Global decline of apex scavengers threatens human health.

Vertebrate scavengers play a critical role in ecosystem functioning worldwide. Through the cascading effects of their ecological role, scavengers can also alleviate the burden of zoonotic diseases on people. This importance to human health fuels a growing need to understand how vertebrate scavengers and their ecosystem services are faring globally in the Anthropocene.

Brazil on fire: Igniting awareness of the 2024 wildfire crisis.

In 2024, South America faced an unprecedented wildfire crisis, with Brazil among the hardest-hit countries. Home to globally significant biomes like the Amazon, Pantanal, Cerrado, and Atlantic Forest, Brazil's ecosystems are undergoing massive destruction. Despite the severity of the 2024 wildfires-surpassing even the internationally scrutinized 2020 wildfires-the current disaster remains underreported internationally.

Elevating local perspectives for equity in ecological research.

High-profile studies conducted in Global South (GS) countries with few, or no GS authors are published frequently, underrepresenting GS researchers in local high-impact publications. Here, we reiterate the importance of conducting equitable research, valuing GS researchers as equal contributors, and propose pathways to decolonize science.

Determinants of vector-borne avian pathogen occurrence in a mosaic of habitat fragmentation in California.

Background: As habitat fragmentation increases, ecological processes, including patterns of vector-borne pathogen prevalence, will likely be disrupted, but ongoing investigations are necessary to examine this relationship. Here, we report the differences in the prevalence of Lyme disease (Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, s.l.

Association between anthropization and rodent reservoirs of zoonotic pathogens in Northwestern Mexico.

The world is facing a major pulse of ecological and social changes that may favor the risk of zoonotic outbreaks. Such risk facilitation may occur through the modification of the host's community diversity and structure, leading to an increase in pathogen reservoirs and the contact rate between these reservoirs and humans. Here, we examined whether anthropization alters the relative abundance and richness of zoonotic reservoir and non-reservoir rodents in three Socio-Ecological Systems.

Underlying and proximate drivers of biodiversity changes in Mesoamerican biosphere reserves.

Protected areas are of paramount relevance to conserving wildlife and ecosystem contributions to people. Yet, their conservation success is increasingly threatened by human activities including habitat loss, climate change, pollution, and species overexploitation. Thus, understanding the underlying and proximate drivers of anthropogenic threats is urgently needed to improve protected areas' effectiveness, especially in the biodiversity-rich tropics.

On the move: spatial ecology and habitat use of red fox in the Trans-Himalayan cold desert.

Red fox () is the most widespread wild carnivore globally, occupying diverse habitats. The species is known for its adaptability to survive in dynamic anthropogenic landscapes. Despite being one of the most extensively studied carnivores, there is a dearth of information on red fox from the Trans-Himalayan region.

Broad-scale climate variation drives the dynamics of animal populations: a global multi-taxa analysis.

Climate is a major extrinsic factor affecting the population dynamics of many organisms. The Broad-Scale Climate Hypothesis (BSCH) was proposed by Elton to explain the large-scale synchronous population cycles of animals, but the extent of support and whether it differs among taxa and geographical regions is unclear. We reviewed publications examining the relationship between the population dynamics of multiple taxa worldwide and the two most commonly used broad-scale climate indices, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).

Circling the drain: the extinction crisis and the future of humanity.

Humanity has triggered the sixth mass extinction episode since the beginning of the Phanerozoic. The complexity of this extinction crisis is centred on the intersection of two complex adaptive systems: human culture and ecosystem functioning, although the significance of this intersection is not properly appreciated. Human beings are part of biodiversity and elements in a global ecosystem.

Human-mediated impacts on biodiversity and the consequences for zoonotic disease spillover.

Human-mediated changes to natural ecosystems have consequences for both ecosystem and human health. Historically, efforts to preserve or restore 'biodiversity' can seem to be in opposition to human interests. However, the integration of biodiversity conservation and public health has gained significant traction in recent years, and new efforts to identify solutions that benefit both environmental and human health are ongoing.

Phenotypic plasticity in plant defense across life stages: Inducibility, transgenerational induction, and transgenerational priming in wild radish.

