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271 results for “ecological research”
Supplementary material from: Aslan CE, Sikes BA, Gedan KB (2015) Research on mutualisms between native and non-native partners can contribute critical ecological insights. NeoBiota 26: 39-54. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.26.8837
Supplementary material from: Aslan CE, Sikes BA, Gedan KB (2015) Research on mutualisms between native and non-native partners can contribute critical ecological insights. NeoBiota 26: 39-54. https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.26.8837
Trends in research approaches and gender in plant ecology dissertations over four decades
<p>Dissertations are a foundational scientific product; they are the formative product that early-career scientists create and share original knowledge. Methodological approaches used in dissertations vary depending on the research field. In plant ecology, these approaches include observations, experiments (field or controlled-environment), literature reviews, theoretical approaches, or analyses of existing data (including 'big data'). This dataset was created to examine how the emphasis on each of these categories has changed over time, and whether male and female authors differ in the methods employed. The dissertations used for this study were gathered from the <em>Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global</em> (<a href="https://www.proquest.com/pqdtglobal)">https://www.proquest.com/pqdtglobal</a><a href="https://www.proquest.com/pqdtglobal)">)</a> database.</p>
A synthesis of hydroclimatic, ecological, and socioeconomic data for transdisciplinary research in the Mekong
<p>Various climate, hydro-meteorological, ecological, and socio-economic datasets are synthesized and made available for the Mekong River Basin. The sources of each dataset are also mentioned in the associated readme file.</p> <p>Dam attribute data, inundation data, and Cambodia census data can be made available upon request to the authors.</p>
Fig. 1A–D in Review paper A Half-century of Research on Free-living Amoebae (1965-2017): Review of Biogeographic, Ecological and Physiological Studies
Fig. 1A–D. Column graphs showing the number of published papers reviewed (ordinate) grouped by decades (abscissa). 1A – Total; 1B – Biogeography; 1C – Ecology; 1D – Physiology.
Trends in research approaches and gender in plant ecology dissertations over four decades
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International Long-Term Ecological Research Network (ILTER) Atmospheric Deposition and Stream Nitrogen Synthesis
We identified variables controlling stream nitrogen concentrations and fluxes, and how they have changed over time, by synthesizing 20 time series ranging from 5 to 51 years of data collected from forest and grassland dominated watersheds across Europe, North America, and East Asia and across four climate types (tropical, temperate, Mediterranean, and boreal) using the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network. We found declining trends in bulk ammonium and nitrate deposition, with ammonium contributing significantly more to atmospheric nitrogen deposition over time. Among sites, there were significant positive relationships between (1) precipitation and stream ammonium and nitrate fluxes and (2) atmospheric nitrogen inputs and stream nitrogen concentrations and fluxes. There were no significant relationships between air temperature and stream nitrogen export. Our long-term data shows that although nitrogen deposition is declining over time, atmospheric nitrogen inputs and precipitation remain the main predictors for nitrogen exported from forested and grassland watersheds. Overall, we also demonstrate that long-term monitoring provides understanding of ecosystems and biogeochemical cycling that would not be possible with short-term studies alone. Acknowledgements: We thank the organizers and funders of the ILTER Nitrogen Initiative Training Course and Workshop in Hokkaido, Japan in June 2016, which brought together many of the participants in this project. Templer was supported by a US National Science Foundation LTER grant NSF DEB 1637685. McDowell was supported by US National Science Foundation LTER grant NSF DEB 1831592. We are grateful to the EU Horizon 2020 funded eLTER PLUS project (Grand Agreement No. 871128) for financial support to Haase and Dirnböck. Dirnböck was also funded by the LTER-CWN project (FFG project number 858024). This study was partly supported by the Research Initiative Grants of the ILTER, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (1
Review of ecological research approaches for the study of extreme events in aquatic ecosystems
Extreme climatic events have increased in frequency globally, with a simultaneous surge in scientific interest about their ecological consequences, particularly in sensitive freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems. In this context, it is imperative that ecologists apply their expertise to understand and predict the ecological impacts of extreme events, and to collaborate across disciplines and sectors to improve socio-ecological resilience to extreme events. However, ecological research on extreme events is often opportunistic and hampered by lack of coordination, among ecologists and among interdisciplinary collaborators. We conducted a literature search to investigate the research approaches that ecologists use to study extreme events in aquatic ecosystems (including freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems), that is, to understand how, when, and where ecologists study these events, and to identify areas to improve research practices. We used keywords related to ecology, aquatic ecosystems, and types of extreme events to identify 215 relevant papers in the literature and we examined these papers to identify 49 studies that met our inclusion criteria of including observations of ecological responses to an extreme event occurring in an aquatic ecosystem. We then extracted information from the 49 included papers, including information on the ecosystem, the extreme event, the spatial and temporal approaches to sampling, the types of response variables sampled, and the magnitude of responses measured. This dataset collates research approaches to the study of extreme events in aquatic ecosystems at a broad scale. Based on this literature review, we identified key areas where aquatic ecologists can improve research practices, including prioritizing pre- and post-event data collection, leveraging long-term and cross-site monitoring networks, and adopting novel approaches to analysis, synthesis, and collaboration.
