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Everything ecology and evolutionary biology
Marc Cadotte
28 posts
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- January 14, 2009
- 07:15 PM
- 817 views
However you skin them, cats have important ecosystem consequences
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
For disclosure’s sake, I was the editor who handled this paper, and much of this post comes from an editorial I wrote for this paper.Islands experience the greatest impacts from the invasion of non-indigenous species and are also at the forefront of efforts to eradicate problematic species and mitigate negative impacts. Bergstrom et al. elegantly studied the habitat and ecosystem consequences from the eradication of feral cats from Macquarie Island, a subantarctic island and a world heritage s........ Read more »
Dana M. Bergstrom, Arko Lucieer, Kate Kiefer, Jane Wasley, Lee Belbin, Tore K. Pedersen, & Steven L. Chown. (2009) Indirect effects of invasive species removal devastate World Heritage Island. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46(1), 73-81. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01601.x
- March 23, 2009
- 02:37 PM
- 760 views
Conserve now or wait for the data?
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
E. O. Wilson, referring to the ethical imperative we should apply to the conservation of life, said “The ethical imperative should be, first of all, prudence. We should judge every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and to come to understand what it means to humanity” (pg. 351, The Diversity of Life). Although, I would argue we should aim to learn biodiversity’s value, both intrinsic and extrinsic, as opposed to what it solely means to humanity, his point is protec........ Read more »
Grantham, H., Wilson, K., Moilanen, A., Rebelo, T., & Possingham, H. (2009) Delaying conservation actions for improved knowledge: how long should we wait?. Ecology Letters, 12(4), 293-301. DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01287.x
- February 3, 2009
- 06:43 PM
- 728 views
Local extinctions reveal metacommunity dynamics.
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Metacommunity dynamics (i.e., that dispersal limitation among locales creates spatially-contingent community processes) have been in vogue over the past half-decade. Many of the advances in this field have come from theoretical models, computer simulations, artificial laboratory assemblages of micro-organisms (with yours truly being a major offender) and field experiments using small-bodied, short-lived organisms. An oft-repeated criticism has been that the necessary conditions for metacommunity........ Read more »
Kevin C. Burns, & Christopher J. Neufeld. (2009) Plant extinction dynamics in an insular metacommunity. Oikos, 118(2), 191-198. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2008.16816.x
- February 10, 2009
- 01:23 AM
- 727 views
Stability begets diversity
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
A classic hypothesis to explain the high diversity found in tropical rain forests, is that areas within the tropics served as a climatic refuges during Pleistocene global climate fluctuations (e.g., ice ages). These refuges beget diversity because they face much lower extinction rates then non-refuges and they are older, allowing speciation events to accrue. This hypothesis has proven controversial as evidence has been circumstantial and circular (i.e., high diversity areas are taken as evidence........ Read more »
A. C. Carnaval, M. J. Hickerson, C. F. B. Haddad, M. T. Rodrigues, & C. Moritz. (2009) Stability Predicts Genetic Diversity in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest Hotspot. Science, 323(5915), 785-789. DOI: 10.1126/science.1166955
- March 27, 2009
- 01:47 PM
- 694 views
The evolutionary meaning of autumn colors
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
As a kid growing up in Ontario, Canada, I have vivid memories of vast expanses of forests set ablaze by their autumn colors. Whole landscapes look like the canvas of a painter whose love of red, orange, gold and yellow are readily apparent. But, like most biologists, I had been taught that these colors are simply the by-product of leaf senescence, nothing more than a biochemical accident. I was amazed to read Marco Archetti's recent work showing that there may actually be adaptive benefits to ch........ Read more »
Archetti, M. (2009) Classification of hypotheses on the evolution of autumn colours. Oikos, 118(3), 328-333. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2008.17164.x
Archetti, M. (2008) Phylogenetic analysis reveals a scattered distribution of autumn colours. Annals of Botany, 103(5), 703-713. DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcn259
Archetti, M., Döring, T., Hagen, S., Hughes, N., Leather, S., Lee, D., Lev-Yadun, S., Manetas, Y., Ougham, H., & Schaberg, P. (2009) Unravelling the evolution of autumn colours: an interdisciplinary approach. Trends in Ecology , 24(3), 166-173. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2008.10.006
- February 20, 2009
- 02:32 AM
- 689 views
Increased access to science, but who gets to publish?
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
What role will open access (OA) journals play as science publishing increasingly moves to the internet and involves a more diverse array of participants? In a recent short article in Science, Evans and Reimer tried to answer this using citation rates from 8253 journals and examine trends in citation rate shifts. They found that researchers from wealthier countries were not likely to shift to citing OA journals while researchers from poorer countries did. The authors conclude that the overall sh........ Read more »
J. A. Evans, & J. Reimer. (2009) Open Access and Global Participation in Science. Science, 323(5917), 1025-1025. DOI: 10.1126/science.1154562
- February 22, 2009
- 12:41 PM
- 659 views
The incredible spreadable weeds
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Research into the spread of non-native species usually assumes a long time lag between introduction and rapid spread, and many studies cite 50 years as the lag time. The reason for believing this is that it is thought that there needs to be sufficient time for adaptations to fine tune the fit between the exotic and its new environment, or that densities are so low to start with, finding mates and buffering populations from stochasticity (i.e., Allee effects) takes time. However, Curtis Daehler a........ Read more »
Curtis C. Daehler. (2009) Short Lag Times for Invasive Tropical Plants: Evidence from Experimental Plantings in Hawai'i. PLoS ONE, 4(2). DOI: 10.1371/Journal.pone.0004462
- March 6, 2009
- 03:56 PM
- 643 views
Salamaders and climate change -impending extinctions?
