Ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deep subsurface formations are potential sites for carbon capture and storage but how subsurface microbial communities may respond to this is not clear. Here, Mayumi et al. construct microcosms and show that increasing CO2partial pressure via carbon capture and storage more than doubles the rate of methanogenesis.

    • Daisuke Mayumi
    • , Jan Dolfing
    •  & Yoichi Kamagata

  • Article |

    Iron plays a key role in controlling biological production in the Southern Ocean, yet mechanisms regulating iron availability are not completely understood. Here, Ingall et al.show that structural incorporation of reduced, organic iron into biogenic silica represents a new and substantial removal pathway.

    • Ellery D. Ingall
    • , Julia M. Diaz
    •  & Jay A. Brandes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest cover up-river influences the sediments reaching coral reefs, but how this relationship is affected by future climate change is not clear. In a study of the Malagasy coral reefs, Maina et al.find that regional land-use management is more important than mediating climate change for reducing reef sedimentation.

    • Joseph Maina
    • , Hans de Moel
    •  & Jan E. Vermaat

  • Article |

    In the Late Triassic, southern Gondwanan flora is thought to have been dominated by endemic species mainly restricted to eastern areas with some mixing with northern species. In this study, pollen and spore assemblages from Argentina reveal the presence of these mixed flora in the westernmost Gondwana as well.

    • Silvia N Césari
    •  & Carina E Colombi

  • Article |

    Modern crocodylian diversity is in decline and sympatry is rare, with usually no more than two or three species occurring in the same geographic area. Here Scheyer et al. identify a diversity peak in sympatric occurrence of at least seven new and previously characterized crocodylian species during the Miocene in South America.

    • T. M. Scheyer
    • , O. A. Aguilera
    •  & M. R. Sánchez-Villagra

  • Article |

    Differentiated genomic regions among conserved loci, known as speciation islands, are believed to form because of reduced inter-population gene flow near loci under divergent selection. Renault et al.show that reduced recombination, rather than slower gene flow, accounts for the formation of these regions in sunflowers.

    • S. Renaut
    • , C. J. Grassa
    •  & L. H. Rieseberg

  • Article |

    The role of bacteria in the origin of iron formations (IF) remains unclear because no direct evidence for their involvement exists. This study shows that spherical siderite in deep-water IF represents a biosignature for photoferrotrophy, whereas massive siderite reflects high cyanobacterial biomass in shallow-water.

    • Inga Köhler
    • , Kurt O Konhauser
    •  & Andreas Kappler

  • Article |

    The identification of hosts of blood-sucking insects is important for studying ecological factors that affect pathogen distribution. Önder et al. report a proteomics-based methodology for the analysis of blood remnants in ticks that identifies the host species from which the tick has fed up to 6 months earlier.

    • Özlem Önder
    • , Wenguang Shao
    •  & Dustin Brisson

  • Article |

    The number of different host species that a parasite uses should affect its extinction risk, yet the number of documented host–parasite coextinctions is lower than expected. Strona et al. find that specialised parasites tend to use hosts with low vulnerability to extinction, which explains the paradox.

    • Giovanni Strona
    • , Paolo Galli
    •  & Simone Fattorini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is thought that only climate change drives temporal tree mortality increases in old forests. Here, Luo and Chen show that both forest dynamics and climate change drive temporal tree mortality increases in young and old forests, and that climate change-associated mortality increases are higher in the young forests.

    • Yong Luo
    •  & Han Y. H. Chen

  • Article |

    Environmental conditions are likely to become more temporally variable with global environmental change. Parepa et al. show that temporal variability on soil nutrient availability strongly promotes plant invasion and consequently can be a strong driver of ecological changes.

    • Madalin Parepa
    • , Markus Fischer
    •  & Oliver Bossdorf

  • Article |

    For parents, sons are more evolutionarily lucrative than daughters if sons get more chances to breed (and vice versa). Kahn et al. find that mosquitofish take advantage of this: they anticipate the future mating prospects of their offspring and bias production towards the sex with greater opportunities.

    • Andrew T. Kahn
    • , Hanna Kokko
    •  & Michael D. Jennions

  • Article |

    Biologists have struggled to explain the existence of sex-role reversal since Darwin first formulated his theory of evolution. Liker et al.show for the first time that sex roles are predicted by adult sex ratio in wild populations of birds: sex-role reversal emerges at male-biased adult sex ratios.

    • András Liker
    • , Robert P. Freckleton
    •  & Tamás Székely

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Camels originated in North America during the Eocene period ~45 million years ago. This study reports evidence of a High Arctic camel from Ellesmere Island, which extends the range of North American camels northward by ~1,200 km to a lineage of giant camels that were well established in a forested Arctic.

