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Climate change is expected to increase summer temperature and winter precipitation throughout the Arctic. The long-term implications of these changes for plant species composition, plant function, and ecosystem processes are difficult to predict. We report on the influence of enhanced snow depth and warmer summer temperature following 20 years of an ITEX experimental manipulation at Toolik Lake, Alaska...
Pregnancy inhibits locomotion, increases predation risk and may translate into reduced survival. The extent to which animals modify behavior in the wild to compensate for the locomotor costs of pregnancy remains poorly understood. We have investigated how reproductive allocation (RA—the proportion of body mass devoted to reproduction) affects locomotor performance and habitat use in Trinidadian guppy...
The usual positive inter-specific relationship between range size and abundance of local populations can have notable exceptions in Afrotropical montane areas, where range-restricted bird species are unusually abundant. We tested how the area occupied locally by passerines and their geographic range size relate to local abundances along a tropical elevational gradient of Mt Cameroon, West-Central...
The evolution of competitive ability plays an important role in plant invasions. While many studies of the evolution of invasive species have compared populations from native and invaded ranges in terms of their performance, little attention has been paid to the evolution of intraspecific competitive ability within the invaded range during range expansion. In addition, whether the proportional change...
The accumulation of ultraviolet (UV)-absorbing compounds (flavonoids and related phenylpropanoids) in the epidermis of higher plants reduces the penetration of solar UV radiation to underlying tissues and is a primary mechanism of acclimation to changing UV conditions resulting from ozone depletion and climate change. Previously we reported that several herbaceous plant species were capable of rapid,...
Fog water inputs can offset seasonal drought in the Mediterranean climate of coastal California and may be critical to the persistence of many endemic plant species. The ability to predict plant species response to potential changes in the fog regime hinges on understanding the ways that fog can impact plant physiological function across life stages. Our study uses a direct metric of water status,...
Plant–animal mutualisms, such as seed dispersal, are often vulnerable to disruption by invasive species. Here, we show for the first time how a non-ant invasive species negatively affects seed dispersal by ants. We examined the effects of several animal species that co-occur in a temperate deciduous forest—including native and invasive seed-dispersing ants (Aphaenogaster rudis and Myrmica rubra, respectively),...
Winter is accompanied by multiple stressors, and the interactions between cold and pathogen stress potentially determine the overwintering success of insects. Thus, it is necessary to explore the thermal performance of the insect immune system. We cold-acclimated spring field crickets, Gryllus veletis, to 6 °C for 7 days and measured the thermal performance of potential (lysozyme and phenoloxidase...
Despite concerns about climate change effects on ecosystems functioning, little is known on how plant assimilate partitioning changes with temperature. Particularly, large temperature effects might occur in cold ecosystems where critical processes are at their temperature limit. In this study, we tested temperature effects on carbon (C) assimilate partitioning in a field experiment at the alpine treeline...
Evolutionary dietary shifts have major ecological consequences. One likely consequence is a change in nutrient limitation—some nutrients become more abundant in the diet, others become more scarce. Individuals’ behavior should change accordingly to match this new limitation regime: they should seek out nutrients that are deficient in the new diet. We investigated the relationship between diet and...
Disturbance releases space and allows the growth of opportunistic species, excluded by the old stands, with a potential to alter community dynamics. In coral reefs, abundances of fast-growing, and disturbance-tolerant sponges are expected to increase and dominate as space becomes available following acute coral mortality events. Yet, an increase in abundance of these opportunistic species has been...
Metacommunity approaches are becoming popular when analyzing factors driving species distribution at the regional scale. However, until the popularization of the variation partitioning technique it was difficult to assess the main drivers of the observed patterns (spatial or environmental). Here we propose a new framework linking the emergence of different metacommunity structures (e.g., nested, Gleasonian,...
Quantifying the variation in plant–water relations and photosynthesis over environmental gradients and during unique events can provide a better understanding of vegetation patterns in a future climate. We evaluated the hypotheses that photosynthesis and plant water potential would correspond to gradients in precipitation and soil moisture during a lengthy drought, and that experimental water additions...
Intraguild (IG) predation and interspecific competition may affect the settlement and success of species in their habitats. Using data on forest-dwelling hawks from Finland, we addressed the impact of an IG predator, the northern goshawk Accipiter gentilis (goshawk), on the breeding of an IG prey, the common buzzard Buteo buteo. We hypothesized that the subordinate common buzzard avoids breeding in...
The invasion success of exotic plant species is often dependent on resource availability. Aspects of climate change such as rising atmospheric CO2 concentration and extreme climatic events will directly and indirectly alter resource availability in ecological communities. Understanding how these climate change-associated changes in resource availability will interact with one another to influence...
A multitude of studies confirm that species have changed their distribution ranges towards higher elevations and towards the poles, as has been predicted by climate change forecasts. However, there is large interspecific variation in the velocity of range shifts. From a conservation perspective, it is important to understand which factors explain variation in the speed and the extent of range shifts,...
Seedling recruitment is a critical driver of population dynamics and community assembly, yet we know little about functional traits that define different recruitment strategies. For the first time, we examined whether trait relatedness across germination and seedling stages allows the identification of general recruitment strategies which share core functional attributes and also correspond to recruitment...
Herbivore distribution can impact community structure and ecosystem function. On coral reefs, herbivores are thought to play an important role in promoting coral dominance, but how they are distributed relative to algae is not well known. Here, we evaluated whether the distribution, behavior, and condition of herbivorous fishes correlated with algal resource availability at six sites in the back reef...
Time lags in responses of organisms to deteriorating environmental conditions delay population declines and extinctions. We examined how local processes at the population level contribute to extinction debt, and how cycles of habitat deterioration and recovery may delay extinction. We carried out a demographic analysis of the fate of the grassland perennial Primula veris after the cessation of grassland...
Protection provided by shelter is important for survival and affects the time and energy budgets of animals. It has been suggested that in fresh waters at high latitudes and altitudes, surface ice during winter functions as overhead cover for fish, reducing the predation risk from terrestrial piscivores. We simulated ice cover by suspending plastic sheeting over five 30-m-long stream sections in a...
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