Spatial ecology

Layer-specific imprints of traits within a plant–herbivore–predator network – complementary insights from complementary methods https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.07028

Who interacts with whom is a key question in community and network ecology. The concept that these interactions may be driven by a match between the traits of consumer and resource species is known as trait-matching. If trait-matching would allow for general predictions of interaction structure based on sufficiently few and easily-measurable traits, then this approach could replace the laborious description of each individual pairwise interaction. To resolve imprints of trait-matching in a species-rich tri-trophic Salix–galler–parasitoid network, and to identify the most relevant traits, we applied five different methods, each approaching the same phenomenon from a different perspective. As traits, we used, body sizes, gall type (position on plant, structure of gall) and phenology, among others, as well as phylogenetic proxies. When jointly applied, the methods demonstrate distinctly different imprints of traits within the two bipartite network elements (Salix–galler versus galler–parasitoid interactions). Of the galler–parasitoid sub-network's interactions, approximately half were explainable by the species traits used; of the Salix–galler sub-network's interactions, traits explained at most two-fifths. Gall type appeared to be the most important structuring trait in both networks. Phylogeny explained as much, or more than did our tested traits, suggesting that traits may be conserved and phylogeny therefore an effective proxy. Overall, the more specialized structure of the Salix–galler network versus the more nested structure of the galler–parasitoid network meant that different methods were more effective at capturing interactions and interaction structure in the different sub-networks. Thus, our analysis reveals how structuring impacts may vary even between levels within the same multitrophic network, and calls for comparative analyses of trait matching across a wide set of systems and methods.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-34037-6?fbclid=IwAR015_qDPe9fresNmiW4lnEdlsKW2sTeb9FSgJEVtrWT42Xsc0B4vq1yjEk

Rangeland Wildlife Ecology and Conservation This Open Access book will serve as a definitive reference for wildlife and rangeland managers, researchers, and policymakers in North America.

Animal‐mediated seed dispersal and the demo‐genetic configuration across plant colonization gradients Journal of Ecology publishes original research on all aspects of the plant ecology (including algae), in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Local adaptation in parapatric and sympatric mosaic coastal habitats through trait divergence of Setaria viridis Journal of Ecology publishes original research on all aspects of the plant ecology (including algae), in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

Spectral asynchrony as a measure of ecosystem response diversity

"Species diversity enhances ecosystem resilience by promoting asynchronous population responses during climatic fluctuations. Addressing the need for scalable metrics in conservation and ecosystem modelling, we introduce spectral asynchrony, a novel metric reflecting the spatial heterogeneity of species' functional responses over time. Utilizing remote sensing, our study establishes the association between spectral asynchrony and enhanced resistance, recovery, and stability in seasonally dry tropical forests, offering a practical tool for assessing ecosystem responses to global changes."

📄 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.17174?campaign=woletoc

Cloud-Free Global Maps of Essential Vegetation Traits Processed from the TOA Sentinel-3 Catalogue in Google Earth Engine Global mapping of essential vegetation traits (EVTs) through data acquired by Earth-observing satellites provides a spatially explicit way to analyze the current vegetation states and dynamics of our planet. Although significant efforts have been made, there is still a lack of global and consistentl...

Un libro muy interesante que puede serles muy útil

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-90998-7?fbclid=IwAR1w49UZofm3nUClXXZC5GL7b5s9qJ_XipcQqpOymJt1_-JePFjRxVO2KuY

Dynamic local anuran diversity across seasons in montane environments: insights from a subtropical frog inhabiting the Brazilian Atlantic Forest 🐸🏔

https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14695

Genetic diversity and historical range shifts of the common gartersnake in North America. Four distinct lineages were identified, suggesting a Pliocene origin and complex expansion patterns influenced by major rivers and climate changes.

https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.14709

|| NEW RESEARCH ||
Climate match is key to predict range expansion of the world's worst invasive terrestrial vertebrates

"Understanding factors determining range expansion of invasive non-native species is key to develop effective prevention strategies. Focusing on the world’s worst terrestrial vertebrate invaders, this study showed that, in addition to propagule pressure and human-assisted transportation, species in invaded regions having more similar climates with their native ranges tended to occupy larger size of invaded ranges, where should still be prioritized to prevent the spread of invasive non-native species under the sustained global change."

