Ecosystem ecology articles within Nature Communications

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  • 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

    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

    Land use intensification could modify microbial activity and thus ecosystem function. Here, Malik et al. sample microbes and carbon-related functions across a land use gradient, demonstrating that microbial biomass and carbon use efficiency are reduced in human-impacted near-neutral pH soils.

    • Ashish A. Malik
    • , Jeremy Puissant
    •  & Robert I. Griffiths

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The magnitudes of replenishment and priming, two important but opposing fluxes in soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics, have not been compared. Here the authors show that the magnitude of replenishment is greater than that of priming, resulting in a net SOC accumulation after additional carbon input to soils.

    • Junyi Liang
    • , Zhenghu Zhou
    •  & Yiqi Luo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Degradation—the loss of carbon stored in intact woodland—is very difficult to measure over large areas. Here, the authors show that carbon emissions from degradation in African woodlands greatly exceed those from deforestation, but are happening alongside widespread increases in biomass in remote areas.

    • Iain M. McNicol
    • , Casey M. Ryan
    •  & Edward T. A. Mitchard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Drought conditions can alter the composition of soil microbial communities, but the effects of drought on network properties have not been tested. Here, de Vries and colleagues show that co-occurrence networks are destabilised under drought for bacteria but not fungi.

    • Franciska T. de Vries
    • , Rob I. Griffiths
    •  & Richard D. Bardgett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Woody plant encroachment has important implications for habitat conservation and global carbon budgets, but its drivers require quantification. Here, Venter et al. report that encroachment is predominantly driven by human activities, changing weather conditions, fire, and herbivory.

    • Z. S. Venter
    • , M. D. Cramer
    •  & H.-J. Hawkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invasive alien pests can cause large-scale forest mortality and release carbon stored in forests. Here the authors show that climate change increases the potential range of alien pests and that their impact on the carbon cycle could be as severe as the current natural disturbance regime in Europe’s forests.

    • Rupert Seidl
    • , Günther Klonner
    •  & Stefan Dullinger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Depending on where and when it occurs, vegetation cover change can affect local climate by altering the surface energy balance. Based on satellite data, this study provides the first data-driven assessment of such effects for multiple vegetation transitions at global scale.

    • Gregory Duveiller
    • , Josh Hooker
    •  & Alessandro Cescatti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evidence of inverted trophic pyramids in marine food webs has been enigmatic owing to lack of theoretical support. Here, Woodson et al. use metabolic and size-spectra theory to show that inverted pyramids are possible when food webs have generalist predators and consumers with large body sizes.

    • C. Brock Woodson
    • , John R. Schramski
    •  & Samantha B. Joye

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) drives biological responses in terrestrial ecosystems through oscillatory modes of climatic variability. Here, the authors show how landscape scale productivity responses to NAO are contingent upon the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation in southwestern Europe.

    • Jaime Madrigal-González
    • , Juan A. Ballesteros-Cánovas
    •  & Miguel A. Zavala

  • Article
    | Open Access

    As remote sensing technology improves, it is now possible to map fine-scale variation in plant functional traits. Schneider et al. remotely sense tree functional diversity, validate with field data, and reveal patterns of plant adaptation to the environment previously not retrievable from plot data

    • Fabian D. Schneider
    • , Felix Morsdorf
    •  & Michael E. Schaepman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Peatland plant communities are expected to be affected by environmental change, though how assemblages respond is not fully understood. Here, Robroek et al. show that peatland species occur in two distinct clusters, and functional identity and redundancy was maintained under taxonomic turnover.

    • Bjorn J. M. Robroek
    • , Vincent E. J. Jassey
    •  & Jos T. A. Verhoeven

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Theory and controlled experiments have shown that the recovery rate of an ecological variable from perturbation slows down before a critical tipping point. Here, van Belzen and colleagues demonstrate that slowed vegetation recovery to disturbance is also apparent in the natural system of a tidal marsh.

    • Jim van Belzen
    • , Johan van de Koppel
    •  & Tjeerd J. Bouma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The maintenance of bacterial and fungal activity is essential for ecosystem functioning, particularly in dry soils where the two phyla co-exist. Here, Worrich and colleagues show experimentally that mycelia traffic water and nutrients and thereby stimulate bacterial activity in stressful conditions.

