Featured
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| Open AccessMultispecies deep learning using citizen science data produces more informative plant community models
By modelling the distribution of the entire Swiss flora using deep learning and citizen science data, this study demonstrates a method that predicts flowering phenology and potentially dominant tree species more accurately than commonly used approaches. This approach could enable investigation of understudied aspects of ecology and refine our understanding of plant distributions.
- Philipp Brun
- , Dirk N. Karger
- & Niklaus E. Zimmermann
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Article
| Open AccessTemperature alters the predator-prey size relationships and size-selectivity of Southern Ocean fish
Using prey size measurements from ten Southern Ocean lanternfish species sampled across >10° of latitude, this study shows that higher temperatures were associated with smaller fish and an overall decrease in the size of fish relative to their prey. Ocean warming may therefore alter the diversity and size structuring of trophic interactions, reducing the stability of marine ecosystems.
- Patrick Eskuche-Keith
- , Simeon L. Hill
- & Eoin J. O’Gorman
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Matters Arising
| Open AccessReply to: Reassessing data quality underlying the recently updated floristic map of the world
- Yunpeng Liu
- , Xiaoting Xu
- & Zhiheng Wang
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal latitudinal gradients and the evolution of body size in dinosaurs and mammals
Bergmann’s Rule predicts larger body sizes in colder climates. Here, the authors examine extinct and extant dinosaurs (birds) and mammaliaforms, finding no evidence of body size variation with latitude in any group, but a small variation with temperature in extant birds.
- Lauren N. Wilson
- , Jacob D. Gardner
- & Chris L. Organ
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Article
| Open AccessDeep biogeographic barriers explain divergent global vertebrate communities
The effect of biogeographic isolation on biodiversity remains unclear. Assessing global mammal and bird assemblages, the authors show that long-term biogeographic barriers explain reduced species richness and divergent ecological function, while environment determines diversity in most of the world.
- Peter J. Williams
- , Elise F. Zipkin
- & Jedediah F. Brodie
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| Open AccessWarming underpins community turnover in temperate freshwater and terrestrial communities
Predicting species responses to climate change may be complicated by the influence of other factors. Here, the authors report that warming is linked to terrestrial and freshwater community shifts towards warm-adapted species overall, but body size, thermal niche breadth, species richness and baseline temperature modulate the trends.
- Imran Khaliq
- , Christian Rixen
- & Anita Narwani
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal conservation status of the jawed vertebrate Tree of Life
Extinction threatens to erode the Tree of Life. Here, the authors calculate extinction risk for jawed vertebrates, predicting a loss of 86–150 billion years (11–19%) of evolutionary history through the next 50–500 years and indicating that cartilaginous fish, ray-finned fish, and turtles are most at risk from a phylogenetic perspective.
- Rikki Gumbs
- , Oenone Scott
- & James Rosindell
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal freshwater fish invasion linked to the presence of closely related species
Whether non-native species are more or less likely to become established in communities that host close relatives is debated. This global study shows that non-native fish species phylogenetically close to native species are more likely to establish in freshwater ecosystems.
- Meng Xu
- , Shao-peng Li
- & Xidong Mu
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Article
| Open AccessRisk of introduction and establishment of alien vertebrate species in transboundary neighboring areas
Controlling and preventing biological invasions requires transnational cooperation. This global study identifies land borders at higher risk of non-native vertebrate invasion and identifies human and environmental factors that predict risk hotspots.
- Qing Zhang
- , Yanping Wang
- & Xuan Liu
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Article
| Open AccessMore than 17,000 tree species are at risk from rapid global change
Tree species may be vulnerable to multiple global change factors. Here, the authors find that more than 17 thousand tree species are exposed to increasing anthropogenic threats, including many species classified as data-deficient in the IUCN Red List.
- Coline C. F. Boonman
- , Josep M. Serra-Diaz
- & Jens-Christian Svenning
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Article
| Open AccessUndiscovered bird extinctions obscure the true magnitude of human-driven extinction waves
The true number of human-driven bird extinctions is likely larger than we think. Here, the authors combine recorded extinctions with estimates from the fossil record to suggest that ~1400 bird species have gone extinct since the Late Pleistocene.
