Chasing the Niche: Escaping Climate Change Threats in Place, Time, and Space.

Climate change is creating mismatches between species' current environments and their historical niches. Locations that once had the abiotic and biotic conditions to support the persistence of a species may now be too warm, too dry, or simply too different, to meet their niche requirements. Changes in behaviors, altered phenology, and range shifts are common responses to climate change.

Modeling the risk of aquatic species invasion spread through boater movements and river connections.

Aquatic invasive species (AIS) are one of the greatest threats to the functioning of aquatic ecosystems worldwide. Once an invasive species has been introduced to a new region, many governments develop management strategies to reduce further spread. Nevertheless, managing AIS in a new region is challenging because of the vast areas that need protection and limited resources.

Species loss due to nutrient addition increases with spatial scale in global grasslands.

The effects of altered nutrient supplies and herbivore density on species diversity vary with spatial scale, because coexistence mechanisms are scale dependent. This scale dependence may alter the shape of the species-area relationship (SAR), which can be described by changes in species richness (S) as a power function of the sample area (A): S = cA , where c and z are constants. We analysed the effects of experimental manipulations of nutrient supply and herbivore density on species richness across a range of scales (0.

The relationship between native species richness and exotic species richness or occurrence will always be negative when the total number of species is accounted for in statistical models: A response to Beaury et al.

Beaury et al. (2020) attempt to address the scale dependence of evidence for biotic resistance by including environmental covariates that can account for total species richness. However, this approach will incorrectly estimate relationships, driven by the accuracy of the covariates rather than the true relationship between native and exotic species.

Trait plasticity alters the range of possible coexistence conditions in a competition-colonisation trade-off.

Most of the classical theory on species coexistence has been based on species-level competitive trade-offs. However, it is becoming apparent that plant species display high levels of trait plasticity. The implications of this plasticity are almost completely unknown for most coexistence theory.

Integrating the underlying structure of stochasticity into community ecology.

Stochasticity is a core component of ecology, as it underlies key processes that structure and create variability in nature. Despite its fundamental importance in ecological systems, the concept is often treated as synonymous with unpredictability in community ecology, and studies tend to focus on single forms of stochasticity rather than taking a more holistic view. This has led to multiple narratives for how stochasticity mediates community dynamics.

Rapid recovery of a coral dominated Eastern Tropical Pacific reef after experimentally produced anthropogenic disturbance.

Local anthropogenic stressors such as overfishing, nutrient enrichment and increased sediment loading have been shown to push coral reefs toward greater dominance by algae. In a few cases this shift has been temporary, with the ability to recover to a healthy coral-dominated community after disturbance, suggesting some systems have considerable resilience. However, an understanding of the circumstances under which reefs may recover is only beginning to emerge.

Invasion complexity at large spatial scales is an emergent property of interactions among landscape characteristics and invader traits.

Invasion potential should be part of the evaluation of candidate species for any species introduction. However, estimating invasion risks remains a challenging problem, particularly in complex landscapes. Certain plant traits are generally considered to increase invasive potential and there is an understanding that landscapes influence invasions dynamics, but little research has been done to explore how those drivers of invasions interact.

Lack of Impacts during Early Establishment Highlights a Short-Term Management Window for Minimizing Invasions from Perennial Biomass Crops.

Managing intentional species introductions requires evaluating potential ecological risks. However, it is difficult to weigh costs and benefits when data about interactions between novel species and the communities they are introduced to are scarce. In anticipation of expanded cultivation of perennial biomass crops, we experimentally introduced and × (two non-native candidate biomass crops) into two different non-crop habitats (old field and flood-plain forest) to evaluate their establishment success and impact on ambient local communities.