    • Anja Worrich
    • , Hryhoriy Stryhanyuk
    •  & Lukas Y. Wick

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Effects of habitat restoration on belowground organisms and ecosystem processes are poorly understood. Morriën and colleagues show that changes in the composition and network interactions of soil biota lead to improved carbon uptake efficiency when formerly cultivated land is restored.

    • Elly Morriën
    • , S. Emilia Hannula
    •  & Wim H. van der Putten

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Site-level quantification of Net Ecosystem Production (NEP) and associated components rely on eddy covariance and biometric methods. Here these techniques are compared for global forest carbon fluxes, revealing differences in NEP, but similar estimates of ecosystem respiration and gross primary production.

    • M. Campioli
    • , Y. Malhi
    •  & I. A. Janssens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alluvial aquifers of river floodplains support abundant large-bodied consumers despite an absence of light and scarcity of organic carbon. DelVecchia et al. reveal that much of the biomass carbon in these freshwater consumers is ancient and derived from methane.

    • Amanda G. DelVecchia
    • , Jack A. Stanford
    •  & Xiaomei Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intensifying drought has caused massive die-offs in ecosystems worldwide. Here, Angelini et al.use observations, experiments, and models in US salt marshes to show that a key mutualism increases ecosystem resilience by maintaining stress-resistant habitat patches that aid post-drought recovery.

    • Christine Angelini
    • , John N. Griffin
    •  & Brian R. Silliman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coral reefs are productive ecosystems due to high levels of nutrient recycling in which fishes play a critical role. This study shows fishing can reduce the amount of nutrients supplied and stored by fishes to coral reefs by nearly half, even when the number of fish species present is largely unchanged.

    • Jacob E. Allgeier
    • , Abel Valdivia
    •  & Craig A. Layman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The role of microbial diversity in ecosystems is less well understood than, for example, that of plant diversity. Analysing two independent data sets at a global and regional scale, Delgado-Baquerizo et al. show positive effects of soil diversity on multiple terrestrial ecosystem functions.

    • Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
    • , Fernando T. Maestre
    •  & Brajesh K. Singh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Global change may affect the resilience of ecosystem functions by altering community composition. Here, Oliver et al.show that in Great Britain since the 1970s there have been significant net declines among animal species that provide key ecosystem functions such as pollination and pest control.

    • Tom H. Oliver
    • , Nick J. B. Isaac
    •  & James M. Bullock

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Belowground soil biota play key roles in maintaining proper ecosystem functioning, but studies on their extinction ecology are sparse. Here, Veresoglou et al. review the risks to soil biota posed by global change, and highlight the technical challenges involved in identifying extinction events.

    • Stavros D. Veresoglou
    • , John M. Halley
    •  & Matthias C. Rillig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Both deterministic and stochastic processes likely contribute to the assembly of ecological communities. Here, Powell et al. measure soil microbial community and habitat turnover across Scotland and show that stochastic processes usually dominate the assembly of fungal but not bacterial communities.

    • Jeff R. Powell
    • , Senani Karunaratne
    •  & Brajesh K. Singh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The response of marine fish assemblages to global change is not fully understood. Analysing a 29-year time-series, Magurran et al.show that despite little change in species richness, high species turnover is leading to North Atlantic groundfish assemblages becoming spatially homogenized, likely as a result of climatic change.

    • Anne E. Magurran
    • , Maria Dornelas
    •  & Brian McGill

  • Article |

    The formation of new feeding links by consumers adapting to the loss of prey is thought to buffer food webs against cascading extinctions. However, Ebenman et al.show that adaptive rewiring can still cause extinction cascades if predators are efficient at capturing rare prey, leading to overexploitation of resources.

    • David Gilljam
    • , Alva Curtsdotter
    •  & Bo Ebenman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Production and consumption of metabolites by soil microorganisms are important for nutrient cycling and maintenance of microbial diversity. Here, Baran et al. study metabolite uptake and release by desert soil microorganisms, showing that coexisting microbes can have divergent substrate preferences.

    • Richard Baran
    • , Eoin L. Brodie
    •  & Trent R. Northen

  • Article |

    Intraspecific variation is known to cascade evolutionary change down through food webs, although bottom-up changes are less well described. Here, Brodersenet al. show that life history change in a prey fish species, mediated through anthropogenic activity, can promote phenotypic diversification of its top predator.