- Rob Cooke
- , Ferran Sayol
- & Søren Faurby
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Article
| Open AccessThe global importance and interplay of colour-based protective and thermoregulatory functions in frogs
Anurans—frogs and toads—are a diverse group with a remarkable variety of colours. Here, the authors report a global analysis of colour variation in anurans, finding evidence that colour lightness is important for thermoregulation, protection from UVB radiation and resistance to pathogens.
- Ricarda Laumeier
- , Martin Brändle
- & Stefan Pinkert
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Article
| Open AccessGrassland intensification effects cascade to alter multifunctionality of wetlands within metaecosystems
It is not clear how agricultural intensification affects spatially coupled ecosystems. Here, the authors use long-term datasets on managed grasslands coupled with unmanaged wetlands showing that grassland intensification affects ecosystem service multifunctionality of spatially coupled wetlands
- Yuxi Guo
- , Elizabeth H. Boughton
- & Jiangxiao Qiu
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Article
| Open AccessArtificial light at night is a top predictor of bird migration stopover density
Twice a year, billions of nocturnal avian migrants traverse landscapes that are changing through natural and anthropogenic forces. Here, the authors identify light pollution as an influential predictor of bird migration stopover density across the USA.
- Kyle G. Horton
- , Jeffrey J. Buler
- & Geoffrey M. Henebry
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Article
| Open AccessQuantifying global colonization pressures of alien vertebrates from wildlife trade
This study compiled a comprehensive global database on live terrestrial vertebrate trade and used it to investigate traded alien species. The authors identify 7,780 species involved in trade globally and show that countries with greater trading power, higher incomes and larger human populations import more alien species, which emerge as hotspots for establishment richness of aliens.
- Yiming Li
- , Tim M. Blackburn
- & Siqi Wang
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Article
| Open AccessWorldwide Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene population declines in extant megafauna are associated with Homo sapiens expansion rather than climate change
Extinction of megafauna is a defining trend of the last 50,000 years. Here, the authors use genomic data to infer population histories of 139 extant megafauna, suggesting that their population decline is better explained by Homo sapiens expansion than by climate change.
- Juraj Bergman
- , Rasmus Ø. Pedersen
- & Jens-Christian Svenning
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Article
| Open AccessFunctional diversity of sharks and rays is highly vulnerable and supported by unique species and locations worldwide
Elasmobranchs (sharks, rays and skates) are among the most threatened marine vertebrates, yet their global functional diversity remains largely unknown. This study uses a trait dataset of over 1,000 species to assess elasmobranch functional diversity and compare it against other previously studied biodiversity facets to identify global conservation priorities.
- Catalina Pimiento
- , Camille Albouy
- & Fabien Leprieur
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Article
| Open AccessDiversification of flowering plants in space and time
Global spatiotemporal patterns of plant diversification are unclear. Here, the authors use a genus-level phylogeny and global distribution data for 14,244 flowering plant genera, finding a negative correlation between spatial patterns of diversification and genus diversity.
- Dimitar Dimitrov
- , Xiaoting Xu
- & Zhiheng Wang
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Article
| Open AccessEcophysiological adaptations shape distributions of closely related trees along a climatic moisture gradient
Energetic tradeoffs help determine where individual traits confer a competitive advantage. Here, the authors grow ten Eucalyptus species at four common gardens along a rainfall gradient and show that 50 traits mostly vary as predicted, and that species in their native ranges generally outperform others in height growth.
- Duncan D. Smith
- , Mark A. Adams
- & Thomas J. Givnish
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Article
| Open AccessCandidate genes under selection in song sparrows co-vary with climate and body mass in support of Bergmann’s Rule
Ecogeographic rules link spatial patterns in phenotype and environment, potentially reflecting adaptation. This study identifies nine genes associated with body mass variation in song sparrow populations, supporting Bergmann’s Rule and highlighting the role of natural selection in local adaptation.
