613 Results Found

Assessment of the progress of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the safeguarding of ecosystems from the perverse negative impacts caused by Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradat...

The timing of leaf phenology tends to be crucial in controlling ecosystem processes such as the acquisition of carbon and water loss as well as in controlling tree nutrient cycling. To date, tree phenology has mostly been associated with environmenta...

Ants are crucial for the functioning of many terrestrial ecosystems, but detailed knowledge of their ecological role is often lacking. This is true for high mountains where a steep environmental gradient exists from mountainous forest, densely popula...

Microorganisms associated with plants play a crucial role in their growth, development, and overall health. However, much remains unclear regarding the relative significance of tree species identity and spatial variation in shaping the distribution o...

Deforestation and forest degradation in Andean forests is influenced by natural and social environments including a wide elevation range and anthropogenic disturbance. Tree community composition is receiving attention as a key indicator of forest deg...

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has initiated a new sustainability mechanism, the ecosystem-services certification. In this system, management entities who wish to be certified for the maintenance of ecosystem services (carbon, biodiversity, wat...

Successional dynamics of plants and animals during tropical forest regeneration have been thoroughly studied, while fungal compositional dynamics during tropical forest succession remain unknown, despite the crucial roles of fungi in ecological proce...

Research Highlights: Variations in species composition across church forests in northern Ethiopia were driven more by variations in human disturbance and community forest management than forest size. The degree of human disturbance acted as an enviro...

The identification of forest community types is essential for prioritizing choices and targets in species and community conservation purposes amid climate change impacts on forest community dynamics. Here, we determined the tree species composition,...

We assessed the understory herb-layer species composition in response to tree vegetation and its associated environmental factors in the reforested area of the Kulon Progo Community Forestry, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The understory herb-layer compositi...

Trees are natural capital assets, especially for cities, as they provide immense environmental benefits and improve urban biodiversity and ecology. However, urbanization has largely destroyed the original native ecosystems and has caused a homogeniza...

The production of tree seedlings in forest nurseries and their use in the replanting of clear-cut forest sites is a common practice in the temperate and boreal forests of Europe. Although conifers dominate on replanted sites, in recent years, deciduo...

Soil microorganisms are well known to play a crucial role in carbon and nutrient cycling within terrestrial ecosystems. Numerous research efforts have demonstrated that nitrogen deposition can change forest soil microbial diversity and community comp...

Tree ferns are ubiquitous in New Zealand forests, but there is limited knowledge of their role in urban plant communities and potential use in restoration. We assessed sixteen sites by measuring 200 m² plots to investigate how tree ferns influence va...

Biochar offers several benefits as a soil amendment, including increased soil fertility, carbon sequestration, and water-holding capacity in nutrient-poor soils. In this study, soil samples with and without biochar additives were collected for two co...

Iberian man-made oak savannahs (so called dehesas) are traditional silvopastoral systems with a high natural value. Scattered trees provide shelter and additional food to livestock (cattle in our study sites), which also makes possible for animals de...

The North American beaver (Castor canadensis Kuhl) and cottonwoods (Populus spp.) are foundation species, the interactions of which define a much larger community and affect a threatened riparian habitat type. Few studies have tested the effect of th...

The relative abundance of nitrogen-fixing species has been hypothesised to influence tree biomass, decomposition, and nitrogen availability in eucalypt forests. This prediction has been demonstrated in experimental settings (two-species mixtures) but...

Soil fungal community characteristics of alpine timberlines are unclear. In this study, soil fungal communities in five vegetation zones across timberlines on the south and north slopes of Sejila Mountain in Tibet, China were investigated. The result...

Specific studies of large trees in giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) habitats are currently lacking. To fill this research gap, a field survey on large trees in Wanglang Nature Reserve of China was conducted. According to a previous definition of...

The phyllosphere (aerial plant surfaces colonized by microorganisms) remains an understudied ecosystem in terms of bacterial biogeography, particularly at intermediate or local spatial scales. This study characterized the phyllosphere bacterial commu...

Little is known about the changes in resin composition in South American gymnosperms associated with the different seasons of the year. The diterpene composition of 44 resin samples from seven Austrocedrus chilensis (Cupressaceae) trees, including ma...

Although much is known about the ecology and functional importance of canopy arthropods in temperate forests, few studies have tried to assess the overall diversity and investigate the composition and dynamics of tree-specific communities. This has i...

Afforestation with different tree species formed different vegetation patterns, and altered soil properties and the composition and diversity of the soil bacterial community. In order to analyze the difference characteristics of vegetation, soil and...

Financially profitable large-scale cultivation of oil palm monocultures in previously diverse tropical rain forest areas constitutes a major ecological crisis today. Not only is a large proportion of the aboveground diversity lost, but the belowgroun...

