Kirsten A. Nelson, Scott F. Collins, Greg G. Sass and David H. Wahl Biological invasions are an important cause of environmental change across the globe. Ecologists have long recognized that native and invasive species can greatly affect the structure of food webs. In some cases, one species can alter the food web in ways…
Category: community ecology
REVIEW: Seed predation & plant community theory
Loralee Larios, Dean E. Pearson and John L. Maron Community ecologists seek to understand the relative strength of local processes in determining the identity and number of species that establish in any given location. Increasingly, plant ecologists have focused on plant traits and how these may determine which species can live together and which species…
Are isotopes representing reliably the structure of food webs?
Franck Jabot, Carolina Giraldo, Sébastien Lefebvre and Stanislas Dubois Most atoms can be found in nature in various forms that are called isotopes. Primary producers (plants, algae, bacteria…) often have different isotopic compositions, notably in carbon isotopes, so that the isotopic composition of their consumers will reflect the food items it has consumed. But the…
The relative importance of CSR strategies and integrative traits in explaining species dominance at local scales
Bruno H. P. Rosado & Eduardo A. de Mattos One of the main focuses in ecology is identifying ecological strategies that describe how species cope with different environments. Most of these identifications have been based on functional traits (morphological, physiological and phenological traits related to fitness). Recently, an important and timely tool named “StrateFy” has…
Biological invasion modifies the coexistence patterns of aquatic insects along a stress gradient
José Antonio Carbonell, Josefa Velasco, Andrés Millán, Andy J. Green, Cristina Coccia, Simone Guareschi and Cayetano Gutiérrez-Cánovas Biological invasions are one of the most important causes of biodiversity loss and ecosystem change worldwide, and especially affect aquatic habitats. However, it is still unclear how biological invasions may interact with local abiotic stressors, which are expected…
The triangular seed mass-leaf area relationship holds for annual plants and is determined by habitat productivity
Bianca A Santini, John G Hodgson, Ken Thompson, Peter J Wilson, Stuart R Band, Glynis Jones, Mike Charles, Amy Bogaard, Carol Palmer & Mark Rees The relationships between plant traits tells us about the amount of resources species invest on a given trait. For example, thicker leaves are long-lived, but their construction is expensive for…
Do different beetle trophic groups recover after logging the same way?
Nicholas M. Fountain-Jones, Gregory J. Jordan, Christopher Burridge, Timothy J. Wardlaw, Thomas P. Baker, Lynette Forster, Morgana Petersfield and Susan C. Baker Beetles are not only the most species rich group of animals, but are also very diverse in function, ranging from predators and parasites to herbivores and decomposers breaking down plant material. In forest…
How come similar lizards coexist? Towards a functional understanding of species coexistence
Anamarija Žagar, Miguel A. Carretero, Al Vrezec, Katarina Drašler, Antigoni Kaliontzopoulou We examined how is it possible that two lizard species that are at first sight remarkably similar in their outer appearance can coexist and live together in the same geographical area. Usually, morphologically and ecologically similar species in areas of geographical overlap (sympatry) come…