EAP21-0576.R1 - Implementing Community-Engaged Ecological Research in Proctor Creek, an Urban Watershed in Atlanta, GA
The Southeast Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) implemented community-engaged research in Proctor Creek, an urban watershed in Northwest Atlanta, Georgia, to sample for aquatic species of concern in Atlanta, Georgia’s Proctor Creek Watershed as a part of the Urban Waters Federal Partnership program. This research shifted the focus of the agency from the endangered and pristine natural spaces to a major city watershed negatively impacted by urbanization and other human influences for more than a century. Team members from USFWS, Proctor Creek Watershed residents, local students, and other stakeholders in the UWFP spent three months conducting stream surveys and participating in community-led events to build relationships and learn community priorities. The team collected data at 11 sites throughout the Proctor Creek Watershed, visually assessed each site, and collected aquatic species using dip nets, seines, and traps. We observed approximately 28 aquatic species, including 13 unique fish species, and eight macroinvertebrate species, including two unique crayfish species. We also observed varying degrees of ecological health throughout the watershed. Native aquatic animal species were found at all stream sites, no matter the condition of the stream. Through creating training resources and disseminating data among team members for future sampling, the team established pathways to keep natural resource stewardship sustainable outside of direct federal involvement. Through engaging in community-engaged research to achieve the mission of the agency, the USFWS Proctor Creek watershed survey helped shift the paradigm of how government agencies can connect their mission statements to the ever-changing complex needs of the American public.
Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB): California vernal pool plant community ecology and restoration, 2000-2017
This data set includes annual vegetation data and selected water depth data collected during the period 2000-2017 from vernal pool basins that were constructed in 1999 as part of a large-scale vernal pool mitigation effort at Travis Air Force Base, California. The constructed pools covered an area of about 15 Ha and were located adjacent to a complex of naturally-occurring pools, which were used as reference sites for comparison. Five plant species were intentionally seeded into the pools according to five seeding treatment protocols to assess the influence of order of colonization, frequency of colonization, and dispersal limitation on vernal pool plant community assembly. Because water depth was known to influence plant species distributions, water depth was recorded weekly during the winter wet season in selected years for each constructed and reference pool at the site. Seed plots were 50 cm x 50 cm and were permanently marked and used for repeated sampling of vegetation from 2000-2017. For each plant species that occurred in the plots, the frequency of occurrence was recorded as the number of squares out of a 100-cell grid laid over the plot in which that plant species appeared. For the five species that were planted into the plots, the frequency was recorded, as above, but in addition the number of individuals of that species in the plot was also recorded.
Net nitrogen mineralization and nitrification across Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Sites
This project organizes data files and code associated with a study evaluating the effect of soil C concentration in the relationship between net N mineralization and net nitrification across terrestrial Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites in North America. Data were aggregated from publically-available LTER databases. Replicated-averaged data and code to replicate figures and analyses in Gill et al. 2022. Soil carbon availability decouples net nitrogen mineralization and net nitrification across United States Long Term Ecological Research Site. Biogeochemistry.
Climate Data Summaries for Long-Term Ecological Research Sites
This dataset contains historical climate data and climate summaries from Long-Term Ecological Research sites and other climate stations in their vicinity. It has as its basis "A Climatic Analysis Of Long-Term Ecological Research Sites" created by David Greenland, Timothy KIttel, Bruce Hayden and David Schimel in 1996 (http://climhy.lternet.edu/documents/climdes/). The dataset includes monthly data and summaries aggregating years and months to produce climatic summaries.
