| 1. |
- de La Peña Aguilera, Pablo, et al.
(author)
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Consistent imprints of elevation, soil temperature and moisture on plant and arthropod communities across two subarctic landscapes
- 2023
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In: Insect Conservation and Diversity. - 1752-458X .- 1752-4598. ; 16, s. 684-700
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- 1. Factors shaping arthropod and plant community structure at fine spatial scales are poorly understood. This includes microclimate, which likely plays a large role in shaping local community patterns, especially in heterogeneous landscapes characterised by high microclimatic variability in space and in time.2. We explored differences in local microclimatic conditions and regional species pools in two subarctic regions: Kilpisj & auml;rvi in north-west Finland and Varanger in north-east Norway. We then investigated the relationship between fine-scale climatic variation and local community characteristics (species richness and abundance) among plants and arthropods, differentiating the latter into two groups: flying and ground-dwelling arthropods collected by Malaise and pitfall traps, respectively. Arthropod taxa were identified through DNA metabarcoding. Finally, we examined if plant richness can be used to predict patterns in arthropod communities.3. Variation in soil temperature, moisture and snow depth proved similar between regions, despite differences in absolute elevation. For each group of organisms, we found that about half of the species were shared between Kilpisj & auml;rvi and Varanger, with a quarter unique to each region.4. Plants and arthropods responded largely to the same drivers. The richness and abun-dance of both groups decreased as elevation increased and were positively correlated with higher soil moisture and temperature values. Plant species richness was a poor predictor of local arthropod richness, in particular for ground-dwelling arthropods.5. Our results reveal how microclimatic variation within each region carves pro-nounced, yet consistent patterns in local community richness and abundance out of a joint species pool.
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| 2. |
- Vesterinen, Eero
(author)
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Environmental features around roost sites drive species-specific roost preferences for boreal bats
- 2023
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In: Global Ecology and Conservation. - 2351-9894. ; 46
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Bats and their reproductive roost sites are strictly protected by legislation in Europe. Although knowledge on foraging habitats of boreal bats has increased vastly over the last decades, little is known on how habitat surrounding the roosts influences the selection of roost sites. We combined citizen science and molecular methods to determine the most critical environmental features within different radiuses around roost sites of bats inhabiting human settlements at the north-ernmost edge of their distribution range in Finland. We compared six different land-use types around the roost sites to randomly selected points for each species to determine at which radiuses around the roost are land-use types most critical. We found that for the northern bat (Eptesicus nilssonii), built environment, open areas, and water within the 200 m radius were the most important in roost site selection. The Brandt's myotis (Myotis brandtii) favored roost sites in landscape not affected by human disturbance within 5 km radius. Based on our results, the surrounding habitat around a roost plays a vital role for bat species, and it should be protected along with the roost and considered in land-use planning. Furthermore, species-specific variation in roost site selection should be considered in conservation planning.
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| 3. |
- Vesterinen, Eero, et al.
(author)
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Environmental responses of fruiting fungal communities are phylogenetically structured
- 2023
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In: Ecography. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Through their ephemeral reproductive structures (fruiting bodies), ectomycorrhizal forest soil fungi provide a resource for a plethora of organisms. Thus, resolving what biotic and abiotic factors determine the occurrence and abundance of fruiting bodies is fundamental for understanding the dynamics of forest trophic networks. While the influence of abiotic factors such as moisture and temperature on fungal fruiting are relatively well established, little is known about how these processes interact with the evolutionary history of fungal species to determine when, where, and in which abundance fungal fruiting bodies will emerge. A specific knowledge gap relates to whether species' responses to their environment are phylogenetically structured. Here, we ask whether related fungal taxa respond similarly to climatic factors and forest habitat characteristics, and whether such correlated responses will affect the assembly of fungal fruiting communities. To resolve these questions, we fitted joint species distribution models combining data on the species composition and abundance of fungal fruiting bodies, environmental variation, and phylogenetic relationships among fungal taxa. Our results show that both site-level forest characteristics (dominant tree species and forest age) and climatic factors related to phenology (effective heat sum) greatly influence the occurrence and abundance of fruiting bodies. More importantly, while different fungal species responded unequally to their shared environment, there was a strong phylogenetic signal in their responses, so that related fungal species tended to fruit under similar environmental conditions. Thus, not only are fruiting bodies short-lived and patchily distributed, but the availability of similar resources will be further aggregated in time and space. These strong constraints on resource availability for fungus-associated taxa highlight the potential of fungus-based networks as a model system for studies on the ecology and evolution of resource-consumer relations in ephemeral systems of high spatiotemporal patchiness.
