Ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Editorial
    | Open Access

    Climate change is exacerbating challenges both for global food production and from its environmental impacts. Sustainable and socially responsible solutions for future world-wide food security are urgently needed.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the genetic basis of many natural behaviours and how they contribute to speciation. Here the authors address this by identifying genes linked to migration of a songbird, investigating how these gene are regulated, and connecting them to potential barriers between species.

    • Matthew I. M. Louder
    • , Hannah Justen
    •  & Kira E. Delmore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aedes aegypti transmit several arboviruses and control of the mosquito populations could be beneficial. Here the authors show that deletion of leucine aminopeptidase1 (LAP1) results in mitochondrial defects and abnormal autophagy in sperm, reducing fertility and fecundity of females. LAP1−/− males show no obvious defects in longevity and mating fitness.

    • Xiaomei Sun
    • , Xueli Wang
    •  & Zhen Zou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study investigates the dynamic associations among microbes in the world’s tropical and subtropical oceans. It reveals that potential interactions vary with ocean depth and location, with most surface associations not persisting in deeper waters. The results contribute to understanding the ocean microbiome in the context of global change.

    • Ina M. Deutschmann
    • , Erwan Delage
    •  & Ramiro Logares

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soils combat climate change by storing carbon but lose considerable amounts of carbon into downstream waters. Here a general process for how microbes transform carbon across soil-to-stream to impact its persistence in the natural environment is demonstrated.

    • Erika C. Freeman
    • , Erik J. S. Emilson
    •  & Andrew J. Tanentzap

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The growth in global milk demand has been accompanied by an increase in waste milk disposal. Here, the authors transform waste milk through humification and incorporate the product into attapulgite creating a nano-fertiliser that benefits for plants growing in pots.

    • Yanping Zhu
    • , Yuxuan Cao
    •  & Dongqing Cai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Body colour may be an important factor in insect phenology. Here, the authors show that colour lightness of dragonfly assemblages from the UK, collected between May and October from 1990-2020, varies in response to seasonal changes in solar radiation, suggesting a link between colour-based thermoregulation and insect phenology.

    • Roberto Novella-Fernandez
    • , Roland Brandl
    •  & Christian Hof

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest restoration in LMICs can contribute to global C mitigation targets. Here, the authors assess the economic feasibility of forest restoration methods in Panama, i.e. natural regeneration, native species plantings, and enrichment planting, showing that not all methods are economically viable.

    • Katherine Sinacore
    • , Edwin H. García
    •  & Jefferson S. Hall

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Heeren et al study the evolutionary genomics of leishmaniasis in Peru and Bolivia to show that parasite hybridization increases the prevalence, diversity and spread of viruses that have been previously associated with disease severity and treatment failure.

    • Senne Heeren
    • , Ilse Maes
    •  & Frederik Van den Broeck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest responses can have major effects on tree architecture and community structure near the edges of forest fragments. Here, using terrestrial LiDAR scanning data from long-term forest plots, the authors find a net negative effect of fragmentation on Amazonian Forest aboveground biomass.

    • Matheus Henrique Nunes
    • , Marcel Caritá Vaz
    •  & Eduardo Eiji Maeda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study uses in situ respirometry assays and transplant experiments with salmonid fish to disentangle the effects of chronic and acute thermal exposure. They show that chronic exposure to warming can attenuate salmonid thermal sensitivity, highlighting the need to incorporate the potential for thermal acclimation or adaptation when forecasting global warming consequences.

    • Alexia M. González-Ferreras
    • , Jose Barquín
    •  & Eoin J. O’Gorman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The diversity and impact of viruses in remote marine environments are less well understood. In this study, the authors analyse an -omics dataset to gain insights into the genomics and potential role of endemic viruses infecting ecologically important microbes inhabiting the ocean cavity beneath the Ross Ice Shelf.

    • Javier Lopez-Simon
    • , Marina Vila-Nistal
    •  & Manuel Martinez-Garcia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Free-ranging domestic cats have major ecological impacts globally. Here, Lepczyk et al. compile records of the species consumed by cats, identifying thousands of species consumed, including hundreds of species that are of conservation concern.

    • Christopher A. Lepczyk
    • , Jean E. Fantle-Lepczyk
    •  & John C. Z. Woinarski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanisms generating montane biodiversity remain incompletely understood. Here, the authors study the passerine avifauna of Indo-Pacific island mountains, finding that Eurasian-origin species colonized directly from other mountains, while Australo-Papuan-origin species made upslope range shifts from the lowlands.

    • Andrew Hart Reeve
    • , Jonathan David Kennedy
    •  & Knud Andreas Jønsson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Crop rotation helps preventing pathogen infestations compared to monocultures, which may be partly due to root-associated microbes. Here, the authors show that rhizosphere microbiomes in monocultures are less able to suppress fungal pathogens compared to crop rotations, and that inoculating certain microbes can mitigate it.