    • Jakob Brodersen
    • , Jennifer G. Howeth
    •  & David M. Post

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about how detritivorous invertebrates cope with high levels of defensive plant polyphenols. Here, Liebekeet al. identify a new class of surface-active metabolites in earthworms exposed to high-polyphenol diets, and show that they play a protective role against precipitation of proteins.

    • Manuel Liebeke
    • , Nicole Strittmatter
    •  & Jacob G. Bundy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The influence of biodiversity on multiple ecosystem processes is not well understood. Analysing 94 biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments, Lefcheck et al. find that increased species richness maintains more ecological functions, across multiple taxa, trophic levels and habitats.

    • Jonathan S. Lefcheck
    • , Jarrett E. K. Byrnes
    •  & J. Emmett Duffy

  • Article |

    The role of successional state in determining ecosystem sensitivity to climate change is largely unknown. Here, the authors subject seven European shrublands to moderate warming and drought conditions over 14 years and show that responsiveness is associated with the dynamic state of the ecosystem.

    • György Kröel-Dulay
    • , Johannes Ransijn
    •  & Josep Penuelas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Functional differentiation and taxonomic diversity are related in modern ecosystems. Here, the authors show that functional differentiation lags behind taxonomic diversification early in the evolutionary history of marine animals and that important shifts in this relationship occur at major mass extinction events.

    • M.L. Knope
    • , N.A. Heim
    •  & J.L. Payne

  • Article |

    Some nutrient budgets and fluxes in aquatic environments are poorly constrained. Here, the authors identify a novel pathway of reactive nitrogen sequestration in lakes of the Sierra Nevada, and investigate the relative reactivity of dissolved organic carbon.

    • S.J. Goldberg
    • , G.I. Ball
    •  & L.I. Aluwihare

  • Article |

    Most studies investigating the biodiversity–stability hypothesis have focused on disturbances that induce productivity losses. Using data from a 200–year flood event in a grassland biodiversity experiment, Wright et al. show that disturbances that increase productivity can also drive decreased stability.

    • Alexandra J. Wright
    • , Anne Ebeling
    •  & Nico Eisenhauer

  • Article |

    Species richness of predators in Pacific coral reef communities is less sensitive to habitat isolation than the species richness of their prey. Here, Stier et al. develop a colonization–extinction model to show that this pattern can be explained by limitations in prey dispersal at the larval stage.

    • Adrian C. Stier
    • , Andrew M. Hein
    •  & Michel Kulbicki

  • Article |

    Organisms exhibit considerable variation in resource competitiveness. Here, the authors explain this variation by showing that competitiveness either evolves to a state where individuals with different competitive abilities coexist, or to oscillations between periods of high and low competitiveness.

    • Sebastian A. Baldauf
    • , Leif Engqvist
    •  & Franz J. Weissing

  • Article |

    Species interactions are known to promote biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Here, the authors assess the effect of habitat alteration on a species network that considers multiple interaction types, and find that plants mediate the response of pollinators and seed dispersers to habitat degradation.

    • Jörg Albrecht
    • , Dana Gertrud Berens
    •  & Nina Farwig

  • Article |

    Ecosystems may irreversibly change after perturbations once the tipping point is reached. Here, the authors assess the dynamics of an experimental ecosystem on the brink of collapse and find that the producer populations grow in size as the environment deteriorates, but the collective dynamics slows down near the tipping point.

    • Andrew Chen
    • , Alvaro Sanchez
    •  & Jeff Gore

  • Article |

    Early Permian sphenacodontid synapsids were the first terrestrial large-bodied apex predators. Here, Brink and Reisz show that sphenacodontids had a diverse dentition associated with the evolution of changes in feeding style at the onset of the first well established, complex terrestrial ecosystems.

    • Kirstin S. Brink
    •  & Robert R. Reisz

  • Article |

    The effect of lower Arctic sea ice levels on local terrestrial ecosystems is not well studied. Here Kerby and Post find that decreasing Arctic sea ice levels are associated with the early emergence of plant growth, which decouples plant growth from the birth of Caribou calves, and may be associated with increased calf mortality.

    • Jeffrey T. Kerby
    •  & Eric Post

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