Ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prior studies showed that humans are causing species to become more active at night. Here the authors show that this trend is not consistent across hyperdiverse wildlife communities, as camera trap surveys in Southeast Asia show that responses depend on species traits and do not affect the temporal overlap of biotic interactions.

    • Samuel Xin Tham Lee
    • , Zachary Amir
    •  & Matthew Scott Luskin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For satellite data, noisy observations can often be ignored in favour of smooth trends and signals. Here, the authors developed a method to quantify the complexity of chlorophyll-α time series on a global scale, which led to the discovery of greater differences among regions than previously recognized.

    • Vitul Agarwal
    • , Jonathan Chávez-Casillas
    •  & Colleen B. Mouw

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Tibetan Plateau is the largest plateau in the world and hosts a variety of aquatic ecosystems. Here, the authors present a gene and genome catalogue of Tibetan Plateau aquatic microbiomes, greatly expanding known taxonomic and functional diversity for the region and giving insights into its microbial biogeography.

    • Mingyue Cheng
    • , Shuai Luo
    •  & Kang Ning

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mobile genetic elements can promote the duplication of antibiotic resistance genes which may in turn accelerate the evolution of resistance to new drugs. Here, the authors show that duplicated antibiotic resistance genes are enriched in bacterial isolates from environments associated with rampant antibiotic use.

    • Rohan Maddamsetti
    • , Yi Yao
    •  & Lingchong You

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study finds that habitat connectivity can increase resilience to ecosystem regime shifts. The authors used >7,000 fish samplings from the Baltic Sea to study a spatially propagating shift from an ecosystem dominated by predatory fish to one dominated by their prey, also finding that fish-eating seals and cormorants increased the risk of a shift.

    • Agnes B. Olin
    • , Ulf Bergström
    •  & Johan S. Eklöf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although co-occurring species may differ widely in their response traits, coordinated functional trait shifts may emerge at the community level in response to environmental factors. Here, the authors use data from 150 grassland sites to identify a coordinated slow-fast strategy response to land-use intensification across above- and belowground taxa.

    • Margot Neyret
    • , Gaëtane Le Provost
    •  & Peter Manning

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Due to fundamental anatomical and biochemical differences, C3 and C4 plant species tend to differ in their biogeography and response to climate change. Here, the authors use global observations and optimality theory to map patterns and temporal trends in C4 species distribution and the contribution of C4 plants to global photosynthesis.

    • Xiangzhong Luo
    • , Haoran Zhou
    •  & Christopher J. Still

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heterostylous plants have floral morphs bearing female and male sex organs at reciprocal heights. Here the authors show that, across angiosperms, heterostyly is associated with tubed flowers pollinated by long-tongued insects, supporting the Darwinian hypothesis about precise pollen transfer between heterostylous morphs.

    • Violeta Simón-Porcar
    • , Marcial Escudero
    •  & Juan Arroyo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil priming could release large amounts of soil C into the atmosphere. Here the authors show that experimental warming boosts soil priming and CO2 emissions in grasslands potentially due to microbial changes. Model accuracy could be improved by incorporating these mechanisms.

    • Xuanyu Tao
    • , Zhifeng Yang
    •  & Jizhong Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    West Nile Virus is emerging as an important pathogen in Europe, likely driven by recent climate and land-use changes. Here, the authors estimate the extent of the climate change-driven impact by modelling the change in West Nile Virus ecological suitability across the continent in the absence of climate change.

    • Diana Erazo
    • , Luke Grant
    •  & Simon Dellicour

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus subtype H5 is an important pathogen of wild birds and poultry that has also caused infection in humans and other mammals. Here the authors use wild bird movement tracking data and virus genome sequences to quantify how seasonal bird migration facilitates global dispersal of the virus.

    • Qiqi Yang
    • , Ben Wang
    •  & Bryan Grenfell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using a dataset that included 341,846 species in 391 angiosperm floras worldwide, this study finds that the global phylogenetic structure of angiosperms shows clear and meaningful relationships with environmental factors and that current climatic variables have the highest predictive power for phylogenetic metrics reflecting recent evolutionary relationships.