- Katherine Carbeck
- , Peter Arcese
- & Jennifer Walsh
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Article
| Open AccessClimate change and land use threaten global hotspots of phylogenetic endemism for trees
Species that are evolutionary distinct and have geographically narrow or isolated distributions may be in particular need of conservation. Here, the authors identify global patterns of tree phylogenetic endemism and their linkages with climate and land use, and estimate future trends.
- Wen-Yong Guo
- , Josep M. Serra-Diaz
- & Jens-Christian Svenning
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Article
| Open AccessLinking climate warming and land conversion to species’ range changes across Great Britain
Climate change and land use change may have independent or interactive effects on species’ distributions. Here, the authors show that changes in bird, lepidopteran and plant ranges across Great Britain are often explained by individual or additive effects of land conversion and temperature change.
- Andrew J. Suggitt
- , Christopher J. Wheatley
- & Alistair G. Auffret
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Article
| Open AccessRelationships of stomatal morphology to the environment across plant communities
The relationship between stomatal traits and environmental drivers across plant communities has important implications for ecosystem fluxes. Here, the authors explore community-scale stomatal trait-environment relationships, which are important for predicting future water and carbon cycles.
- Congcong Liu
- , Lawren Sack
- & Guirui Yu
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Article
| Open AccessA latitudinal gradient in Darwin’s naturalization conundrum at the global scale for flowering plants
Alien species could be either more or less likely to become naturalized where closely related species occur. This study reveals a global latitudinal pattern whereby successfully naturalized alien plants are more closely related to natives at higher latitudes, reinforced by human modification of the environment.
- Shu-ya Fan
- , Qiang Yang
- & Mark van Kleunen
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Article
| Open AccessThe relationship between geographic range size and rates of species diversification
Do species with large ranges diversify faster? While there have been some studies suggesting the opposite pattern, this study indicates that large-ranged mammals indeed diversify faster in general, but that there are important geographic domains deviating from this pattern.
- Jan Smyčka
- , Anna Toszogyova
- & David Storch
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal determinants of insect mitochondrial genetic diversity
This study presents a global map of predicted insect mitochondrial genetic diversity from cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 sequences. From over 2 million mtDNA sequences, they find a negative quadratic latitudinal gradient in genetic diversity evenness, peaking in the subtropics and correlating with hot, stable environments.
- Connor M. French
- , Laura D. Bertola
- & Michael J. Hickerson
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Article
| Open AccessDiversity, distribution and intrinsic extinction vulnerability of exploited marine bivalves
Marine bivalves are important components of ecosystems and are exploited for food across the world. This study expands the list of marine bivalves known to be exploited worldwide and then uses a trait-based approach to identify intrinsically vulnerable species and to pinpoint regions with high levels of extinction-prone exploited species, helping to prioritize areas for conservation effort.
- Shan Huang
- , Stewart M. Edie
- & David Jablonski
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Article
| Open AccessUrbanisation generates multiple trait syndromes for terrestrial animal taxa worldwide
Cities may host surprisingly diverse and functionally distinct biological communities. This global analysis on 5302 vertebrate and invertebrate species finds evidence of 4 trait syndromes in urban animal assemblages, modulated by spatial and geographic factors.
- Amy K. Hahs
- , Bertrand Fournier
- & Marco Moretti
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Article
| Open AccessClade density and the evolution of diversity-dependent diversification
common assumption of evolution is that of an ecological limit to species diversity. This study tests whether sympatry with closely-related species leads to decreasing speciation rates. They find that, for terrestrial vertebrates, the probability of speciation seems to be unaffected by the number of other species of that lineage already present
- Marcio R. Pie
- , Raquel Divieso
- & Fernanda S. Caron
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Article
| Open AccessLocal colonisations and extinctions of European birds are poorly explained by changes in climate suitability
Species’ range shifts projections are usually based on climate and land cover variables. Here, the authors use long-term records for bird species to show that species distribution models accounting for climate and land cover often fail to predict observed range shifts.
