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Plant post‐drought recovery performance is essential to predict shifts in ecosystem dynamics and production during frequent climate change‐driven drought events. Yet, it is not clear how post‐drought recovery is related to evolutionary and geographic variations in plants. In this study, we generated a global data set of post‐drought recovery performance in 140 plant species from published studies...
A central issue in plant evolutionary ecology is to understand how several coordinated suites of traits (i.e. traits syndrome) may be jointly selected within a single species. This study aims to describe patterns of variation and co‐variation of functional traits in a water‐stressed tree population and test their relationships with performance traits.
Within a Mediterranean population of Fagus sylvatica...
The mineral and biochemical food quality of prey may limit predator production. This well‐studied direct bottom–up effect is especially prominent for herbivore–plant interactions. Low‐quality prey species, particularly when defended, are generally considered to be less prone to predator‐driven extinction. Undefended high‐quality prey species sustain high predator production thereby potentially increasing...
Acoustic signaling is a form of information transmission that in many animal species may be behaviorally learnt and transmitted between individuals, creating flows of cultural traits (i.e. memes) across the landscape. The biogeography of memetic traits can have major implications for avian population evolution, ecology and conservation. We characterize the α (i.e. within population), β (i.e. among...
Nutritional ecology forms the interface between environmental variability and large herbivore behaviour, life history characteristics, and population dynamics. Forage conditions in arid and semi‐arid regions are driven by unpredictable spatial and temporal patterns in rainfall. Diet selection by herbivores should be directed towards overcoming the most pressing nutritional limitation (i.e. energy,...
The competitive exclusion principle is one of the most influential concepts in ecology. The classical formulation suggests a correlation between competitor species similarity and competition severity, leading to rapid competitive exclusion where species are very similar; yet neutral models show that identical species can persist in competition for long periods. Here, we resolve the conflict by examining...
Wildfires play an important role in vegetation composition and structure, nutrient fluxes, human health and wealth, and are interlinked with climate change. Plants have an influence on wildfire behaviour and predicting this feedback is a high research priority. For upscaling from leaf traits to wildfire behaviour we need to know if the same leaf traits are important for the flammability of 1) individual...
Understanding the ability of plants to spread is important for assessing conservation strategies, landscape dynamics, invasiveness and ability to cope with climate change. While long‐distance seed dispersal is often viewed as a key process in population spread, the importance of inter‐specific variation in demography is less explored. Indeed, the relative importance of demography vs seed dispersal...
Despite the growing evidence for individual variation in trophic niche within populations, its potential indirect effects on ecosystem processes remains poorly understood. In particular, few studies have investigated how intraspecific trophic variability can modulate the effects of consumers on ecosystems through potential changes in nutrient excretion rates. Here, we first quantified the level of...
Plants are shifting their ranges towards higher elevations in response to global warming, yet such shifts are occurring at a rate slower than is needed to keep pace with a rapidly changing climate. There is, however, an almost complete lack of knowledge on seed dispersal across altitude, a key process to understand what constrains climate‐driven range shifts. Here, we report the first direct empirical...
Ecologists traditionally use environmental parameters to predict successional shifts in compositional characteristics of local species assemblages (environmental control). Another important focus in ecology is to understand functional roles of species assemblages in determining local environmental properties (diversity control). Then, the question emerges: which is the cause, and which is the consequence?...
The Shannon–Wiener index is a popular nonparametric metric widely used in ecological research as a measure of species diversity. We used the Web of Science database to examine cases where papers published from 1990 to 2015 mislabelled this index. We provide detailed insights into causes potentially affecting use of the wrong name ‘Weaver’ instead of the correct ‘Wiener’. Basic science serves as a...
Although the number of studies discerning the impact of climate change on ecological systems continues to increase, there has been relatively little sharing of the lessons learnt when accumulating this evidence. At a recent workshop entitled ‘Using climate data in ecological research’ held at the UK Met Office, ecologists and climate scientists came together to discuss the robust analysis of climate...
While community‐weighted means of plant traits have been linked to mean environmental conditions at large scales, the drivers of trait variation within communities are not well understood. Local environmental heterogeneity (such as microclimate variability), in addition to mean environmental conditions, may decrease the strength of environmental filtering and explain why communities support different...
Global warming has begun to have a major impact on the species composition and functioning of plant and soil communities. However, long‐term community and ecosystem responses to increased temperature are still poorly understood. In this study, we used a well‐established elevational gradient in northern Sweden to elucidate how plant, microbial and nematode communities shift with elevation and associated...
Alpine treelines are expected to move upslope with a warming climate. However, so far treelines have responded inconsistently and future shifts remain difficult to predict since many factors unrelated to temperature, such as biotic interactions, affect responses at the local scale. Especially during the earliest regeneration stages, trees can be strongly influenced by alpine vegetation via both competition...
Trace metals are chemical pollutants of prime concern nowadays given their implication in several human diseases and their noxious effects on wildlife. Previous studies demonstrated their negative (e.g. lead, cadmium) or positive (e.g. zinc) effects on body condition, immunity and reproductive success in birds. Because of their effects on bird condition, trace metals are likely to influence the production...
Recent studies suggest the necessity of understanding the interactive effects of predation and productivity on species coexistence and prey diversity. Models predict that coexistence of prey species with different competitive abilities can be achieved if inferior resource competitors are less susceptible to predation and if productivity and/or predation pressure are at intermediate levels. Hence,...
Spatial and temporal heterogeneity within landscapes influences the distribution and phenotypic diversity of individuals both within and across populations. Phenotype–habitat correlations arise either through phenotypes within an environment altering through the process of natural selection or plasticity, or phenotypes remaining constant but individuals altering their distribution across environments...
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