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495 results for “spatial scale”
Foraging in nature: contrasting responses to resource heterogeneity at small and large spatial scales.
<p>A key problem faced by foragers is how to forage when resources are distributed heterogeneously in space. This heterogeneity and associated trade-offs may change with spatial scale. Furthermore, foragers may also have to optimize acquiring multiple resources. Such complexity of decision-making while foraging is poorly understood. We studied the butterfly <i>Ypthima huebneri</i> to examine how foraging decisions of adults are influenced by spatial scale and multiple resources. We predicted that, at a small-spatial scale, the time spent foraging in a patch should be proportional to resources in the patch, but at large-spatial scales, due to limitations arising from large travel costs, this relationship should turn negative. We also predicted that both adult and larval resources should jointly affect foraging butterflies. To test these predictions, we laid eleven plots, and sub-divided them into patches. We mapped nectar and larval resources and measured butterfly behavior in these patches and plots. We found that adult foraging behavior showed contrasting relationships with adult resource density at small versus large-spatial scales. At the smaller-spatial scale, butterflies spent more time feeding in resource-rich patches, whereas at the large-scale, butterflies spent more time feeding in resource-poor plots. Furthermore, both adult and larval resources appeared to affect foraging decisions, suggesting that individuals may optimize search costs for different resources. Overall, our findings suggest that the variation in foraging behavior seen in foragers might result from animals responding to complex ecological conditions, such as, resource heterogeneity at multiple spatial scales and the challenges of tracking multiple resources.</p>
Environmental and biotic drivers of soil microbial β‐diversity across spatial and phylogenetic scales
<p>Soil microbial communities play a key role in ecosystem functioning but still little is known about the processes that determine their turnover (β-diversity) along ecological gradients. Here, we characterize soil microbial β-diversity at two spatial scales and at multiple phylogenetic grains to ask how archaeal, bacterial and fungal communities are shaped by abiotic processes and biotic interactions with plants. We characterized microbial and plant communities using DNA metabarcoding of soil samples distributed across and within eighteen plots along an elevation gradient in the French Alps. The recovered taxa were placed onto phylogenies to estimate microbial and plant β-diversity at different phylogenetic grains (i.e. resolution). We then modeled microbial β-diversities with respect to plant β-diversities and environmental dissimilarities across plots (landscape scale) and with respect to plant β-diversities and spatial distances within plots (plot scale). At the landscape scale, fungal and archaeal β-diversities were mostly related to plant β-diversity, while bacterial β-diversities were mostly related to environmental dissimilarities. At the plot scale, we detected a modest covariation of bacterial and fungal β-diversities with plant β-diversity; as well as a distance–decay relationship that suggested the influence of ecological drift on microbial communities. In addition, the covariation between fungal and plant β-diversity at the plot scale was highest at fine or intermediate phylogenetic grains hinting that biotic interactions between those clades depends on early-evolved traits. Altogether, we show how multiple ecological processes determine soil microbial community assembly at different spatial scales and how the strength of these processes change among microbial clades. In addition, we emphasized the imprint of microbial and plant evolutionary history on today's microbial community structure.</p>
Data from: Environmental filtering by pH and soil nutrients drives community assembly in fungi at fine spatial scales
Whether niche processes, like environmental filtering, or neutral processes, like dispersal limitation, are the primary forces driving community assembly is a central question in ecology. Here, we use a natural experimental system of isolated tree "islands" to test whether environment or geography primarily structures fungal community composition at fine spatial scales. This system consists of isolated pairs of two distantly-related, congeneric pine trees established at varying distances from each other and the forest edge, allowing us to disentangle the effects of geographic distance versus host and edaphic environment on associated fungal communities. We identified fungal community composition with Illumina sequencing of ITS amplicons, measured all relevant environmental parameters for each tree - including tree age, size, and soil chemistry - and calculated geographic distances from each tree to all others and to the nearest forest edge. We applied generalized dissimilarity modeling to test whether total and ectomycorrhizal fungal (EMF) communities were primarily structured by geographic or environmental filtering. Our results provide strong evidence that, as in many other organisms, niche and neutral processes both contribute significantly to turnover in community composition in fungi, but environmental filtering plays the dominant role in structuring both free-living and symbiotic fungal communities at fine spatial scales. In our study system, we found pH and organic matter primarily drive environmental filtering in total soil fungal communities and that pH and cation exchange capacity – and, surprisingly, not host species - were the largest factors affecting EMF community composition. These findings support an emerging paradigm that pH may play a central role in the assembly of all soil mediated systems.