    • Natalia Rybczynski
    • , John C. Gosse
    •  & Mike Buckley

  • Article |

    Clear evidence between sulphidic conditions and denitrification in the Proterozoic ocean should be observable in the rock record. Here, minimalistic biogeochemical modelling shows how periods of extensive sulphate reduction must have gone hand-in-hand with low denitrification and available nitrate.

    • R.A. Boyle
    • , J.R. Clark
    •  & T.M. Lenton

  • Article |

    It has been thought that the evolution of mammals similar to modern grass-eating horses in South America ∼38 million years ago was a response to the spread of grasslands. This study uses microscopic plant silica fossils from southern Argentina to show that these presumed grass-eating mammals evolved in forests, not grasslands.

    • Caroline A.E. Strömberg
    • , Regan E. Dunn
    •  & Alfredo A. Carlini

  • Article |

    In microbial biogeography, little is known about processes involved in soil bacterial diversity turnover. By conducting a wide-scale investigation, this study shows that dispersal limitation and environmental selection of bacteria are not mutually exclusive, highlighting the importance of landscape diversity.

    • L. Ranjard
    • , S. Dequiedt
    •  & P. Lemanceau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coral reef health is declining globally and is projected to lead to net loss of reef structure. This study shows that ecological change across the Caribbean has reduced reef growth rates to levels lower than those measured over the last ~8,000 years, threatening the ability of reefs to keep pace with future sea-level rise.

    • Chris T. Perry
    • , Gary N. Murphy
    •  & Peter J. Mumby

  • Article |

    The long-term hydroclimate variability in Amazonia and its influence on biodiversity remain poorly understood. Here, new speleothem oxygen isotope records characterize spatial–temporal changes in precipitation and provide new insights to understanding the west–east contrasting pattern of biodiversity in Amazonia.

    • Hai Cheng
    • , Ashish Sinha
    •  & Augusto S. Auler

  • Article |

    Free-ranging domestic cats cause wildlife extinctions on islands, but their impact on wildlife in mainland areas is unclear. This study presents an estimate of mortality caused by cats in the United States, suggesting that 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals are killed annually.

    • Scott R. Loss
    • , Tom Will
    •  & Peter P. Marra

  • Article |

    A nested pattern of interactions is thought to promote species persistence in mutualistic ecological networks. In this study, Staniczenko et al. introduce a spectral graph measure of nestedness, to show that nestedness is maximally destabilizing and demonstrate that empirical species preferences are not quantitatively nested.

    • Phillip P. A. Staniczenko
    • , Jason C. Kopp
    •  & Stefano Allesina

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tree diversity is thought to benefit forest ecosystems, but evidence from large-scale studies is scarce. This study of a 400,000 km2forest area shows that higher tree species richness supports higher levels of multiple ecosystem services, and therefore also a more sustainable management of production forests.

    • Lars Gamfeldt
    • , Tord Snäll
    •  & Jan Bengtsson

  • Article |

    The rise of open-habitat ecosystems in southern South America is thought to have occurred with the spread of hypsodont mammals 26 million years ago. In this study, the fossil record of plants preserved in Patagonia suggests that open-habitat ecosystems emerged 15 million years later than previously assumed.

    • Luis Palazzesi
    •  & Viviana Barreda

  • Article |

    The functioning of bacterial communities is affected by selection, but the role of predation by single or multiple predators is unclear. In a study of 465 bacterial microcosms, Saleem et al.find that multiple predation causes positive bacterial diversity effects due to increased evenness among bacterial species.

    • Muhammad Saleem
    • , Ingo Fetzer
    •  & Antonis Chatzinotas

  • Article |

    Knowledge of how a disease spreads can lead to useful predictions to help manage and contain it. Here, Maher et al.model white-nose syndrome spreading in North American bats, and show that concentrated habitat distribution and longer winters can mediate pathogen dispersal, matching the ecological traits of bats.

    • Sean P. Maher
    • , Andrew M. Kramer
    •  & John M. Drake

  • Article |

    In Müllerian mimicry two or more harmful species share a similar appearance for mutual benefit. This study identifies a large Müllerian mimicry complex in North American velvet ants, where 65 species mimic each other through shared colour patterns gained as the result of independent evolution.