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| 4. |
- Vesterinen, Eero
(author)
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Large-scale long-term passive-acoustic monitoring reveals spatio-temporal activity patterns of boreal bats
- 2023
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In: Ecography. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587. ; 2023
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The distribution ranges and spatio-temporal patterns in the occurrence and activity of boreal bats are yet largely unknown due to their cryptic lifestyle and lack of suitable and efficient study methods. We approached the issue by establishing a permanent passive-acoustic sampling setup spanning the area of Finland to gain an understanding on how latitude affects bat species composition and activity patterns in northern Europe. The recorded bat calls were semi-automatically identified for three target taxa; Myotis spp., Eptesicus nilssonii or Pipistrellus nathusii and the seasonal activity patterns were modeled for each taxa across the seven sampling years (2015-2021). We found an increase in activity since 2015 for E. nilssonii and Myotis spp. For E. nilssonii and Myotis spp. we found significant latitude -dependent seasonal activity patterns, where seasonal variation in patterns appeared stronger in the north. Over the years, activity of P. nathusii increased during activity peak in June and late season but decreased in mid season. We found the passive-acoustic monitoring network to be an effective and cost-efficient method for gathering bat activity data to analyze spatio-temporal patterns. Long-term data on the composition and dynamics of bat communities facilitates better estimates of abundances and population trend directions for conservation purposes and predicting the effects of climate change.
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| 5. |
- Vesterinen, Eero
(author)
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Novel frontier in wildlife monitoring: Identification of small rodent species from fecal pellets using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS)
- 2023
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In: Ecology and Evolution. - : Wiley. - 2045-7758. ; 13
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Small rodents are prevalent and functionally important across the world's biomes, making their monitoring salient for ecosystem management, conservation, forestry, and agriculture. There is a growing need for cost-effective and noninvasive methods for large-scale, intensive sampling. Fecal pellet counts readily provide relative abundance indices, and given suitable analytical methods, feces could also allow for the determination of multiple ecological and physiological variables, including community composition. In this context, we developed calibration models for rodent taxonomic determination using fecal near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our results demonstrate fNIRS as an accurate and robust method for predicting genus and species identity of five coexisting subarctic microtine rodent species. We show that sample exposure to weathering increases the method's accuracy, indicating its suitability for samples collected from the field. Diet was not a major determinant of species prediction accuracy in our samples, as diet exhibited large variation and overlap between species. fNIRS could also be applied across regions, as calibration models including samples from two regions provided a good prediction accuracy for both regions. We show fNIRS as a fast and cost-efficient high-throughput method for rodent taxonomic determination, with the potential for cross-regional calibrations and the use on field-collected samples. Importantly, appeal lies in the versatility of fNIRS. In addition to rodent population censuses, fNIRS can provide information on demography, fecal nutrients, stress hormones, and even disease. Given the development of such calibration models, fNIRS analytics could complement novel genetic methods and greatly support ecosystem- and interaction-based approaches to monitoring.
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| 6. |
- Wirta, Helena, et al.
(author)
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The role of seasonality in shaping the interactions of honeybees with other taxa
- 2023
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In: Ecology and Evolution. - 2045-7758. ; 13:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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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