403 papers
This data paper provides an overview of the methods, file structure, and relational data organization for the Portal Project, a long-term ecological study of rodents, plants, and ants in the Chihuahuan desert of southeastern Arizona, with all data and protocols archived on Zenodo.
This semi-field study on *Aedes albopictus* in Georgia demonstrates that accurately predicting mosquito population dynamics and fitness requires models that account for the complex interactions between larval density and natural microclimate variations (temperature and humidity), rather than relying on isolated factors or constant laboratory conditions.
This study demonstrates that the climate vulnerability of the alpine-obligate Gray crowned Rosy Finch is shaped by a three-timescale co-limitation framework involving static nesting cliffs, dynamic annual snowpack, and directional woody encroachment, which together drive significant population density fluctuations despite stable detection rates.
Using drone-based imagery within Antarctic Specially Protected Area 133, this study reveals a severe 57% decline in the Chinstrap Penguin population at Harmony Point alongside stable Gentoo Penguin numbers, a newly discovered large Gentoo colony, and an 84% increase in Antarctic Shags, providing critical baseline data on the impacts of environmental change in the region.
WildAlert is a scalable, AI-driven early warning system that integrates natural language processing and anomaly detection on real-time wildlife rehabilitation data to proactively identify diverse ecological and health threats, such as zoonotic diseases and environmental hazards, often before they are confirmed by traditional surveillance methods.
This study reveals that while the coral *Acropora* cf. *tenuis* exhibits genetic patterns indicative of long-distance dispersal, its symbiotic *Cladocopium* algae display distinct, fine-scale genetic structuring driven by latitude and depth, suggesting that environmental acquisition of locally adapted symbionts may benefit the host.
This study reveals that vertical stratification of caterpillar communities in oak canopies is inconsistent across years and driven more by inter-annual and tree-level variation than by canopy height or phenology, highlighting the need to combine targeted canopy sampling with ground-based proxies for effective monitoring.
This paper proposes a new framework for microbial ecology by integrating genotype-to-phenotype maps into classical models, revealing that ecological interactions between genes drive "metagenomic hitchhiking" and enable the stable coexistence of multiple strains within complex communities.
A seven-year study on the Tibetan Plateau demonstrates that nitrogen fertilization-induced soil acidification exerts a stronger negative impact on alpine grassland bacterial diversity than plant species loss, primarily by suppressing oligotrophic taxa and stimulating copiotrophic ones.
This study demonstrates that while marine phytoplankton community dynamics can be accurately predicted from population-level demographic parameters measured in simpler experimental settings, these parameters cannot be further reduced to predictions based on organismal traits like cell size, indicating that ecological predictability emerges at the population level where interactions reshape organismal performance.
This paper employs a consumer/resource model to demonstrate that while current human-biosphere dynamics remain stable, unchecked technological modulation of consumption rates relative to carrying capacity is driving the system toward a trajectory of inevitable biosphere depletion and potential population collapse, necessitating a fundamental shift in the relationship between technology, growth, and resource use.
A four-week mesocosm experiment on the River Elbe plankton revealed that while warming had subtle effects, strong internal trophic dynamics and artificial setup conditions were the primary drivers of community changes, with biotic interactions and oxygen levels outweighing temperature as key determinants of ecosystem functioning.
This study demonstrates that the spatial breeding dispersion of northern lapwings is not driven by passive habitat filtering but is a highly plastic, context-dependent strategy where individuals dynamically switch between aggregation for communal defense and dispersion to avoid competition or detection, a flexibility modulated by predation risk and climate-induced habitat bottlenecks that critically influences population persistence.
By utilizing leaf-derived environmental DNA and the NIClassify tool to overcome taxonomic limitations, this study reveals that arthropod communities on Oahu are primarily structured by spatial location and elevation, with introduced taxa declining at higher elevations, while plant species effects remain context-dependent.
This study demonstrates that high-throughput DNA metabarcoding using the Qiagen Blood and Tissue Kit provides a cost-effective and efficient alternative to traditional morphological methods for assessing leaf-litter invertebrate biodiversity, successfully revealing significant community differences between forest and field habitats driven by temperature.
This study demonstrates that exposure to herbivore-induced plant volatiles in cotton plants triggers a dual defense strategy where jasmonic acid levels rise immediately to prime the plants, enabling a rapid and robust accumulation of toxic terpenoids and volatile sesquiterpenes upon subsequent herbivore attack regardless of the insect species.
The Egyptian fruit bat population on Cyprus declined by approximately 85% between 2005 and 2022, a collapse primarily driven by the combined effects of human-induced roost disturbance and reduced food availability linked to climate change.
This paper proposes a standardized protocol for assessing the thermal load sensitivity of photosystem II by integrating temperature intensity and exposure duration, demonstrating how factors like light and recovery time significantly influence tolerance estimates and advocating for a dose-dependent approach over traditional single-moment measurements.
By integrating metagenomics and metatranscriptomics in Lake Cadagno sediments, this study reveals that the active Bacteroidota clade VadinHA17 drives complex organic matter degradation into methanogenic substrates, a process further enhanced by extrachromosomal elements (viruses and plasmids) that encode additional carbohydrate-degrading enzymes.
In a subtropical forest study, experimentally manipulated variables revealed that increased moisture in lying deadwood, rather than ant activity or forest habitat characteristics, is the primary factor reducing the diversity and abundance of cavity-nesting bees, wasps, and their parasitoids compared to standing deadwood.