No net insect abundance and diversity declines across US Long Term Ecological Research sites
<p>Recent reports of dramatic declines in insect abundance suggest grave consequences for global ecosystems and human society. Most evidence comes from Europe, however, leaving uncertainty about insect population trends worldwide. We used > 5,300 time series for insects and other arthropods, collected over 4-36 years at monitoring sites representing 68 different natural and managed areas, to search for evidence of declines across the United States. Some taxa and sites showed decreases in abundance and diversity while others increased or were unchanged, yielding net abundance and biodiversity trends generally indistinguishable from zero. This lack of overall increase or decline was consistent across arthropod feeding groups, and was similar for heavily disturbed versus relatively natural sites. The apparent robustness of U.S. arthropod populations is reassuring. Yet, this result does not diminish the need for continued monitoring and could mask subtler changes in species composition that nonetheless endanger insect-provided ecosystem services. </p>
Chemical variations in Quercus pollen as a tool for taxonomic identification: implications for long-term ecological and biogeographical research
<p><strong>Aim</strong> </p> <p>Fossil pollen is an important tool for understanding biogeographic patterns in the past, but the taxonomic resolution of the fossil-pollen record may be limited to genus or even family level. Chemical analysis of pollen grains has the potential to increase the taxonomic resolution of pollen, but present-day chemical variability is poorly understood. This study aims to investigate whether a phylogenetic signal is present in the chemical variations of <em>Quercus</em> L. pollen and to assess the prospects of chemical techniques for identification in biogeographic research.</p> <p><strong>Location</strong> </p> <p>Portugal</p> <p><strong>Taxon</strong> </p> <p>Six taxa (five species, one subspecies) of <em>Quercus</em> L., <em>Q. faginea, Q. robur, Q. robur</em> ssp. <em>estremadurensis, Q. coccifera, Q. rotundifolia</em> and <em>Q. suber</em> belonging to three sections: <em>Cerris, Ilex</em>, and <em>Quercus</em> (<a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/761148v2#ref-13">Denk, Grimm, Manos, Deng, & Hipp, 2017</a>)</p> <p><strong>Methods</strong> </p> <p>We collected pollen samples from 297 individual <em>Quercus</em> trees across a 4° (∼450 km) latitudinal gradient and determined chemical differences using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). We used canonical powered partial least-squares regression (CPPLS) and discriminant analysis to describe within- and between-species chemical variability.</p> <p><strong>Results</strong> </p> <p>We find clear differences in the FTIR spectra from <em>Quercus</em> pollen at the section level (<em>Cerris</em>: ∼98%; <em>Ilex</em>: ∼100%; <em>Quercus</em>: ∼97%). Successful discrimination is based on spectral signals related to lipids and sporopollenins. However, discrimination of species within individual <em>Quercus</em> sections is more difficult: overall, species recall is ∼76% and species misidentifications within sections lie between 18% and 31% of the test-set.</p> <p><strong>Main Conclusions</strong> </p> <p>Our results demonstrate that subgenus level differentiation of <em>Quercus</em> pollen is possible using FTIR methods, with successful classification at the section level. This indicates that operator-independent FTIR approaches can surpass traditional morphological techniques using the light microscope. Our results have implications both for providing new insights into past colonisation pathways of <em>Quercus</em>, and likewise for forecasting future responses to climate change. However, before FTIR techniques can be applied more broadly across palaeoecology and biogeography, our results also highlight a number of research challenges that still need to be addressed, including developing sporopollenin-specific taxonomic discriminators and determining a more complete understanding of the effects of environmental variation on pollen-chemical signatures in <em>Quercus</em>.</p>
Stem data from first three censuses on the University of California Santa Cruz Forest Ecology Research Plot
<p>Here we present stem-based data from the first three censuses of the 16-ha UC Santa Cruz Forest Ecology Research Plot, located in the Mediterranean climate forest of coastal central California, USA. The forest includes both mixed evergreen forest and redwood-dominated forest, and is recovering from significant logging disturbance in the early 20th century. Each woody stem with diameter larger than 1 cm has been mapped, tagged, identified, and measured, with censuses on a ~5-year interval. The first census (FERP1) began in 2007, and included just 6 ha. During FERP2, begun in 2011, the plot was expanded to 16 ha. The FERP3 census was begun in 2017. The community includes 34 woody species, including 4 gymnosperm and 9 angiosperm tree species, 18 species of shrubs, and 3 species of lianas. Across the three censuses, we report identity, size, location, and mortality data from 48,556 stems of 31,206 mapped individuals.</p>
Using protein isolation on elasmobranch blood plasma for ecological research and stable isotope analysis