Data from: Scale‐dependent spatial patterns in benthic communities around a tropical island seascape
Understanding and predicting patterns of spatial organization across ecological communities is central to the field of landscape ecology, and a similar line of inquiry has begun to evolve sub‐tidally among seascape ecologists. Much of our current understanding of the processes driving marine community patterns, particularly in the tropics, has come from small‐scale, spatially‐discrete data that are often not representative of the broader seascape. Here we expand the spatial extent of seascape ecology studies and combine spatially‐expansive in situ digital imagery, oceanographic measurements, spatial statistics, and predictive modeling to test whether predictable patterns emerge between coral reef benthic competitors across scales in response to intra‐island gradients in physical drivers. We do this around the entire circumference of a remote, uninhabited island in the central Pacific (Jarvis Island) that lacks the confounding effects of direct human impacts. We show, for the first time, that competing benthic groups demonstrate predictable scaling patterns of organization, with positive autocorrelation in the cover of each group at scales < ~1 km. Moreover, we show how gradients in subsurface temperature and surface wave power drive spatially‐abrupt transition points in group dominance, explaining 48 – 84% of the overall variation in benthic cover around the island. Along the western coast, we documented ten times more sub‐surface cooling‐hours than any other part of the coastline, with events typically resulting in a drop of 1 – 4°C over a period of < 5 hr. These high frequency temperature fluctuations are indicative of upwelling induced by internal waves and here result in localized nitrogen enrichment (NO2 + NO3) that promotes hard coral dominance around 44% of the island's perimeter. Our findings show that, in the absence of confounding direct human impacts, the spatial organization of coral reef benthic competitors are predictable and somewhat bounded across the seascape by concurrent gradients in physical drivers.
Data from: Bringing multivariate support to multiscale codependence analysis: assessing the drivers of community structure across spatial scales
1. Multiscale codependence analysis (MCA) quantifies the joint spatial distribution of a pair of variables in order to provide a spatially-explicit assessment of their relationships to one another. For the sake of simplicity, the original definition of MCA only considered a single response variable (e.g. a single species). However, that definition would limit the application of MCA when many response variables are studied jointly, for example when one wants to study the effect of the environment on the spatial organisation of a multi-species community in an explicit manner. 2. In the present paper, we generalize MCA to multiple response variables. We conducted a simulation study to assess the statistical properties (i.e. type I error rate and statistical power) of multivariate MCA (mMCA) and found that it had honest type I error rate and sufficient statistical power for practical purposes, even with modest sample sizes. We also exemplified mMCA by applying it to two ecological data sets. 3. The simulation study confirmed the adequacy of mMCA from a statistical standpoint: it has honest type I error rates and sufficient power to be useful in practice. Using mMCA, we were able to detect variation in fish community structure along the Doubs River (in France), which was associated with large spatial structures in the variation of physical and chemical variables related to water quality. Also, mMCA usefully described the spatial variation of an Oribatid mite community structure associated with a gradient of water content superimposed on various smaller-scale spatial features associated with vegetation cover in the peat blanket surrounding Lac Geai (in Québec, Canada). 4. In addition to demonstrating the soundness of mMCA in theory and practice, we further discuss the strengths and assumptions of mMCA and describe other potential scenarios where it would be helpful to biologists interested in assessing influence of environmental conditions on community structure in a spatially-explicit way.