The article presented here is the continuation of a study on the importance of dead wood for the biodiversity of the Uropodina (Acari: Parasitiformes) communities inhabiting dead wood. The major aim of this study is to check whether the species of tr...

We assessed the diversity and composition of fungal communities in different functional tissues and the rhizosphere soil of Pinus sylvestris and Picea abies stands along the latitudinal gradient of these tree species distributions in Europe to model...

The composition and complex interaction of microorganisms in forest trees are still unknown. However, current studies on cultivated plants indicate that the microbiome can have a significant influence on plant development, vitality, and susceptibili...

Research Highlights: Seasonally flooded and terra firme forests are characteristic ecosystems of the Colombian Orinoco Basin and of great importance in the maintenance of regional biodiversity and ecosystem function. These forests have a unimodal pre...

Examining the changes in woody plant structural diversity along an inverse elevation-dependent warming gradient will enhance our mechanistic understanding of how warming affects forest communities because such an inverse elevational gradient reflects...

Cacao agroforestry systems offer the potential to diversify farmer income sources, enhance biodiversity, sequester carbon, and deliver other important ecosystem services. To date, however, studies have emphasized field- and system-scale outcomes of s...

Forest management plans offer valuable data on forest species composition and structure, useful for large-scale bird conservation. We examined the relationship between bird community diversity and five vegetation characteristics from management plans...

The mass planting of mangroves has been proposed as a mitigation strategy to compensate for mangrove loss. However, the effects of mangrove vegetation on the abundance and community composition of macrobenthos remain controversial. The macrobenthic c...

Old-growth longleaf pine savannas are characterized by diverse ground-layer plant communities comprised of graminoids, forbs, and woody plants. These communities co-exist with variable-aged patches containing similar-aged trees of longleaf pine (Pinu...

Mixed broad-leaved trees are particularly effective in addressing ecological issues such as soil degradation and biodiversity loss caused by the dense planting of Chinese fir. Understanding the changes in soil bacterial communities in fir–broad...

Natural forests serve as the main component of the forest ecosystem. An in-depth interpretation of tree composition and structure of forest community is of great significance for natural forest conservation, monitoring, management, and near-natural s...

We investigated the effects on humans, in terms of skin conductance levels (SCLs) and positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS) scores, of plant communities that differed in their vegetation structure (single-layer woodland, tree-shrub-grass comp...

Nutritional content of host plants is expected to drive caterpillar species assemblages and their trait composition. These relationships are altered by tree richness-induced neighborhood variation and a seasonal decline in leaf quality. We tested how...

There is a need to understand how anthropogenic influences affect urban and periurban forest diversity at the regional scale. This study aims to compare urban and periurban tree composition along a geographic gradient, and test hypotheses about speci...

Bamboo and broad-leaved mixed forests have been widely recognized for their advantages in maintaining ecological balance, improving soil fertility, and enhancing biodiversity. To understand the effects of mixed broad-leaved tree species and mixing ra...

(1) Studying changes in plant composition and diversity of Pinus pumila communities along the elevation is significant for biodiversity conservation; (2) In this study, we systematically analysed Pinus pumila communities’ species composition an...

Invasive plants can significantly alter the composition and functioning of soil ecosystems, which in turn affects soil fauna such as microorganisms; mesofauna including mites, springtails, nematodes, and insects; and other invertebrates. We used clus...

Human disturbance and vegetation are known to affect soil microorganisms. However, the interacting effects of pavement and plant species on soil bacterial communities have received far less attention. In this study, we collected soil samples from pin...

Understory trees occupy a spatially heterogeneous light environment owing to light interception by patchily distributed canopy leaves. We examined the spatial distribution of canopy leaves and the spatial structure of the understory tree community (h...

Old trees function as enduring ecological legacies that preserve historical biodiversity within intensively human-modified landscapes, yet the relative influence of environmental versus anthropogenic drivers on their diversity remains unclear. Here,...

Although decades of research have typically demonstrated a positive correlation between biodiversity of primary producers and associated trophic levels, the ecological drivers of this association are poorly understood. Recent evidence suggests that t...

Urban trees provide many ecosystem services essential to city dwellers well-being. Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi are symbionts for trees and may also contribute to urban tree health and thus maintenance of the ecosystem services. However, no studies so...

The intercropping of nitrogen-fixing and non-nitrogen-fixing tree species changed the availability of soil nitrogen and soil microbial community structure and then affected the regulation process of soil carbon and nitrogen cycle by microorganisms in...

As a vital component of biodiversity, phyllosphere bacteria in forest canopy play a critical role in maintaining plant health and influencing the global biogeochemical cycle. There is limited research on the community structure of phyllosphere bacter...

Pinggu peach (Prunus persica (L.)) has great economic and ecological value in north China. As a plant, the peach is naturally colonized by a variety of endophytic fungi, which are very important for tree growth and health. However, the mycobiota comp...