📄 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.17137?campaign=woletoc

Top ten hazards to avoid when modeling species distributions: a didactic guide of assumptions, problems, and recommendations https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.06852

Species distribution models, also known as ecological niche models or habitat suitability models, have become commonplace for addressing fundamental and applied biodiversity questions. Although the field has progressed rapidly regarding theory and implementation, key assumptions are still frequently violated and recommendations inadvertently overlooked. This leads to poor models being published and used in real-world applications. In a structured, didactic treatment, we summarize what in our view constitute the ten most problematic issues, or hazards, negatively affecting implementation of correlative approaches to species distribution modeling (specifically those that model suitability by comparing the environments of a species' occurrence records with those of a background or pseudoabsence sample). For each hazard, we state relevant assumptions, detail problems that arise when violating them, and convey straightforward existing recommendations. We also discuss five major outstanding questions of active current research. We hope this contribution will promote more rigorous implementation of these valuable models and stimulate further advancements.

RadWet: An Improved and Transferable Mapping of Open Water and Inundated Vegetation Using Sentinel-1 Mapping the spatial and temporal dynamics of tropical herbaceous wetlands is vital for a wide range of applications. Inundated vegetation can account for over three-quarters of the total inundated area, yet widely used EO mapping approaches are limited to the detection of open water bodies. This pap...

Global reductions in manual agricultural work capacity due to climate change Global Change Biology is an environmental change journal tackling issues such as sustainability, climate change and environmental protection.

‘phyloraster': an R package to calculate measures of endemism and evolutionary diversity for rasters
https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.06902

The spatial exploration of richness, endemism, and evolutionary diversity patterns has become an important part of biogeographic research and conservation planning. As the volume and complexity of biogeographical and phylogenetic data increase, the need for efficient tools to manipulate and analyze these datasets becomes essential. The 'phyloraster' package addresses this need by facilitating the analysis of evolutionary diversity and endemism for rasters. Our package offers a set of functions to support the linkage of species distribution models (SDMs) with phylogenies, providing then an understanding of the spatial distribution of biodiversity. It covers three main stages: pre-processing, processing, and post-processing of macroecological and phylogenetic data. During the pre-processing step, basic functions are provided to prepare the data. The processing step combines functions to calculate indices including species richness, Faith's phylogenetic diversity, phylogenetic endemism, weighted endemism, and evolutionary distinctiveness. Additionally, this step includes functions to compute the standardized effect size for each metric using spatial and phylogenetic randomization methods, ensuring proper control for richness effects. The post-processing stage includes functions to calculate the change of metrics between different times (e.g. present and future). In relation to processing in our functions, we show that 'phyloraster' takes up considerably less RAM than the other packages when computing the same metrics (weighted endemism). Lower RAM usage minimizes the hardware requirements to work with high-resolution datasets from local to global scales. This broadens user accessibility of the spatialized measures of endemism and evolutionary diversity.

A Cloud-Based Mapping Approach Using Deep Learning and Very-High Spatial Resolution Earth Observation Data to Facilitate the SDG 11.7.1 Indicator Computation As urbanized areas continue to expand rapidly across all continents, the United Nations adopted in 2015 the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, aimed at shaping a sustainable future for city dwellers. Earth Observation (EO) satellite data can provide at a fine scale, essential urban land use info...

Mapping Underwater Aquatic Vegetation Using Foundation Models With Air- and Space-Borne Images: The Case of Polyphytos Lake Mapping underwater aquatic vegetation (UVeg) is crucial for understanding the dynamics of freshwater ecosystems. The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has shown great potential in improving the accuracy and efficiency of UVeg mapping using remote sensing data. This paper present...

Global spectra of plant litter carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations and returning amounts Our results provide a quantitative assessment of the global concentrations and returning amounts of leaf litter C, N and P, which showed new light on the role of leaf litter in global C and nutrients...

‘RISDM‘: species distribution modelling from multiple data sources in R
https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.06964
Species distribution models (SDMs) are usually based on a single data type, such as presence-only (PO), presence-absence (PA) or abundance (AA). Results from SDMs using single sources of data will suffer from inherent biases and limitations to that data type. For example, PO data contain sampling-bias and PA/AA data are often less expansive and more sparse. Integrated SDMs (ISDMs) combine multiple data types and have recently emerged as a way to leverage strengths and minimise weaknesses of the different data types. They pose a common (distribution) model and separate observation models for each of the data types. The ‘RISDM' package for the R environment (www.r-project.org) provides access to this modelling framework using functions for preparation, fitting, interpreting and diagnosing models. The functionality of the package is demonstrated here using synthetic data sets.

Classification of Fish Species Using Multispectral Data from a Low-Cost Camera and Machine Learning This work creates a fish species identification tool combining a low-cost, custom-made multispectral camera called MultiCam and a trained classification algorithm for application in the fishing industry. The objective is to assess, non-destructively and using reflectance spectroscopy, the possibilit...