Data from: Repeatable patterns of small-scale spatial variation in intertidal mussel beds and their implications for responses to climate change
The interaction of ocean conditions and weather with small-scale physical features of a habitat can have profound effects on the experiences of individual organisms. On topographically complex shorelines, and particularly within dense aggregations of organisms such as mussel beds, a mosaic of environmental conditions can develop, and the resulting variation in conditions within the aggregation could drastically alter the performance of neighboring individuals. Using a suite of sensors mounted to individual Mytilus californianus mussels over two summer field deployments, we have characterized the temperature variation and valve gaping behavior differences found at two spatial scales: within a group separated by centimeters, and between groups of mussels located at the upper and lower extents of the natural mussel zone separated by meters. While temperature conditions near the lower edge of the mussel bed were generally more benign, temperature extremes were similar at both heights in the bed, and variation in body temperature among neighbors increased as the daily mean temperature increased. These patterns were similar across years despite a 3.8°C difference in mean air and seawater temperatures between years. Gaping behavior was also highly variable among individuals, though that variability diminished at the high end of the mussel bed where the total time mussels spent submerged was much more constrained. These data indicate that an individual mussel's physiological status and past history can be drastically different than those of its nearby neighbors, complicating our ability to characterize representative conditions within a habitat. These observations also provide for the possibility that the impacts of future climate change will be highly specific to certain individuals based on their relative exposure or protection within the mosaic. To address such possibilities, future work must examine the correlation between genotypic and physiological traits that determine performance and individuals' unique experiences in their disparate micro-environments.
Data from: Effects of roads and land use on frog distributions across spatial scales and regions in the eastern and central United States
Aim: Understanding the scales over which land use affects animal populations is critical for conservation planning, and it can provide information about the mechanisms that underlie correlations between species distributions and land use. We used a citizen-science database of anuran surveys to examine the relationship between road density, land use, and the distribution of frogs and toads across spatial scales and regions of the United States. Location: Eastern and Central United States Methods: We compiled data on anuran occupancy collected from 1999-2013 across 13 states in the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program, a citizen science survey of calling frogs. These data were indexed to measures of land use within buffers ranging from 300 m to 10 km. Results: The negative effects of road density and development on anuran richness were strongest at the smallest scales (300 – 1000 m), and this pattern was consistent across regions. In contrast, the relationships of anuran richness to agriculture and forest cover were similar across local scales but varied among regions. Richness had a negative relationship with agriculture/ forest loss in the Midwest but a positive relationship with agriculture in the Northeast. Anuran richness was more closely related to primary/secondary road density than to rural road density, and the negative effects of larger roads increased at smaller scales. Individual species differed in the scales over which roads and development affected their distributions, but these differences were not closely related to either body size or movement ability. Main conclusions: This study further refines our understanding of the relationship between roads and amphibian populations and highlights the need for research into the specific mechanisms by which roads affect amphibians. Additionally, we find that relationships between land use and species richness can differ substantially across regions, demonstrating that one should use caution in generalizing from one region to another, even when species composition is similar.
Data from: A heritable symbiont and host-associated factors shape fungal endophyte communities across spatial scales
1. Although microbial ecologists are intensely interested in the processes governing microbial community assembly, progress has been limited by a lack of studies that span multiple geographical scales and levels of biological organization. 2. We used high throughput sequencing to characterize foliar fungal endophyte communities and host plant genetic structure both within, and among, 24 populations of spotted locoweed (Astragalus lentiginosus) across the Great Basin Desert. 3. Across the Great Basin, both within, and among populations of the host plant, fungal endophyte richness was predicted by plant size and variation in the seed-borne, heritable fungus, Alternaria fulva, which produces the bioactive alkaloid swainsonine. 4. The degree of between-plant turnover in the endophyte community was inversely related to host plant inbreeding and average plant size, and positively related to the relative abundance of A. fulva. Plant size was inversely related to endophyte community richness, both among, and within populations. The genetic and physical distance between host populations was not predictive of differences in fungal community structure. 5. Synthesis: Through pairing intensive local- and regional sampling, we uncovered a primacy of deterministic forces imposed by a heritable symbiont on the community structure of locoweed endophytes.
