Biodiversity articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    “Factors influencing soil microbiota functioning remain understudied. Here, the authors describe bacterial and fungal diversity across Europe and along a gradient of land-use perturbation, observing that the occurrence of pathogens, symbionts and saprotrophs varied among cropland, woodland and grassland.”

    • Maëva Labouyrie
    • , Cristiano Ballabio
    •  & Alberto Orgiazzi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biodiversity often increases the functioning and productivity of ecosystems or communities. This work shows that such a positive diversity effect, namely overyielding in mixtures of two divergent Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, can be genetically mapped and resolved to a single gene.

    • Samuel E. Wuest
    • , Lukas Schulz
    •  & Pascal A. Niklaus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Competition between agriculture and land conservation may hinder climate and biodiversity targets. Here, the authors use global models integrating multiple spatial scales to assess how ambitious land conservation action and associated land-use dynamics could drive changes in landscape heterogeneity, pollination supply and soil loss.

    • Patrick José von Jeetze
    • , Isabelle Weindl
    •  & Alexander Popp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Isolating the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in natural ecosystems is challenging. Here, the authors apply a causal inference approach to observational data from grasslands and find a negative effect of biodiversity on productivity driven by non-native and rare species.

    • Laura E. Dee
    • , Paul J. Ferraro
    •  & Michel Loreau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By combining fisheries, nutrient, and carbon cycling data, this synthesis suggests that marine kelp forests, a dominant but often undescribed habitat, provide services with a potential value of $111,000/ha/year and a global yearly value of $500 billion.

    • Aaron M. Eger
    • , Ezequiel M. Marzinelli
    •  & Adriana Vergés

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Trees often associate with mycorrhizal fungi, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) or ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi. Luo et al. analyze 74,563 forest plots across the contiguous USA, showing that forests with mixed AM and ECM tree species are more productive than when dominated by AM or ECM tree species.

    • Shan Luo
    • , Richard P. Phillips
    •  & Nico Eisenhauer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat loss and climate change are widely acknowledged as drivers of wildlife population change, but socioeconomic impacts are relatively unexplored. This study explores drivers of population change in large carnivores and reveals that socioeconomic growth is more associated with population declines than habitat loss and climate change.

    • Thomas F. Johnson
    • , Nick J. B. Isaac
    •  & Manuela González-Suárez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Desert-dwelling species are adapted to high temperatures, but further warming may push them beyond their physiological limits. Here, the authors integrate biophysical models and species distributions to project physiological impacts of climate change on desert birds globally and identify potential refugia.

    • Liang Ma
    • , Shannon R. Conradie
    •  & David S. Wilcove

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ungulate herbivory is an important driver of ecological change in forests. Here, the authors combine vegetation resurveys showing herbivory effects are highly dependent on soil eutrophication, promoting non-natives under high N-conditions, yet benefiting threatened species under low N-conditions.

    • Josiane Segar
    • , Henrique M. Pereira
    •  & Ingmar R. Staude

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drivers of long-term trends in insect populations are usually inferred from space-for-time substitution studies rather than from time-series data. Here, the authors investigate insect trends across a 40-year period in Switzerland and test their linkages with climate change, land use change and their interactions.

    • Felix Neff
    • , Fränzi Korner-Nievergelt
    •  & Eva Knop

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant intraspecific diversity genetic diversity could affect also other trophic levels. This meta-analysis shows that increasing plant genetic diversity improves the performance of plants and natural enemies of herbivores, while decreasing the performance of plant antagonists.

    • Nian-Feng Wan
    • , Liwan Fu
    •  & Christoph Scherber

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors use reproductive mode data with matching phylogenetic data to explore the evolution of reproductive mode, transitions between reproductive modes, and diversification rates in amphibians.

    • H. Christoph Liedtke
    • , John J. Wiens
    •  & Ivan Gomez-Mestre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the microbiota of multiple body sites from 101 marine fish species from Southern California were sampled and analysed. The authors compared diversity measures while also establishing a method to estimate microbial biomass. Body site is shown to be the strongest driver of microbial diversity and patterns of phylosymbiosis are observed across the gill, skin and hindgut.

    • Jeremiah J. Minich
    • , Andreas Härer
    •  & Eric E. Allen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors use sedimentary DNA, pollen, fungal spores, chironomids, and microcharcoal from an alpine lake core to reconstruct vegetation across 12,000 years. They find that vegetation responded to climate in the early Holocene, followed by a shift to human activity from 6000 years onward corresponding with an increase in deforestation and agropastoralism.

    • Sandra Garcés-Pastor
    • , Eric Coissac
    •  & Inger Greve Alsos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aquatic (blue) and terrestrial (green) food webs are part of the same landscape, but it remains unclear whether they respond similarly to shared environmental gradients. Using long-term monitoring data from Switzerland and a metaweb approach, this study reveals how inferred blue and green food webs exhibit different properties along an elevation gradient and among land-use types.

    • Hsi-Cheng Ho
    • , Jakob Brodersen
    •  & Florian Altermatt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Crop wild relatives’ genetic diversity is usually not considered in conservation planning. Here, the authors introduce an approach to identify conservation areas based on evolutionary and threat processes, by developing proxies of genetic differentiation, and including taxa’s habitat preferences.

