Ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The utility of UV vision for visualizing habitat structure is poorly known. Here, the authors use optical models and multispectral imaging to show that UV vision reveals sharp visual contrasts between leaf surfaces, potentially an advantage in navigating forest environments.

    • Cynthia Tedore
    •  & Dan-Eric Nilsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phylogenetic turnover measures the evolutionary distance between species assemblages. Here, Saladin et al. analyze the phylogenetic turnover of European tetrapods after controlling for geographic distance and show greater roles of environment in recent evolutionary history for ectotherms than for endotherms.

    • Bianca Saladin
    • , Wilfried Thuiller
    •  & Niklaus E. Zimmermann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Given the size differences between the autotrophs in aquatic and terrestrial systems, it is unclear whether the same metabolic scaling patterns apply in both groups. Here the authors unify previous datasets and show that plankton and trees follow similar power-law scaling of individual size distributions.

    • Daniel M. Perkins
    • , Andrea Perna
    •  & Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biological complexity has impeded our ability to predict the dynamics of mutualistic interactions. Here, the authors deduce a general rule to predict outcomes of mutualistic systems and introduce an approach that permits making predictions even in the absence of knowledge of mechanistic details.

    • Feilun Wu
    • , Allison J. Lopatkin
    •  & Lingchong You

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the role of forest fires in Earth’s climate system is critical to predict future fire-climate interactions. Here the authors show that fire-induced forest loss accounts for ~15% of global forest loss and that its impact on surface temperature depends on evapotranspiration and albedo.

    • Zhihua Liu
    • , Ashley P. Ballantyne
    •  & L. Annie Cooper

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stocking of hatchery produced fish is widely used to supplement wild fish populations. Here, the authors show that supplementary stocking can unintentionally favour introgressed individuals with domestic genotypes and compromise the fitness of a wild population of Atlantic salmon.

    • Ingerid J. Hagen
    • , Arne J. Jensen
    •  & Sten Karlsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increased extreme wet and dry years and forest growth loss from drought legacy effect lead to a question whether wetness events can conversely compensate for this loss. Here the authors report substantial growth enhancement after extreme wetness compensating for drought-induced growth loss globally.

    • Peng Jiang
    • , Hongyan Liu
    •  & Hongya Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Primates utilise human-modified landscapes, and how they do so can provide key conservation insights. This study shows that primates using anthropic lands are less often threatened with extinction, but more often diurnal, not strictly arboreal, with medium or large body sizes, and habitat generalists.

    • Carmen Galán-Acedo
    • , Víctor Arroyo-Rodríguez
    •  & Robert M. Ewers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Examples of overdominance are usually explained by deleterious effects in homozygotes. Here, Kellenberger et al. describe a case of overdominance in the floral color of the Alpine orchid Gymnadenia rhellicani apparently maintained by pollinator preferences without deleterious effects in homozygotes.

    • Roman T. Kellenberger
    • , Kelsey J. R. P. Byers
    •  & Philipp M. Schlüter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There has been recent interest in understanding why the biodiversity-productivity relationship varies among studies and across scales. Here Fei et al. show that climatic variation drives forest biodiversity-productivity relationships at large spatial scales, whilst biotic and abiotic factors are important in given climate units.

    • Songlin Fei
    • , Insu Jo
    •  & Eckehard G. Brockerhoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flaviviruses have emerged or re-emerged in several regions, but factors underlying emergence are incompletely understood. Here, Pandit et al. identify potential sylvatic reservoirs of flaviviruses and, in combination with vector distribution data, predict regions of global vulnerability.

    • Pranav S. Pandit
    • , Megan M. Doyle
    •  & Christine K. Johnson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The potential impact of neonicotinoid field exposure on bumblebee microbiota remains unclear. In a landscape—scale study, Wintermantel et al. show that whilst exposure to clothianidin impacts Bombus terrestris performance, it does not affect levels of gut bacteria, viruses or intracellular parasites.

    • Dimitry Wintermantel
    • , Barbara Locke
    •  & Joachim R. de Miranda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although components of animal mating signals are often studied separately, many animals produce complex multimodal displays. Here, the authors show that the courtship display of male broad-tailed hummingbirds consists of synchronized motions, sounds, and colors that occur within just 300 milliseconds.

    • Benedict G. Hogan
    •  & Mary Caswell Stoddard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Locations in the ocean where CO2 naturally seeps from the seafloor can be used to infer potential responses to ocean acidification. Here the authors explore the functional composition of benthic communities along a natural CO2 gradient, showing a loss of functional diversity at high-CO2 sites.

    • Nuria Teixidó
    • , Maria Cristina Gambi
    •  & Enric Ballesteros

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Northern tree populations may not benefit under climate change, with implications for assisted migration and range expansion. Here, Isaac-Renton et al. show that leading-edge lodgepole pine populations have fewer characteristics of drought-tolerance, so may not adapt to tolerate drier conditions.

    • Miriam Isaac-Renton
    • , David Montwé
    •  & Kerstin Treydte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The late Paleozoic was a time of major transition for tetrapods. Here, Brocklehurst and colleagues analyse the biogeography of Paleozoic tetrapods and find shifts in dispersal and vicariance associated with Carboniferous mountain formation and end-Guadalupian climate variability.

    • Neil Brocklehurst
    • , Emma M. Dunne
    •  & Jӧrg Frӧbisch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Herbivorous insects could diversify through radiations after major host switches or through constant variability in new host use. With phylogenetic and network analyses, Braga et al. show that variability in host use supports most butterfly diversification, while rare radiations can further boost diversity.