    • Hong Qian
    • , Shenhua Qian
    •  & Michael Kessler

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Combining ocean predictions with physiological understanding yields the ability to forecast habitat multiple years into the future for a wide variety of marine organisms. However, several challenges remain before we see the regular production and use of marine habitat forecasts.

    • Mark R. Payne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nutrient limitation is a well-known control of phytoplankton growth, but predicting specific responses in individual lakes based on nutrient data alone has proven challenging. Here, the authors show that long-term signals of chlorophyll-a dynamics in shallow lakes can be captured based on stoichiometric effects of N and P concentrations along a continuum of total N:total P ratios.

    • Daniel Graeber
    • , Mark J. McCarthy
    •  & Thomas A. Davidson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors demonstrate that cropland expansion following the historical trend together with closing the current exploitable yield gap by half or more across Africa reduces the continent’s reliance on land conversions and imports by 2050.

    • Shen Yuan
    • , Kazuki Saito
    •  & Patricio Grassini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soil organisms are affected by the presence of predatory protists. Here, the authors predatory protists are negatively associated with bacteria wilt disease incidence in tomato plants and that fertilisation enhances the abundance of predatory protists

    • Sai Guo
    • , Zixuan Jiao
    •  & Stefan Geisen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monitoring antimicrobial resistance in food animals is challenging due to limited surveillance systems. Here, the authors combine data from point prevalence surveys in lower- and middle-income settings to map resistance to seven antimicrobials and predict which are likely to exceed key resistance thresholds.

    • Cheng Zhao
    • , Yu Wang
    •  & Thomas P. Van Boeckel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A large proportion of wetland extent is not mapped in currently available national datasets. Incorporating newly revealed wetlands into soil carbon mapping methods increases estimates of wetland soil carbon stock by 482%.

    • Anthony J. Stewart
    • , Meghan Halabisky
    •  & L. Monika Moskal

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study reveals the spatial and temporal patterns of temperature buffer inside the tropical forests. It provides insights into the forests’ microclimate that controls the functioning of living organisms residing under the forest canopy.

    • Ali Ismaeel
    • , Amos P. K. Tai
    •  & Eduardo Eiji Maeda

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Natural climate solutions can mitigate climate change but misunderstandings about what constitutes a natural climate solution generate unnecessary confusion and controversy. This Perspective distills five foundational principles of natural climate solutions and fifteen operational principles for practical implementation.

    • Peter Woods Ellis
    • , Aaron Marr Page
    •  & Susan C. Cook-Patton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Interactions with angiosperms are thought to have had a significant impact on insect diversification. Here, the authors use a Bayesian process-based approach to find that angiosperm radiation played a dual role that changed through time, mitigating insect extinction in the Cretaceous and promoting insect origination in the Cenozoic.

    • David Peris
    •  & Fabien L. Condamine

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tree mortality due to climate change and other disturbances is on the rise. Here, the authors use high-resolution remote sensing data, ground observations and deep learning to quantify individual dead trees and potential drivers across California in the year 2020, encompassing 91.4 million dead trees.

    • Yan Cheng
    • , Stefan Oehmcke
    •  & Stéphanie Horion

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dengue virus circulation was unusually low in Brazil in 2015-2018 following the emergence of Zika virus, but subsequently resurged causing large outbreaks with a lower mean age of infection. Here, the authors use mathematical modelling to investigate the links between dengue dynamics and prior Zika infection.

    • Francesco Pinotti
    • , Marta Giovanetti
    •  & José Lourenço

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Live poultry markets in rural areas can be hotspots for transmission of pathogens, but the effects of markets on selection of viral virulence are not known. This study demonstrates through mathematical modelling that high turnover rate and persistence of viral particles can select for highly virulent pathogens in markets.

    • Justin K. Sheen
    • , Fidisoa Rasambainarivo
    •  & C. Jessica E. Metcalf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The response of organic molecules to climate change is linked to warming, nutrient loading, and greenhouse gas emissions, according to an indicator developed to quantify the aggregated thermal response of individual organic molecules.