- Christine Howard
- , Emma-Liina Marjakangas
- & Stephen G. Willis
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Article
| Open AccessDisruption of trait-environment relationships in African megafauna occurred in the middle Pleistocene
Mammalian megafaunal biodiversity has declined since the Plio-Pleistocene. Here, the authors apply ecometric methods to evaluate the functional link between eastern African herbivorous megafauna and their environments, showing that some biodiversity loss coincided with community ecological function disturbance.
- Daniel A. Lauer
- , A. Michelle Lawing
- & Jenny L. McGuire
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Article
| Open AccessComplementarity in Allen’s and Bergmann’s rules among birds
Birds can adapt to temperature gradients by changing body size (Bergmann’s rule) or bill size (Allen’s rule), but many groups don’t conform to these patterns. Here the authors show that most bird families show subtle and complementary changes in bill and body size, while also being constrained by feeding ecology.
- Justin W. Baldwin
- , Joan Garcia-Porta
- & Carlos A. Botero
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Article
| Open AccessPlant traits poorly predict winner and loser shrub species in a warming tundra biome
Functional trait data could guide predictions of species responses to environmental change. Here, the authors show that winner and loser shrub species in the warming tundra biome overlap in trait space and may therefore be difficult to predict based on commonly measured traits.
- Mariana García Criado
- , Isla H. Myers-Smith
- & Anna-Maria Virkkala
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Article
| Open AccessAn updated floristic map of the world
This study updates the floristic realms of the world by integrating global distributions and mega-phylogenies of 12,664 angiosperm genera. Eight realms and 16 sub-realms are identified, most of which have formed since the Paleogene, and their formation is dominated by geographic isolation induced by plate tectonics rather than current or historical climate.
- Yunpeng Liu
- , Xiaoting Xu
- & Zhiheng Wang
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Article
| Open AccessMechanistic models project bird invasions with accuracy
Forecasts of risks of invasion by non-native species are challenging to obtain. Here, the authors show that mechanistic models based on functional traits related to species’ capacity to generate and retain body heat identify areas at risk of invasion by non-native birds in Europe.
- Diederik Strubbe
- , Laura Jiménez
- & Carsten Rahbek
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Article
| Open AccessThe impact of land use on non-native species incidence and number in local assemblages worldwide
Anthropogenic habitat modification is considered a driver of non-native species establishment. Here, the authors quantify the occurrence of non-native species in local assemblages of vascular plants, ants, spiders, birds and mammals, finding generally greater presence and frequency under disturbed land-use types.
- Daijun Liu
- , Philipp Semenchuk
- & Stefan Dullinger
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Article
| Open AccessAnthropogenic impacts on threatened species erode functional diversity in chelonians and crocodilians
Many species of reptiles are threatened with extinction. This analysis on 259 species of turtles, tortoises and crocodilians identifies anthropogenic threats that disproportionally affect species with certain life history strategies and others that affect all species similarly.
- R. C. Rodríguez-Caro
- , E. Graciá
- & R. Salguero-Gómez
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Article
| Open AccessRegional occupancy increases for widespread species but decreases for narrowly distributed species in metacommunity time series
Whether a species declines under the current biodiversity crisis could partly depend on its range size. Here, the authors use replicated metacommunity data to identify global patterns in the relationship between species’ range size and changes in occupancy through time.
- Wu-Bing Xu
- , Shane A. Blowes
- & Jonathan M. Chase
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Article
| Open AccessAllometry reveals trade-offs between Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules, and different avian adaptive strategies for thermoregulation
Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules are speculated to describe alternative strategies of thermal adaptation. Here, Frӧhlich et al. explore global variation across avian species to show that the way in which relative length of beaks and tarsi co-vary with ambient temperature depends on body mass and vice versa.
