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All things ecology and evolutionary biology
The EEB and flow
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- March 9, 2010
- 09:44 AM
- 40 views
Ecology and industry: bridging the gap between economics and the environment
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Applied ecology is the science of minimizing human impacts and of supporting ecological systems in an economic landscape. Often though, applied ecologists work in isolation from those economic forces shaping biological landscapes, not really knowing what businesses would like to accomplish for habitat protection or sustainability. At the same businesses are seldom aware of the knowledge, tools and insight provided by ecologists. And perhaps, greater interaction could help turn ecology into a sci........ Read more »
Armsworth, P., Armsworth, A., Compton, N., Cottle, P., Davies, I., Emmett, B., Fandrich, V., Foote, M., Gaston, K., Gardiner, P.... (2010) The ecological research needs of business. Journal of Applied Ecology, 47(2), 235-243. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2010.01792.x
- February 22, 2010
- 06:30 PM
- 56 views
How can evolution inform conservation decisions?
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
First of all, let me apologize for the lack of blog posts over the past 2 weeks, I've been busy visiting the Olympics and reading a couple of hundred blog, judging them for the Research Blogging awards.
The conservation of biological diversity is a major imperative for biologists. International agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and intergovernmental exercises, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, call upon scientists to provide evidence on the current state of bi........ Read more »
Hendry, A., Lohmann, L., Conti, E., Cracraft, J., Crandall, K., Faith, D., Häuser, C., Joly, C., Kogure, K., Larigauderie, A.... (2010) EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY IN BIODIVERSITY SCIENCE, CONSERVATION, AND POLICY: A CALL TO ACTION. Evolution. DOI: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.00947.x
- February 3, 2010
- 09:38 PM
- 102 views
The evolution of a symbiont
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
The evolution of negative interactions seems like a logical consequence of natural selection. Organisms compete for resources or view one another as a resource, thus finding ways to more efficiently find and consume prey. However, to me, the natural selection of symbiotic or mutualistic interactions has never seemed as straight forward (expect maybe the case where one species provides protection for the other, such as in ant-plant mutualisms). A specific example is the rise of nitrogen-fixing pl........ Read more »
Marchetti, M., Capela, D., Glew, M., Cruveiller, S., Chane-Woon-Ming, B., Gris, C., Timmers, T., Poinsot, V., Gilbert, L., Heeb, P.... (2010) Experimental Evolution of a Plant Pathogen into a Legume Symbiont. PLoS Biology, 8(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000280
- January 19, 2010
- 09:47 PM
- 87 views
Timing is everything: global warming and the timing of species interactions
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
While an obvious affect of climate change will be changes in the distributions or range sizes of species, more insidious and likely more consequential will be how species interactions are affected by changes in the timing of growth and reproduction. These changes in an organism's life cycle, or phenology, can create mismatches between an organism's need and resource availability or the readiness of coevolved partners -such as plants and pollinators.In an 'Idea and Perspective' paper in Ecology L........ Read more »
Yang, L., & Rudolf, V. (2010) Phenology, ontogeny and the effects of climate change on the timing of species interactions. Ecology Letters, 13(1), 1-10. DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01402.x
- January 14, 2010
- 10:28 PM
- 140 views
Plant genotypic diversity supports pollinator diversity
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Research over the past 20 years has shown that plant communities with greater diversity maintain higher productivity, greater stability and support more diverse arthropod assemblages. More recently, several experiments have shown that interspecific diversity (namely genotypic differences) also affects community functioning. Pollination is often considered an essential function, and does plant genotypic diversity affect pollinator diversity and frequency?In a recent paper in PLoS ONE, Genung and ........ Read more »
Genung, M., Lessard, J., Brown, C., Bunn, W., Cregger, M., Reynolds, W., Felker-Quinn, E., Stevenson, M., Hartley, A., Crutsinger, G.... (2010) Non-Additive Effects of Genotypic Diversity Increase Floral Abundance and Abundance of Floral Visitors. PLoS ONE, 5(1). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008711
- January 5, 2010
- 12:50 PM
- 148 views
Predicting invader success requires integrating ecological and land use patterns.
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Disclaimer, this was modified from an editorial I wrote for the Journal of Applied Ecology.In the quest to understand species invasions, we often try to link the abundance and distribution of invaders to underlying ecological processes. For example, oft-studied are the links between exotic diversity and native richness or environmental heterogeneity. Seemingly independently, research into how specific land use or management activities affect invasion dynamics is also fairly common. While both re........ Read more »
Diez, J., Buckley, H., Case, B., Harsch, M., Sciligo, A., Wangen, S., & Duncan, R. (2009) Interacting effects of management and environmental variability at multiple scales on invasive species distributions. Journal of Applied Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01725.x
- December 16, 2009
- 09:51 PM
- 201 views
Parastie competition enhances host survival
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Contracting a parasite is bad. But is getting colonized by multiple parasitic species worse? This is an interesting and important question. The host is a resource, which can support a limited number of parasitic individuals, and so how does competition affect parasitic species and host mortality?This was the premise of a recent paper by Oliver Balmer and colleagues, studying trypanosome infection of mice hosts. They engineered two transgeneic strains of the protozoan parasite, Trypanosoma brucei........ Read more »
Balmer, O., Stearns, S., Schötzau, A., & Brun, R. (2009) Intraspecific competition between co-infecting parasite strains enhances host survival in African trypanosomes. Ecology, 90(12), 3367-3378. DOI: 10.1890/08-2291.1
- November 25, 2009
- 10:13 PM
- 261 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
- November 9, 2009
- 10:14 AM
- 246 views
Emergent linkages in seemingly unconnected food chains
by Marc Cadotte in The EEB and flow
Food webs are notoriously complex, and a difficult aspect of ecology is to offer a priori model-derived predictions of food web processes. There are some ecologists, such Neo Martinez and Jordi Bascompte, who have advanced our understanding of the general mechanisms of food web properties and dynamics through tools such as network theory. Such advanced approaches rely on direct interactions among species, or at least indirect interactions that are mediated through changes in abundance of differe........ Read more »
Prasad, R., & Snyder, W. (2009) A non-trophic interaction chain links predators in different spatial niches. Oecologia. DOI: 10.1007/s00442-009-1486-7
- October 21, 2009
- 05:04 PM
- 313 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
- October 7, 2009
- 11:38 AM
- 321 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
- September 25, 2009
- 10:09 PM
- 400 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
- September 21, 2009
- 09:06 PM
- 382 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 25, 2009
- 06:40 AM
- 395 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
- 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
- May 28, 2009
- 06:27 PM
- 636 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- March 27, 2009
- 01:47 PM
- 691 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
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