    • Yanyan Zhou
    • , Zhen Yang
    •  & Xiaogang Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ecosystem services provided by dung beetles are an underappreciated component of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, the authors report a standardized distributed experiment which shows that dung removal rate, a key ecosystem process in pastures, is greater under high beetle functional diversity regardless of grazing intensity.

    • Jorge Ari Noriega
    • , Joaquín Hortal
    •  & Ana M. C. Santos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A characteristic of costal-pelagic fishes is their large population size fluctuations, yet the drivers remain elusive. Here, the authors analyze a 45-year timeseries of nitrogen stable isotopes measured in larvae of Northern Anchovy and find that high energy transfer efficiency from the base of the food web up to young larvae confers high survival and recruitment to the adult population.

    • Rasmus Swalethorp
    • , Michael R. Landry
    •  & Andrew R. Thompson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forecasting ecology can support proactive decision-making in the face of uncertain environmental conditions. Using case studies on whale entanglement and sea turtle bycatch, this study showcases the capacity for existing management tools to transition to a forecast configuration and provide skilful forecasts up to 12 months in advance.

    • Stephanie Brodie
    • , Mercedes Pozo Buil
    •  & Michael G. Jacox

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microplastic uptake by animals is often assumed to reflect the level of contamination in the environment. Here, the authors compile a global inventory of individual microplastic body burden in benthic marine invertebrates and find that feeding mode and geographic location are more important predictors than environmental microplastic loading.

    • Adam Porter
    • , Jasmin A. Godbold
    •  & Tamara S. Galloway

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Factors behind interspecific variation in masting are unclear. Here, the authors show that, in 517 species of terrestrial perennial plants, masting is more frequent in species that have high stem tissue density, suggesting that stronger stress resistance may buffer against missed reproductive opportunities.

    • Valentin Journé
    • , Andrew Hacket-Pain
    •  & Michał Bogdziewicz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The microbiome is thought to be important for its host’s wellbeing, but it varies much among individuals. We offer a solution to this conundrum, showing that factors like the form of microbes’ contribution to hosts’ fitness and host population size may be preventing natural selection from operating effectively.

    • Itay Daybog
    •  & Oren Kolodny

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Abrupt regime shifts could in theory be predicted from early warning signals. Here, the authors show that true critical transitions are challenging to classify in lake planktonic systems, due to mismatches between trophic levels, and reveal uneven performance of early warning signal detection methods.

    • Duncan A. O’Brien
    • , Smita Deb
    •  & Christopher F. Clements

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors describe a pathogenic fungus from a 400-million-year-old fossil plant from the Devonian Rhynie Chert in Scotland. They use advanced imaging methods to determine that the fungus belongs to the sac fungi, the most diverse group of Fungi today.

    • Christine Strullu-Derrien
    • , Tomasz Goral
    •  & David L. Hawksworth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study relates 88,000 elevation range sizes of vascular plants in 44 mountains to short-term and long-term temperature variation. The authors finding of decreasing elevation range sizes with greater diurnal temperature range supports a novel biodiversity hypothesis and indicates increased extinction risk of continental species.

    • Arnaud Gallou
    • , Alistair S. Jump
    •  & John-Arvid Grytnes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Airborne microplastics (MPs) are observed over the Southern Ocean and Antarctica. MPs morphology is the primary factor influencing the hemispheric transport to these remote areas that may suffer increased pollution from urbanized, land-based sources.

    • Qiqing Chen
    • , Guitao Shi
    •  & Denise M. Mitrano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A species’ response to anthropogenic climate change may depend on its adaptations to past climate changes. Here, the authors use whole-genome resequencing and genetic-environment association to identify genes important for local adaptation and project adaptation under future climate scenarios across bank vole populations in Britain.

    • Silvia Marková
    • , Hayley C. Lanier
    •  & Petr Kotlík

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ecosystem productivity generally declines under drought. Here, the authors show that spring droughts are linked to increases in gross primary productivity in energy-limited ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere, and that terrestrial biosphere models tend not to capture this.

    • David L. Miller
    • , Sebastian Wolf
    •  & Trevor F. Keenan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors use a dataset of stable isotope compositions of otoliths from Atlantic bluefin tuna to infer the thermal sensitivity of metabolic performance in their first year of life. They then assess the likely trajectories of tuna production until end century under differing emission scenarios in their two main spawning grounds, the western Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea.

    • Clive N. Trueman
    • , Iraide Artetxe-Arrate
    •  & Igaratza Fraile

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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

  • Article
    | Open Access

    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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