- Arkadiusz Frӧhlich
- , Dorota Kotowska
- & Matthew R. E. Symonds
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Article
| Open AccessA density functional theory for ecology across scales
Modelling diverse ecological phenomena across scales with a single mathematical framework is challenging. Here, the authors draw on density functional theory to develop a framework that bridges between mechanistic theories at fine scales and statistical models at large scales.
- Martin-I. Trappe
- & Ryan A. Chisholm
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Article
| Open AccessA latitudinal gradient of deep-sea invasions for marine fishes
This study finds that high-latitude fish clades with the fastest speciation rates also exhibit elevated rates of depth evolution, creating a prevailing latitudinal gradient of deep-sea invasions concentrated in poleward regions. These results advance our understanding of how niche lability and climate shape global patterns of species distributions.
- Sarah T. Friedman
- & Martha M. Muñoz
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Article
| Open AccessGlobally invariant metabolism but density-diversity mismatch in springtails
Springtails are omnipresent soil arthropods, vital for ecosystems. In the first global assessment of springtails, this study shows a 20-fold biomass difference between the tundra and the tropics, with distinct temperature-related patterns for diversity and metabolism that suggest climate change may restructure the functioning of soil biodiversity.
- Anton M. Potapov
- , Carlos A. Guerra
- & Stefan Scheu
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Article
| Open AccessHuman activities favour prolific life histories in both traded and introduced vertebrates
Predicting which species will become invasive is vital because the harm they cause cannot always be mitigated once populations establish. Street et al. show that traded and introduced species have distinctive life histories with high invasion potential, helping to identify future invasion risks.
- Sally E. Street
- , Jorge S. Gutiérrez
- & Isabella Capellini
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Article
| Open AccessClimate warming has compounded plant responses to habitat conversion in northern Europe
Land use change has been the dominant anthropogenic driver of plant distribution change, but climate change has also become a major factor. This analysis of long-term data shows that warming likely reinforced the impact of grassland abandonment on plant species distribution change in Sweden.
- Alistair G. Auffret
- & Jens-Christian Svenning
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Article
| Open AccessPopulation fluctuations and synanthropy explain transmission risk in rodent-borne zoonoses
Many rodent species are known as hosts of zoonotic pathogens, but the ecological conditions that trigger spillover are not well-understood. Here, the authors show that population fluctuations and association with human-dominated habitats explain the zoonotic reservoir status of rodents globally.
- Frauke Ecke
- , Barbara A. Han
- & Richard S. Ostfeld
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Article
| Open AccessMultiple drivers and lineage-specific insect extinctions during the Permo–Triassic
The impact of three extinction events during the Permo–Triassic interval on terrestrial invertebrates is unclear. Here, the authors find that key abiotic and biotic factors, including changes in floral assemblages, were correlated with changes in insect diversity through this interval.
- Corentin Jouault
- , André Nel
- & Fabien L. Condamine
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal and regional ecological boundaries explain abrupt spatial discontinuities in avian frugivory interactions
Vertebrate frugivores play important ecological roles. Here, the authors analyse a global dataset on plants and birds and find that plant-frugivore networks are more dissimilar, yet structurally consistent, across ecoregion and biome boundaries.
- Lucas P. Martins
- , Daniel B. Stouffer
- & Jason M. Tylianakis
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Article
| Open AccessGlobal patterns of vascular plant alpha diversity
Global patterns of regional plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether they hold for local communities is debated. This study created multi-grain global maps of alpha diversity for vascular plants to provide a nuanced understanding of plant diversity hotspots and improve predictions of global change effects on biodiversity.
- Francesco Maria Sabatini
- , Borja Jiménez-Alfaro
- & Helge Bruelheide
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Article
| Open AccessConsistent predator-prey biomass scaling in complex food webs
The ratio of predator-to-prey biomass is a key element in food webs. Here, the authors report a unified analysis of predator-prey biomass scaling in complex food webs, finding general patterns of sub-linear scaling across ecosystems and levels of organization.
- Daniel M. Perkins
- , Ian A. Hatton
- & Ulrich Brose