicate both male condition and their match to distinct environments, fosteringreproductive isolation among diverging species. This occurs even with searchcosts and with independent preference loci targeting independent displays. Suchpreferences can also evolve from standing variation. Divergence occurs becausecondition-dependentdisplay and female preference depend on local ecology, andfemales obtain different benefits of choice. Given the ubiquity of ecological differencesamong environments, our model could help explain the evolution of strikingradiations of displays seen in nature.
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| 5. |
- Braga, Mariana P., et al.
(författare)
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Phylogenetic reconstruction of ancestral ecological networks through time for pierid butterflies and their host plants
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 24:10, s. 2134-2145
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The study of herbivorous insects underpins much of the theory that concerns the evolution of species interactions. In particular, Pieridae butterflies and their host plants have served as a model system for studying evolutionary arms races. To learn more about the coevolution of these two clades, we reconstructed ancestral ecological networks using stochastic mappings that were generated by a phylogenetic model of host-repertoire evolution. We then measured if, when, and how two ecologically important structural features of the ancestral networks (modularity and nestedness) evolved over time. Our study shows that as pierids gained new hosts and formed new modules, a subset of them retained or recolonised the ancestral host(s), preserving connectivity to the original modules. Together, host-range expansions and recolonisations promoted a phase transition in network structure. Our results demonstrate the power of combining network analysis with Bayesian inference of host-repertoire evolution to understand changes in complex species interactions over time.
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| 6. |
- Bras, Audrey, et al.
(författare)
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Pesticide resistance in arthropods: Ecology matters too
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 25, s. 1746-1759
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Pesticide resistance development is an example of rapid contemporary evolution that poses immense challenges for agriculture. It typically evolves due to the strong directional selection that pesticide treatments exert on herbivorous arthropods. However, recent research suggests that some species are more prone to evolve pesticide resistance than others due to their evolutionary history and standing genetic variation. Generalist species might develop pesticide resistance especially rapidly due to pre-adaptation to handle a wide array of plant allelochemicals. Moreover, research has shown that adaptation to novel host plants could lead to increased pesticide resistance. Exploring such cross-resistance between host plant range evolution and pesticide resistance development from an ecological perspective is needed to understand its causes and consequences better. Much research has, however, been devoted to the molecular mechanisms underlying pesticide resistance while both the ecological contexts that could facilitate resistance evolution and the ecological consequences of cross-resistance have been under-studied. Here, we take an eco-evolutionary approach and discuss circumstances that may facilitate cross-resistance in arthropods and the consequences cross-resistance may have for plant–arthropod interactions in both target and non-target species and species interactions. Furthermore, we suggest future research avenues and practical implications of an increased ecological understanding of pesticide resistance evolution.
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| 7. |
- Cantwell-Jones, Aoife, et al.
(författare)
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Using individual-based trait frequency distributions to forecast plant-pollinator network responses to environmental change
- 2024
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 27:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Determining how and why organisms interact is fundamental to understanding ecosystem responses to future environmental change. To assess the impact on plant-pollinator interactions, recent studies have examined how the effects of environmental change on individual interactions accumulate to generate species-level responses. Here, we review recent developments in using plant-pollinator networks of interacting individuals along with their functional traits, where individuals are nested within species nodes. We highlight how these individual-level, trait-based networks connect intraspecific trait variation (as frequency distributions of multiple traits) with dynamic responses within plant-pollinator communities. This approach can better explain interaction plasticity, and changes to interaction probabilities and network structure over spatiotemporal or other environmental gradients. We argue that only through appreciating such trait-based interaction plasticity can we accurately forecast the potential vulnerability of interactions to future environmental change. We follow this with general guidance on how future studies can collect and analyse high-resolution interaction and trait data, with the hope of improving predictions of future plant-pollinator network responses for targeted and effective conservation.
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| 8. |
- Chen, S. C., et al.
(författare)
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Trade-off between seed dispersal in space and time
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 23:11, s. 1635-1642
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Seed movement and delayed germination have long been thought to represent alternative risk-spreading strategies, but current evidence covers limited scales and yields mixed results. Here we present the first global-scale test of a negative correlation between dispersal and dormancy. The result demonstrates a strong and consistent pattern that species with dormant seeds have reduced spatial dispersal, also in the context of life-history traits such as seed mass and plant lifespan. Long-lived species are more likely to have large, non-dormant seeds that are dispersed far. Our findings provide robust support for the theoretical prediction of a dispersal trade-off between space and time, implying that a joint consideration of risk-spreading strategies is imperative in studying plant life-history evolution. The bet-hedging patterns in the dispersal-dormancy correlation and the associated reproductive traits have implications for biodiversity conservation, via prediction of which plant groups would be most impacted in the changing era.
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| 9. |
- Clark, Adam Thomas, et al.
(författare)
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General statistical scaling laws for stability in ecological systems
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 24:7, s. 1474-1486
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ecological stability refers to a family of concepts used to describe how systems of interacting species vary through time and respond to disturbances. Because observed ecological stability depends on sampling scales and environmental context, it is notoriously difficult to compare measurements across sites and systems. Here, we apply stochastic dynamical systems theory to derive general statistical scaling relationships across time, space, and ecological level of organisation for three fundamental stability aspects: resilience, resistance, and invariance. These relationships can be calibrated using random or representative samples measured at individual scales, and projected to predict average stability at other scales across a wide range of contexts. Moreover deviations between observed vs. extrapolated scaling relationships can reveal information about unobserved heterogeneity across time, space, or species. We anticipate that these methods will be useful for cross-study synthesis of stability data, extrapolating measurements to unobserved scales, and identifying underlying causes and consequences of heterogeneity.
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| 10. |
- De Laender, Frederik, et al.
(författare)
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Mean species responses predict effects of environmental change on coexistence
- 2023
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : WILEY. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 26:9, s. 1535-1547
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Environmental change research is plagued by the curse of dimensionality: the number of communities at risk and the number of environmental drivers are both large. This raises the pressing question if a general understanding of ecological effects is achievable. Here, we show evidence that this is indeed possible. Using theoretical and simulation-based evidence for bi- and tritrophic communities, we show that environmental change effects on coexistence are proportional to mean species responses and depend on how trophic levels on average interact prior to environmental change. We then benchmark our findings using relevant cases of environmental change, showing that means of temperature optima and of species sensitivities to pollution predict concomitant effects on coexistence. Finally, we demonstrate how to apply our theory to the analysis of field data, finding support for effects of land use change on coexistence in natural invertebrate communities.
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