    • Ang Hu
    • , Kyoung-Soon Jang
    •  & Jianjun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A key assumption of ageing research is that old males are less fertile. A meta-analysis of ejaculate traits challenges this, by showing senescence is not consistently observed across 157 species of animals, but is specific to only certain taxa and ejaculate traits. The study also highlights methodological factors that might modulate the evidence for reproductive senescence.

    • Krish Sanghvi
    • , Regina Vega-Trejo
    •  & Irem Sepil

  • Article
    | Open Access

    What a microbial strain is and how many strains make up a natural bacterial population remain elusive concepts. Here, Viver et al. analyse Salinibacter ruber isolates and metagenomes from two solar salterns, revealing gaps within the species sequence space that they use to define and quantify sub-species categories, such as genomovars and strains, that co-exist in a saltern pond.

    • Tomeu Viver
    • , Roth E. Conrad
    •  & Ramon Rossello-Mora

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study shows that conserving approximately half of global land area through protection or sustainable management could provide 90% of ten of nature’s contributions to people and could meet representation targets for 26,709 species of mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. This finding supports recent commitments to conserve at least 30% of global lands and waters by 2030.

    • Rachel A. Neugarten
    • , Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer
    •  & Amanda D. Rodewald

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In a first global analysis, researchers find that sandy shores are severely squeezed between human infrastructure and the rising sea, as on average, the first road or building is currently situated at just 390 meters distance from the shoreline.

    • Eva M. Lansu
    • , Valérie C. Reijers
    •  & Tjisse van der Heide

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using a global synthesis of size spectra data from pelagic food webs, this study finds that size structure is not driven by temperature as often suggested, but by the nutrient status of the system. This means that modest phytoplankton declines projected for key fishing grounds at mid-latitudes will amplify into substantial reductions in the supportable biomass of fish.

    • Angus Atkinson
    • , Axel G. Rossberg
    •  & Constantin Frangoulis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Climate change is redistributing species poleward, threatening widespread socio-ecological disruption as key tipping-points are exceeded. This study examines space-time dynamics of kelp ecosystem collapse over a 15-year period along the warming coastline of eastern Tasmania and shows that an early-warning signal of kelp ecosystem collapse is recognisable well-in-advance.

    • Scott D. Ling
    •  & John P. Keane

  • Article
    | Open Access

    DNA sequencing methods for characterizing microbial communities are well developed for bacteria, archaea and fungi, but less so for eukaryotic parasites and commensals. Here, the authors present an optimized and validated metabarcoding protocol for host-associated eukaryotic communities.

    • Leah A. Owens
    • , Sagan Friant
    •  & Tony L. Goldberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Agricultural soil C dynamics under climate change are difficult to predict. Here, the authors report that experimental warming increases soil organic C stocks in conservation agriculture but not in conventional agriculture, which appears driven by soil microbial responses to no tillage and C inputs from the crops.

    • Jing Tian
    • , Jennifer A. J. Dungait
    •  & Jizhong Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of cicadas is unclear due to a lack of understanding of transitional features. Here, the authors assess adult and nymph mid-Cretaceous cicadas, to elucidate their morphological evolution and identify evidence of the origins of cicada sound-generation and subterranean lifestyle.

    • Hui Jiang
    • , Jacek Szwedo
    •  & Bo Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although intraspecific dominance hierarchies are common, large scale interspecific dominance hierarchies are unknown. Using data from hundreds of avian species, the authors find that species that are more familiar with each other engage in less aggression and the aggression is resolved more directly.

    • Gavin M. Leighton
    • , Jonathan P. Drury
    •  & Eliot T. Miller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, Rühlemann et al. analyze the gut microbiome of wild-living African great apes (Gorillas, Bonobos, Chimpanzees) in comparison to that of humans, identifying host specific patterns and shared evolutionary conserved traits disrupted in humans.

    • M. C. Rühlemann
    • , C. Bang
    •  & A. Franke

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