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
By the now the evidence of a global frog decline, perhaps even an extinction crisis, has been well documented. But what about salamanders? They are normally less abundant and less-studied compared to frogs, but is there evidence of the same general pattern of declining population sizes? According to Sean Rovito and colleagues, the answer is unfortunately yes. They repeated a plethodontid (lungless) salamander survey done in the 1970’s in Central America and found that many species have decline........ Read more »
S. M. Rovito, G. Parra-Olea, C. R. Vasquez-Almazan, T. J. Papenfuss, & D. B. Wake. (2009) Dramatic declines in neotropical salamander populations are an important part of the global amphibian crisis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(9), 3231-3236. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0813051106
- May 28, 2009
- 06:27 PM
- 640 views
How long does it take for an ecosystem to recover?
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Numerous human activities, such as logging, fishing, pollution and the introduction of exotic species negatively impact ecosystems around the world. These negative impacts mean ecosystems lose species diversity, biomass production, carbon storage, and nutrient uptake. An important question is, how long does it take for ecosystems to recover from perturbations. The answer to this question can inform conservation policy and strategies and could help focus management resources.In a recent PLoS ONE ........ Read more »
Jones, H., & Schmitz, O. (2009) Rapid Recovery of Damaged Ecosystems. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005653
- March 17, 2009
- 03:58 PM
- 634 views
Being a clover isn’t always so lucky
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, I thought that covering an article about Trifolium (clover) seemed very appropriate. In a paper by Matthias Schleuning and colleagues, Trifolium montanum is a species in decline in central Germany. They examined the relative threats of habitat fragmentation and degradation on T. montanum’s population dynamics. They found that both degradation and fragmentation were having serious negative impacts. Degraded habitats in this system mean the shift away from nutrient-poo........ Read more »
SCHLEUNING, M., NIGGEMANN, M., BECKER, U., & MATTHIES, D. (2009) Negative effects of habitat degradation and fragmentation on the declining grassland plant Trifolium montanum. Basic and Applied Ecology, 10(1), 61-69. DOI: 10.1016/j.baae.2007.12.002
- May 20, 2009
- 07:19 PM
- 580 views
Fire and the changing world
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
This is probably the most appropriate blog I have ever written. My family and I were evacuated two weeks ago because of the Jesusita fire in Santa Barbara, and several homes in our neighborhood were lost. Here in Santa Barbara we have experienced multiple years of extremely large fires, with this last one occurring much earlier than previous fires.Wildfires have been a part of the Earth’s biota likely since organisms first died and dried on land. Ecosystems have been shaped by fire, numerous o........ Read more »
Bowman, D., Balch, J., Artaxo, P., Bond, W., Carlson, J., Cochrane, M., D'Antonio, C., DeFries, R., Doyle, J., Harrison, S.... (2009) Fire in the Earth System. Science, 324(5926), 481-484. DOI: 10.1126/science.1163886
- April 22, 2009
- 06:10 PM
- 579 views
People value rare species; at least from their computers
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Do people value rare species more than common ones? This is an important question for conservation because not only does valuation justify public funds being spent conserving rare species, but valuation can have negative implications as well. In what is called the ‘anthropogenic Allee effect’, increased valuation can increase species desirability –thus enhancing monetary value for exotic pets, building ecotourism lodges in sensitive habitats, or exotic tasty dishes (ah, the freshman). In w........ Read more »
Angulo, E., & Courchamp, F. (2009) Rare Species Are Valued Big Time. PLoS ONE, 4(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005215
- May 1, 2009
- 01:48 AM
- 526 views
Enrichment and diversity loss: a mechanism tested
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
To paraphrase Thomas Henry Huxley: How stupid of us not to have thought of that!In what has to be one of the most elegant and simple experiments I've seen in a long time, Yann Hautier, Pascal Niklaus and Andy Hector tested a basic mechanism of why nutrient enrichment results in species loss. This is a critically important issue as it has been repeatedly shown that while adding nitrogen to plant communities causes increases in productivity, species go locally extinct. We may bare witness to local........ Read more »
Hautier, Y., Niklaus, P., & Hector, A. (2009) Competition for Light Causes Plant Biodiversity Loss After Eutrophication. Science, 324(5927), 636-638. DOI: 10.1126/science.1169640
- September 25, 2009
- 10:09 PM
- 401 views
Global warming and shifts in food web strucutre
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Predicting the effects of global warming on biological systems is of critical importance for informing proactive policy decisions. Most research so far has been on trying to predict shifts in species distributions and changes in interactions within local habitats. But what many of these studies assume is that the basic biological processes and requirements of the individual species will not change -that is their biology is fixed and they simply need to find the place that best suits them. Not so........ Read more »
O'Connor, M., Piehler, M., Leech, D., Anton, A., & Bruno, J. (2009) Warming and Resource Availability Shift Food Web Structure and Metabolism. PLoS Biology, 7(8). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000178
- August 25, 2009
- 06:40 AM
- 397 views
March of polyploids!