    • Joseph S. Wilson
    • , Kevin A. Williams
    •  & James P. Pitts

  • Article |

    Rivers receive more terrestrial carbon than they transport to the ocean, leaving carbon stored along the way. Here, with an estimate of carbon storage in the headwater rivers of the Rocky Mountains, the authors show that broad valley bottoms with old-growth forest store most of the above- and below-ground carbon.

    • Ellen Wohl
    • , Kathleen Dwire
    •  & Roberto Bazan

  • Article |

    Microbes appear to play an important role in carbon sequestration. Here, the composition of microbial residues in a California grassland with elevated carbon dioxide, warming and nitrogen deposition reveals that warming and nitrogen deposition can both alter the fraction of carbon derived from microbes in soils.

    • Chao Liang
    •  & Teri C. Balser

  • Article |

    Human influence on an ecosystem generates a predictable pattern in biodiversity. In a study of boreal plant communities, Mayoret al.show that the species richness of native vascular plants fits the predicted hump-shaped relationship to human disturbance, reaching a maximum when half of the landscape is disturbed.

    • S.J. Mayor
    • , J.F. Cahill Jr
    •  & S. Boutin

  • Article |

    It has been proposed that phylogenetic diversity can be used as a proxy to estimate functional diversity and to predict ecosystem functioning. Here, the rapid evolutionary response of marine bacteria is used to study the positive effects of evolutionary history and species diversity on ecosystem productivity.

    • Dominique Gravel
    • , Thomas Bell
    •  & Nicolas Mouquet

  • Article |

    Humans, with their opposable thumbs, are not the only species with tool-related morphological adaptations. This study shows that tool use in New Caledonian crows is facilitated by a straight bill, enabling a firm grip on tools, and an extremely wide binocular field, affording excellent visual feedback.

    • Jolyon Troscianko
    • , Auguste M.P. von Bayern
    •  & Graham R. Martin

  • Article |

    The analysis of food web properties under different environmental conditions informs us how the ecosystem functions. Here, Tunneyet al. use post-glacial lakes as model ecosystems to show how macroscopic patterns of food webs vary with changes in habitat and resource accessibility.

    • Tyler D. Tunney
    • , Kevin S. McCann
    •  & Brian J. Shuter

  • Article |

    Sex pheromones are used by adult members of a species to attract a mate. This study proposes that the larvae of the cotton leafwormSpodoptera littoralisare attracted to sex pheromones and prefer a food source containing it, suggesting an alternative use of the sex pheromone to trigger food search in caterpillars.

    • Erwan Poivet
    • , Kacem Rharrabe
    •  & Emmanuelle Jacquin-Joly

  • Article |

    Methane is an important anthropogenic greenhouse gas and is thought to be produced by industrial processes and prokaryotic methanogenic Archaea. In this study, the saprotrophic fungi,Basidiomycetes, is shown to produce methane in the absence of methanogenic Archaea.

    • Katharina Lenhart
    • , Michael Bunge
    •  & Frank Keppler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether humans are the only animals with cultural behaviour remains an open question in behavioural research. Here, a network analysis of the social preferences among bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia finds that tool-using dolphins prefer others like themselves, suggesting the presence of cultural behaviour.

    • Janet Mann
    • , Margaret A. Stanton
    •  & Lisa O. Singh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Beringian mammoths were abundant 45,000 to 30,000 years ago, but then experienced a long decline in concert with changes in climate, habitat and human presence. This study uses14C dating to trace their spatio temporal pattern of extinction until the loss of final island populations about 4,000 years ago.

    • G.M. MacDonald
    • , D.W. Beilman
    •  & B. Van Valkenburgh

  • Article |

    Ecological factors impact cooperative and competitive behaviour, creating social conflict. Here, predictions from a game-theory model together with observations of Taiwan yuhinas—a joint-nesting species where group members are unrelated—show that these birds are more cooperative in unfavourable environmental conditions.

    • Sheng-Feng Shen
    • , Sandra L. Vehrencamp
    •  & Hsiao-Wei Yuan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Catch certificates and eco-labels are used to control illegal fishing worldwide, however, independent control methods are needed. Here, gene-associated SNPs are used to assign individual marine fish back to their population of origin with high precision, with potential application for illegal fishing control.

    • Einar E. Nielsen
    • , Alessia Cariani
    •  & Gary R. Carvalho

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fungus-growing ants cultivate fungi for food, but it is unclear whether single ant and fungal species are exclusive to one another. This study ofC. wheeleriants and their fungi shows that each ant species has been associated with a single fungal cultivar species for millions of years and that ant speciation coincides with shifts in fungal use.

    • Natasha J. Mehdiabadi
    • , Ulrich G. Mueller
    •  & Ted R. Schultz

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