2020 November - 33 articles
The most common ecological response to climate change is the shifts in species distribution ranges. Nevertheless, landscape fragmentation compromises the ability of limited dispersal species to move following these climate changes. Building connected...
Evolutionary processes fuelling rapid species diversification are not yet fully understood, although their major contribution to overall patterns of plant biodiversity is well established. Hybridisation is among the least understood of these processe...
Interests to estimate and assess the diversity of ciliates have a centuries-long history [...]
Plant communities form the structural and functional basis for nearly all terrestrial ecosystems [...]
Agronomic management modifies the soil bacterial communities and may alter the carbon fractions. Here, we identify differences in several chemical and biological soil variables, as well as bacterial composition between organic (Org) and conventional...
Fungi play key roles at two levels of ecological organization: in communities, fungi are symbionts of plants and animals, while in ecosystems, fungi are decomposers that recycle nutrients to other organisms [...]
Large-scale dinoflagellate blooms have appeared in recent decades in the Taiwan Strait, Southeast China. To study spatial variability of phytoplankton community composition, physical and chemical environmental drivers in surface seawater of the Taiwa...
Spatial configuration of habitat types in multihabitat seascapes influence ecological function through links of biotic and abiotic processes. These connections, for example export of organic matter or fishes as mobile links, define ecosystem function...
Diatoms inhabiting terrestrial habitats that are affected by thermal activity remain poorly studied, despite significant interest in the biodiversity of hot springs. The Kamchatka peninsula is characterized by the presence of 30 active volcanoes asso...
The rhizosphere fungal community is essential for determining plant health and improving crop productivity. The fungal community structure and functional roles in the plastic shed soils were explored using high throughput sequencing and FUNGuild in t...
Almost all pea crab species in the subfamily Pinnotherinae (Decapoda: Brachyura: Pinnotheridae) are considered obligatory endo- or ectosymbionts, living in a mutualistic or parasitic relationship with a wide variety of invertebrate hosts, including b...
The architectural complexity of coral-reef habitat plays an important role in determining the assemblage structure of reef fish. We investigated associations between the reef habitats and fish assemblages in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) u...
Acanthurids (surgeonfishes) are an abundant and diverse group of herbivorous fishes on coral reefs. While their contribution to trophic linkages and dynamics in coral reef systems has received considerable attention, the role of linkages involving th...
Larks constitute an avian family of exceptional cryptic diversity and striking examples of convergent evolution. Therefore, traditional morphology-based taxonomy has recurrently failed to reflect evolutionary relationships. While taxonomy ideally sho...
Seascapes are typically comprised of multiple components that are functionally linked by the movement of organisms and fluxes of matter. Changes to the number and spatial arrangement of these linkages affect biological connectivity that, in turn, can...
Wolbachia bacteria are widely distributed across invertebrate taxa, including ants, but several aspects of this host-associated interaction are still poorly explored, especially with regard to the ancestral state association, origin, and dispersion p...
The biotas of the Galápagos Islands are one of the best studied island systems and have provided a broad model for insular species’ origins and evolution. Nevertheless, some locally endemic taxa, such as the Galápagos Rail Lateral...
Efforts to conserve rare plant species can be limited by a lack of time and funding for monitoring. Understanding species occurrence and distribution patterns within existing protected habitat and throughout the entire species range can help stewards...
The term “rare in space and time” is often used to typify the spatial and temporal patterns of occurrence of heterobranch sea slugs. However, “rare” in this context has not been clearly defined. In an attempt to provide more i...
Paraseriantheslophantha subsp. lophantha (Leguminosae) is native to southwestern Australia, but has become naturalized in eastern Australia and in countries around the world. Previous studies have investigated the introduction sources for P. lophanth...
The anthropization of the landscape of the Cerrado biome that has occurred over the past few decades has fragmented its natural environments, impacting the connectivity of the plant populations and altering their gene flow. Plant species may also red...
The degradation of tropical pastures sown with introduced grasses (e.g., Urochloa spp.) has dramatic environmental and economic consequences in Latin America. Nitrogen (N) limitation to plant growth contributes to pasture degradation. The introductio...
The middle Eocene in Nei Mongol (China) was an interval of profound faunal changes as regards the basal Glires and gliriform mammals in general. A major diversification of rodent lineages (ctenodactyloids) and more modern small-sized lagomorphs was a...
Sclerolaena napiformis is a perennial chenopod endemic to southeast Australia. Human-mediated habitat loss and fragmentation over the past century has caused a rapid decline in abundance and exacerbated reduced connectivity between remnant population...
Plant microbiota support the diversity and productivity of plants. Thus, cultivation-dependent approaches are indispensable for in vitro manipulation of hub taxa. Despite recent advances in high-throughput methods, cultivability is lagging behind oth...
Predation is ubiquitous in nature and can be an important component of both ecological and evolutionary interactions. One of the most striking features of predators is how often they cause evolutionary diversification in natural systems. Here, we rev...
Although dispersal is critical to plant life history, the relationships between seed traits and dispersal success in animal-dispersed plants remain unclear due to complex interactions among the effects of seed traits, habitat structure, and disperser...
Ramón Margalef proposed in 1968 that ecosystems could be better understood if they were viewed as cybernetic systems. I tested this hypothesis in the case of hypogean ecosystems using available pieces of evidence. I looked on how information o...
The Special Issue “Genetic Diversity of Soil Bacterial Communities” collected research and review articles addressing some relevant and unclear aspects of the composition and functioning of bacterial communities in rich or marginal agricu...
Mesophotic ecosystems (MEs) are characterized by the presence of light-dependent organisms, found at depths ranging from ~30 to 150 m in temperate, subtropical and tropical regions. These communities occasionally create massive reef structures with d...
Translocation is increasingly being used to supplement existing occurrences and establish new occurrences of rare plant species, but translocation success is dependent on understanding responses to habitat conditions and management. Platanthera integ...
Most ecological studies require a cost-effective collection of multi-species samples. A literature review unravelled that (1) large-sized grabs to collect infauna have been used at greater depths, despite no consistent relationship between grab size...
Reliable estimates of animal and plant population sizes are necessary to track trends in populations through time. Diamondback terrapins are an ecologically unique keystone species that are globally declining. Conservation efforts for this species re...