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Speciation by polyploidy (see here for a general description of polyploidy) is one of the mechanisms of speciation and evolutionary diversification. We all learn about it in Bio 101, right after allopatry and sympatry. It is thought to be an especially important driver of speciation in plants, and anecdotal evidence, such as the origination of the invasive polyploid, Spartina anglica in the UK in the 1800's, reinforced that view. But how important has been unanswered until now.In a new publicati........ Read more »
Wood, T., Takebayashi, N., Barker, M., Mayrose, I., Greenspoon, P., & Rieseberg, L. (2009) The frequency of polyploid speciation in vascular plants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(33), 13875-13879. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811575106
- September 21, 2009
- 09:06 PM
- 383 views
Everything but extinct: invasion impacts on native diversity
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
There has been a persistent debate in the plant invasions literature about whether exotic plant invasions are a major threat to native plant persistence. While there are clear examples of animal invasions resulting in large scale extinction -e.g., the brown tree snake or Nile perch, evidence has been ambiguous for plants. Most ecologists are not so sanguine as to actually conclude that plant invasions are not a threat, and I think most believe that plant invader effects are an issue of temporal ........ Read more »
Jäger, H., Kowarik, I., & Tye, A. (2009) Destruction without extinction: long-term impacts of an invasive tree species on Galápagos highland vegetation. Journal of Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01578.x
- August 18, 2009
- 10:06 AM
- 336 views
Unifying invader success and impact
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Something that has continuously bothered me about our collective narrative concerning invasions has been the conflicting processes determining invader success and impact. Numerous studies (including some of my own) show that invaders are successful often because they are different from residents. That is, they are thought to occupy some unique niche. However, occupying a unique niche means that competition is minimized and these successful invaders should have relatively low impact on residents......... Read more »
MacDougall, A., Gilbert, B., & Levine, J. (2009) Plant invasions and the niche. Journal of Ecology, 97(4), 609-615. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01514.x
- October 7, 2009
- 11:38 AM
- 324 views
Exotic plants integrate into plant-pollinator networks
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
At almost any spot on the globe, there are species present that are not native to that locale, having been transported by human activities. Whether and how exotic species impact communities is a multifaceted problem that requires understanding the multitude of direct and indirect species interactions that occur. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, Montserrat Vila and colleagues asked if exotic plants where integrated into plant-pollinator networks, and whether this i........ Read more »
Vila, M., Bartomeus, I., Dietzsch, A., Petanidou, T., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Stout, J., & Tscheulin, T. (2009) Invasive plant integration into native plant-pollinator networks across Europe. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276(1674), 3887-3893. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1076
- October 21, 2009
- 05:04 PM
- 315 views
Adaptation and dispersal = (mal)adapted
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Ever since Darwin, we often think of organisms as being in a constant battle against other organisms and local environments. Thus natural selection and the resulting arms race results in organisms highly adapted to local conditions and against local antagonists. At the same time, and especially driven by theoretical advances in the 1990's, researchers began to ask how dispersal -that is, the flow of genetic material from elsewhere, can disrupt local adaptation. On the one hand it may provide gen........ Read more »
Anderson, J., & Geber, M. (2009) DEMOGRAPHIC SOURCE-SINK DYNAMICS RESTRICT LOCAL ADAPTATION IN ELLIOTT'S BLUEBERRY ( ) . Evolution. DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00825.x
- November 25, 2009
- 10:13 PM
- 263 views
Taking below-ground processes seriously: plant coexistence and soil depth
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Some of the earliest ecologists, like Eugen Warming and Christen Raunkiaer, were enthralled with the minutia of the differences in plant life forms and how these differences determined where plants lived. They realized that differences in plant growth forms corresponded to how different plants made their way in the world. Since this early era, understanding the mechanisms of plant competition is one of the most widely-studied aspects of ecology. This is such an important aspect of ecology becaus........ Read more »
Dornbush, M., & Wilsey, B. (2009) Experimental manipulation of soil depth alters species richness and co-occurrence in restored tallgrass prairie. Journal of Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01605.x
Bartelheimer, M., Gowing, D., & Silvertown, J. (2009) Explaining hydrological niches: the decisive role of below-ground competition in two closely related species . Journal of Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01598.x
Cramer, M., van Cauter, A., & Bond, W. (2009) Growth of N -fixing African savanna species is constrained by below-ground competition with grass . Journal of Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01594.x
Meier, C., Keyserling, K., & Bowman, W. (2009) Fine root inputs to soil reduce growth of a neighbouring plant via distinct mechanisms dependent on root carbon chemistry. Journal of Ecology, 97(5), 941-949. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2009.01537.x
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