<p>Stable isotope analysis is a useful tool for studying the ecology of elasmobranchs. Analysis of elasmobranch blood plasma provides insight into an individual's ecology on a small temporal scale. However, plasma is a systemic transport vessel containing many dissolved constituents in variable amounts, which may bias analyses and ecological conclusions based on that data.</p> <p>In this study, we develop a new method of protein precipitation using ethanol and acetonitrile to isolate the protein fraction of plasma from Sandbar Sharks, and examine its effects on carbon and nitrogen stable isotope values. We also tested these solvent precipitations on bovine serum albumin as a control to assess the introduction of exogenous sources of C and N.</p> <p>Protein isolation resulted in a significant decrease in δ<sup>13</sup>C values and a significant increase in C:N compared to untreated plasma. Isolated proteins were not significantly different in δ<sup>15</sup>N value compared to untreated plasma. We observed no change in isotope composition in bovine serum albumin samples, indicating protein precipitation does not itself affect isotope analysis.</p> <p>These results suggest that the preparation of blood plasma is necessary for stable isotope analysis, to eliminate the biasing effects of other dissolved compounds. We find that solvent precipitation is an effective method of isolating proteins for stable isotope studies.</p>
A Socio-Ecological View of Research Capacity
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Data from: The roles of non-production vegetation in agroecosystems: a research framework for filling process knowledge gaps in a social-ecological context
<p>1. An ever-expanding human population, climatic changes, and the spread of intensive farming practices is putting increasing pressure on agroecosystems and their inherent biodiversity. Non-production vegetation elements, such as woody patches, riparian margins, and restoration plantings, are vital for conserving agroecosystem biodiversity. Further, such elements are key building blocks that are manipulated via land management, thereby influencing the biotic and abiotic processes that underpin functioning agroecosystems.</p> <p>2. Despite this critical role, there has been a lack of synthesis on which types of vegetation elements drive and/or support ecological processes, and the mechanisms by which this occurs. Using a systematic, quantitative literature review of 342 articles, we asked: what are the effects of non-production vegetation on agroecosystem processes and how are these processes measured within global agroecosystems?</p> <p>3. Woody patches, hedgerows and borders, riparian margins, and shelterbelts were the most studied types of non-production vegetation. The majority (61%) of studies showed positive effects of non-production vegetation on ecological processes, where the presence, level or rate of the studied process was increased or enhanced.</p> <p>4. However, four key research gaps were revealed: (1) most studies (83%) used proxies for, instead of direct measurements of, ecosystem processes related to non-production vegetation; (2) study designs used to investigate non-production vegetation effects on ecosystem processes directly were largely limited to observational comparisons of non-production vegetation types, farm-scale vegetation configurations, and different proximities to vegetation in terms of the effect on ecological processes; relatively few studies used manipulative experiments (3) the relatively few studies directly measuring ecosystem processes were dominated by four process categories: invertebrate biocontrol, predator and natural enemy spillover, animal movement, and ecosystem cycling, and (4) the methods used to directly measure non-production vegetation effects comprised a surprisingly limited set of approaches.</p> <p>5. To fill key research gaps that will inform the use of non-production vegetation to enhance agroecosystem processes, we present a framework for future research that emphasises the need to combine an understanding of human decision making with carefully-designed and targeted investigations into the roles of taxa, ecosystem processes, and landscape heterogeneity related to non-production vegetation, at multiple spatial scales within agroecosystems.</p>
Additional climate information for research paper «Ecological and Geographical Analysis of Distribution of Heracleum persicum, H. mantegazzianum and H. sosnowskyi on The Northern Limit of Its Invaded Range in Europe» submitted to Russian Journal of Biological Invasions
<p><strong>Additional climate information for research paper «Ecological and Geographical Analysis of Distribution of Heracleum persicum, H. mantegazzianum and H. sosnowskyi on The Northern Limit of Its Invaded Range in Europe» submitted to Russian Journal of Biological Invasions </strong></p>
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Cyberinfrastructure for a Virtual Observatory and Ecological Informatics System (VOEIS)
<p>Internally logging temperature sensor (HOBO Water Temp Pro v2) tethered to a buoy at 5 m fixed depth from 2011 to 2014. Buoy located in Flathead Lake, Montana, USA, at the sampling location termed 'Midlake Deep' (-114.0663, 47.8631).</p> <p>Data presented in: Evans, K. A., L. M. Peoples, J. R. Ranieri, E. K. Wear, and M. J. Church. 2023. Mixing-driven changes in distributions and abundances of planktonic microorganisms in Flathead Lake.</p>
The legacy of ecological imperialism in the Scandes: earthworms and their implications for Arctic research
<p>Data used in the article 'The legacy of ecological imperialism in the Scandes: earthworms and their implications for Arctic research' in the scientific journal 'Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research'. The various columns are explained in the sheet 'Metadata'. </p>
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.