    • Wolke Tobón-Niedfeldt
    • , Alicia Mastretta-Yanes
    •  & Patricia Koleff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sedimentary ancient DNA can indicate ecosystem-wide changes. Here, the authors show association between warm phases and high diatom abundance in the Antarctic Scotia Sea, in addition to presenting ancient eukaryote sedimentary DNA spanning the last approximately 1 million years.

    • Linda Armbrecht
    • , Michael E. Weber
    •  & Xufeng Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dental development and replacement rates varied greatly among early terrestrial carnivorous and herbivorous amniotes, revealing a complexity that reflected a diversity of feeding behaviours soon after their initial appearance in the fossil record.

    • Tea Maho
    • , Sigi Maho
    •  & Robert R. Reisz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear whether the positive effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning are maintained under multifaceted anthropogenic disturbance. In this experiment, the authors show that multiple simultaneous stressors can negate the positive effect of microbial diversity on soil functions.

    • Gaowen Yang
    • , Masahiro Ryo
    •  & Matthias C. Rillig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study examines the tempo and drivers of penguin diversification by combining genomes from all extant and recently extinct penguin lineages, stratigraphic data from fossil penguins and morphological and biogeographic data from all extant and extinct species. Together, these datasets provide new insights into the genetic basis and evolution of adaptations in penguins.

    • Theresa L. Cole
    • , Chengran Zhou
    •  & Guojie Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using experimental communities of grassland species, this study shows that drought-exposure history can accelerate recovery from subsequent drought through increased niche complementarity between species. This transgenerational effect may enhance the sustainability of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in a future with more frequent droughts.

    • Yuxin Chen
    • , Anja Vogel
    •  & Bernhard Schmid

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spaceborne spectroscopy is a promising tool to monitor vegetation globally. Here, the authors combine airborne spectroscopy and field-based vegetation data to demonstrate that spectral imagery from upcoming satellite missions can be used to capture changes in plant species composition across biomes.

    • Anna K. Schweiger
    •  & Etienne Laliberté

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Several rankings of the relative importance of global threats to biodiversity have been proposed. This Comment argues that relative rankings of biodiversity threats have little application for conservation and might even mislead policymaking.

    • Céline Bellard
    • , Clara Marino
    •  & Franck Courchamp

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Population growth in the coming decades will lead to increasing land conversion to urban areas. Here, the authors use spatially explicit projections of global urban expansion to analyze its effects on habitat changes, and terrestrial mammals, birds and amphibians under the main shared socioeconomic pathways.

    • Guangdong Li
    • , Chuanglin Fang
    •  & Xiaoping Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invertebrate-derived eDNA (iDNA) is an emerging tool for taxonomic and spatial biodiversity monitoring. Here, the authors use metabarcoding of leech-derived iDNA to estimate vertebrate occupancy over an entire protected area, the Ailaoshan Nature Reserve, China.

    • Yinqiu Ji
    • , Christopher C. M. Baker
    •  & Douglas W. Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Disentangling causal interactions among biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and environmental factors is key to understanding how ecosystems respond to changing environment. This study presents a global scale analysis quantifying causal interactions and feedbacks among phytoplankton diversity, biomass and nutrients along environmental gradients of aquatic ecosystems.

    • Chun-Wei Chang
    • , Takeshi Miki
    •  & Chih-hao Hsieh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rare species are crucial for biological diversity and ecosystem functioning. Here, the authors combine taxonomic and functional diversity data to quantify rarity across marine fish species, identifying mismatches between rarity hotspots and protected areas.

    • Isaac Trindade-Santos
    • , Faye Moyes
    •  & Anne E. Magurran

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The influence of human pressure within the matrix surrounding habitat fragments remains poorly understood. This study measures the relationship between habitat fragmentation, matrix condition and the change in extinction risk of 4,426 terrestrial mammals, finding that fragmentation and matrix condition are stronger predictors of risk than habitat loss and habitat amount.

    • Juan Pablo Ramírez-Delgado
    • , Moreno Di Marco
    •  & Oscar Venter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Species interactions that can enhance habitat heterogeneity such as facilitation cascades of foundation species have been overlooked in biodiversity models. This study conducted 22 geographically distributed experiments in different ecosystems and biogeographical regions to assess the extent to which biodiversity is explained by three axes of habitat heterogeneity in facilitation cascades.

    • Mads S. Thomsen
    • , Andrew H. Altieri
    •  & Gerhard Zotz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Environmental and biotic factors control ecological communities. Here, the authors study community ribosomal rRNA gene copy number in coastal sediment and ocean bacterial communities, and in microcosm nutrient addition experiments, to propose a conceptual framework of how nutrient supply and ecological interactions shape the community.

    • Tianjiao Dai
    • , Donghui Wen
    •  & Yunfeng Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans have altered plant biogeography by introducing species from one region to another, but an analysis of how naturalized plant species affect the uniqueness of regional floras around the world was missing. This study presents an analysis using data from native and naturalized alien floras in 658 regions, finding strong taxonomic and phylogenetic floristic homogenization overall.

    • Qiang Yang
    • , Patrick Weigelt
    •  & Mark van Kleunen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil seed banks are reservoirs of plant biodiversity. Here the authors compile a global dataset of soil seed banks in natural plant communities and report a spatially explicit analysis of environmental controls of seed bank density and diversity.

    • Xuejun Yang
    • , Carol C. Baskin
    •  & Johannes H. C. Cornelissen

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