    • Mariana P. Braga
    • , Paulo R. Guimarães Jr
    •  & Niklas Janz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The expansion of grassland plant diversity is thought to have facilitated diversification of herbivorous insects. Here, the authors show opposing evolutionary dynamics in a clade of African grasses and associated stemborers, opposing the hypothesis about grasslands as a 'cradle' of herbivore diversity.

    • Gael J. Kergoat
    • , Fabien L. Condamine
    •  & Bruno Le Ru

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protection of rare species requires advanced understanding of the reasons for their rarity. Here, Hallett et al. show that potential growth rate and density dependence together predict rarity vs. abundance, and that the stability of species of similar sizes depends on the relative strength of these two mechanisms.

    • Lauren M. Hallett
    • , Emily C. Farrer
    •  & Richard J. Hobbs

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Increases in tree mortality can signal changes in forest health, but large-scale tree mortality is difficult to quantify. Here Senf et al. show large-scale increases in forest mortality in Central Europe over the past 30 years, which were related to increasing growing stocks and temperature.

    • Cornelius Senf
    • , Dirk Pflugmacher
    •  & Rupert Seidl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Numerous microbial symbionts, both commensal and pathogenic, are associated with honey bees. Here, the authors genomically characterize this ‘metagenome’ of the British honey bee, identifying a diversity of commensal microbes as well as known and putative pathogens

    • Tim Regan
    • , Mark W. Barnett
    •  & Tom C. Freeman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Associations between corals and symbiotic microorganisms could be driven by the environment or shared evolutionary history. Here, the authors examine relationships between coral phylogenies and associated microbiomes, finding evidence of phylosymbiosis in microbes from coral skeleton and tissue, but not mucus.

    • F. Joseph Pollock
    • , Ryan McMinds
    •  & Jesse R. Zaneveld

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Research on plant root-associated microbial communities may help develop more efficient or sustainable crop production methods. Here the authors analyse the citrus rhizosphere microbiome, using both amplicon and deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing of samples collected across six continents.

    • Jin Xu
    • , Yunzeng Zhang
    •  & Nian Wang

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Facilitation is a well-known ecological interaction among free-living species, but symbionts residing in or on a host can also positively affect other symbiont species. Here, the authors review examples of facilitation among symbionts, revealing how facilitation theory can improve understanding of these interactions.

    • Flore Zélé
    • , Sara Magalhães
    •  & Alison B. Duncan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Managing forests for the supply of multiple ecosystem services (ES) is key given potential trade-offs among services. Here, the authors analyse how forest stand attributes generate trade-offs among ES and the relative contribution of forest attributes and environmental factors to predict services.

    • María R. Felipe-Lucia
    • , Santiago Soliveres
    •  & Eric Allan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Material flows between ecosystems, though the degree to which ecosystems are coupled is under investigation. Here Gounand et al. analyze cross-ecosystem carbon flows and relate them to in situ functions, and report different dependencies on spatial flows across numerous ecosystems.

    • Isabelle Gounand
    • , Chelsea J. Little
    •  & Florian Altermatt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A challenge for mutualists is that partner cue reliability is often low. Here, the authors show that though fruit brightness is weakly predictive of nutritional content, the diets of birds (e.g. migrants vs. residents) are structured by fruit brightness in alignment with expected nutritional needs.

    • Jörg Albrecht
    • , Jonas Hagge
    •  & Nina Farwig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cotton bollworm is an important agricultural pest with widespread resistance to insecticides. Here Wang et al. identifies CYP6AEs from cotton bollworm involved in detoxifying plant toxins and chemical insecticides through the CRISPR-Cas9-based reverse genetics approach in conjunction with in vitro metabolism.

    • Huidong Wang
    • , Yu Shi
    •  & Yidong Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animal physiology, including reproduction, could respond to climate change in complex ways. Here, the authors use experiments with an insect model system to show that simulated heatwaves harm male reproductive potential by reducing sperm number and viability, an effect which persisted into the next generation

    • Kris Sales
    • , Ramakrishnan Vasudeva
    •  & Matthew J. G. Gage

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The biogeographic drivers of reptile diversity are poorly understood relative to other animal groups. Here, using a dataset of distributions of African squamates, the authors show that environmental filtering explains diversity in stressful habitats while competition explains diversity in benign habitats.

    • Till Ramm
    • , Juan L. Cantalapiedra
    •  & Johannes Müller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Marine cyanophages infect oceanic cyanobacteria that are important contributors to global primary production. By using an experimental evolution approach, here the authors show that adaptation to sub-optimal cyanobacterial hosts result in genomic diversification of cyanophage populations.

    • Hagay Enav
    • , Shay Kirzner
    •  & Oded Béjà

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pharmaceuticals are widespread contaminants in surface waters. Here, Richmond and colleagues show that dozens of pharmaceuticals accumulate in  food chains of streams, including in predators in adjacent terrestrial ecosystems.

    • Erinn K. Richmond
    • , Emma J. Rosi
    •  & Michael R. Grace

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plant functional traits may help distinguish introduced species that will become invasive from those that do not. Here, Divíšek et al. show that functional profiles of naturalized plant species are similar to natives, while those of invasive plant species exist at the edge of the functional trait space.

    • Jan Divíšek
    • , Milan Chytrý
    •  & Jane Molofsky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Species extinction risk is difficult to measure and often lags behind the pace of increasing threats. Here, the authors demonstrate how monitoring changes in cumulative human pressures could be used to rapidly assess potential change in species’ conservation status.

    • Moreno Di Marco
    • , Oscar Venter
    •  & James E. M. Watson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has recently been found that stress hormones accumulate in the earwax of whales. Here, the authors use these signatures of stress along with time series of ocean warming and whaling pressure to demonstrate that both stressors were correlated with baleen whale stress over several decades.

    • Stephen J. Trumble
    • , Stephanie A. Norman
    •  & Sascha Usenko

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