As they develop, many plants deploy shifts in antiherbivore defense allocation due to changing costs and benefits of their defensive traits. Plant defenses are known to be primed or directly induced by herbivore damage within generations and across generations by long-lasting epigenetic mechanisms. However, little is known about the differences between life stages of epigenetically inducible defensive traits across generations.

Transgenerational Plasticity in Flower Color Induced by Caterpillars.

Variation in flower color due to transgenerational plasticity could stem directly from abiotic or biotic environmental conditions. Finding a link between biotic ecological interactions across generations and plasticity in flower color would indicate that transgenerational effects of ecological interactions, such as herbivory, might be involved in flower color evolution. We conducted controlled experiments across four generations of wild radish (, Brassicaceae) plants to explore whether flower color is influenced by herbivory, and to determine whether flower color is associated with transgenerational chromatin modifications.

Distinct responses of antagonistic and mutualistic networks to agricultural intensification.

Species interaction networks, which govern the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem processes within ecological communities, are being rapidly altered by anthropogenic activities worldwide. Studies on the response of species interaction networks to anthropogenic disturbance have almost exclusively focused on one interaction type at a time, such as mutualistic or antagonistic interactions, making it challenging to decipher how networks of different interaction types respond to the same anthropogenic disturbance. Moreover, few studies have simultaneously focused on the two main components of network structure: network topology (i.

Agricultural intensification drives changes in hybrid network robustness by modifying network structure.

Within ecological communities, species engage in myriad interaction types, yet empirical examples of hybrid species interaction networks composed of multiple types of interactions are still scarce. A key knowledge gap is understanding how the structure and stability of such hybrid networks are affected by anthropogenic disturbance. Using 15,169 interaction observations, we constructed 16 hybrid herbivore-plant-pollinator networks along an agricultural intensification gradient to explore changes in network structure and robustness to local extinctions.

An island of wildlife in a human-dominated landscape: The last fragment of primary forest on the Osa Peninsula's Golfo Dulce coastline, Costa Rica.

Habitat loss and fragmentation, together with related edge effects, are the primary cause of global biodiversity decline. Despite a large amount of research quantifying and demonstrating the degree of these effects, particularly in top predators and their prey, most fragmented patches are lost before their conservation value is recognized. This study evaluates terrestrial vertebrates in Playa Sandalo, in the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, which represents the last patch of "primary" forest in the most developed part of this region.

Invasive rat eradication strongly impacts plant recruitment on a tropical atoll.

Rat eradication has become a common conservation intervention in island ecosystems and its effectiveness in protecting native vertebrates is increasingly well documented. Yet, the impacts of rat eradication on plant communities remain poorly understood. Here we compare native and non-native tree and palm seedling abundance before and after eradication of invasive rats (Rattus rattus) from Palmyra Atoll, Line Islands, Central Pacific Ocean.

Assessing sustainability in North America's ecosystems using criticality and information theory.

Sustainability is a key concept in economic and policy debates. Nevertheless, it is usually treated only in a qualitative way and has eluded quantitative analysis. Here, we propose a sustainability index based on the premise that sustainable systems do not lose or gain Fisher Information over time.

Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines.

The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth's sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction (indicative of population shrinkage and/or population extinctions according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature) using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species.

Species traits and interaction rules shape a species-rich seed-dispersal interaction network.

Species phenotypic traits affect the interaction patterns and the organization of seed-dispersal interaction networks. Understanding the relationship between species characteristics and network structure help us understand the assembly of natural communities and how communities function. Here, we examine how species traits may affect the rules leading to patterns of interaction among plants and fruit-eating vertebrates.

Interacting effects of land use and climate on rodent-borne pathogens in central Kenya.

Understanding the effects of anthropogenic disturbance on zoonotic disease risk is both a critical conservation objective and a public health priority. Here, we evaluate the effects of multiple forms of anthropogenic disturbance across a precipitation gradient on the abundance of pathogen-infected small mammal hosts in a multi-host, multi-pathogen system in central Kenya. Our results suggest that conversion to cropland and wildlife loss alone drive systematic increases in rodent-borne pathogen prevalence, but that pastoral conversion has no such systematic effects.