Data from: The role of climate, water and biotic interactions in shaping biodiversity patterns in arid environments across spatial scales
Aim: Desert ecosystems, with their harsh environmental conditions, hold the key to understanding the responses of biodiversity to climate change. As desert community structure is influenced by processes acting at different spatial scales, studies combining multiple scales are essential for understanding the conservation requirements of desert biota. We investigated the role of environmental variables and biotic interactions in shaping broad and fine-scale patterns of diversity and distribution of bats in arid environments to understand how the expansion of nondesert species can affect the long-term conservation of desert biodiversity. Location: Levant, Eastern Mediterranean. Methods: We combine species distribution modelling and niche overlap statistics with a statistical model selection approach to integrate interspecific interactions into broadscale distribution models and fine-scale analysis of ecological requirements. We focus on competition between desert bats and mesic species that recently expanded their distribution into arid environment following anthropogenic land-use changes. Results: We show that both climate and water availability limit bat distributions and diversity across spatial scales. The broadscale distribution of bats was determined by proximity to water and high temperatures, although the latter did not affect the distribution of mesic species. At the fine-scale, high levels of bat activity and diversity were associated with increased water availability and warmer periods. Desert species were strongly associated with warmer and drier desert types. Range and niche overlap were high among potential competitors, but coexistence was facilitated through fine-scale spatial partitioning of water resources. Main conclusions: Adaptations to drier and warmer conditions allow desert-obligate species to prevail in more arid environments. However, this competitive advantage may disappear as anthropogenic activities encroach further into desert habitats. We conclude that reduced water availability in arid environments under future climate change projections pose a major threat to desert wildlife because it can affect survival and reproductive success and may increase competition over remaining water resources.
Data from: Ultra-fine scale spatially-integrated mapping of habitat and occupancy using structure-from-motion
Organisms respond to and often simultaneously modify their environment. While these interactions are apparent at the landscape extent, the driving mechanisms often occur at very fine spatial scales. Structure-from-Motion (SfM), a computer vision technique, allows the simultaneous mapping of organisms and fine scale habitat, and will greatly improve our understanding of habitat suitability, ecophysiology, and the bi-directional relationship between geomorphology and habitat use. SfM can be used to create high-resolution (centimeter-scale) three-dimensional (3D) habitat models at low cost. These models can capture the abiotic conditions formed by terrain and simultaneously record the position of individual organisms within that terrain. While coloniality is common in seabird species, we have a poor understanding of the extent to which dense breeding aggregations are driven by fine-scale active aggregation or limited suitable habitat. We demonstrate the use of SfM for fine-scale habitat suitability by reconstructing the locations of nests in a gentoo penguin colony and fitting models that explicitly account for conspecific attraction. The resulting digital elevation models (DEMs) are used as covariates in an inhomogeneous hybrid point process model. We find that gentoo penguin nest site selection is a function of the topography of the landscape, but that nests are far more aggregated than would be expected based on terrain alone, suggesting a strong role of behavioral aggregation in driving coloniality in this species. This integrated mapping of organisms and fine scale habitat will greatly improve our understanding of fine-scale habitat suitability, ecophysiology, and the complex bi-directional relationship between geomorphology and habitat use.
Data from: Testing for human impacts in the mismatch of living and dead ostracode assemblages at nested spatial scales in subtropical lakes from the Bahamian archipelago
Naturally time-averaged accumulations of skeletal remains – death assemblages – provide reliable, albeit temporally coarse, information on the species composition and structure of communities in diverse settings, and their mismatch with local living communities usually signals recent human-driven ecological change. Here, we present the first test of live-dead mismatch as an indicator of human stress using ostracodes. On three islands along a gradient of human population density in the Bahamas, we compared the similarity of living and death assemblages in ten lakes with relatively low levels of human stress to live-dead similarity in eleven physically comparable lakes subject to industrial, agricultural, or other human activities currently or in the past. We find that live-dead agreement in pristine lakes is consistently excellent, boding well for using death assemblages in modern-day and paleolimnological biodiversity assessments. In most comparison of physically-similar paired lakes, sample-level live-dead mismatch in both taxonomic composition and species' rank-abundance is on average significantly greater in the stressed lake; live-dead agreement is not lower in all samples from stressed lakes, but is more variable. When samples are pooled for lake-level and island-level comparisons, stressed lakes still yield lower live-dead agreement but the significance of the difference with pristine lakes decreases – species that occur dead-only (or alive-only) in one sample are likely to occur alive (or dead) in other samples. Inter-island differences in live-dead agreement are congruent with, but not significantly correlated with, differences in human population density. This situation arises from heterogeneity in the timing and magnitudes of stresses and in the extent of post-stress recovery. Live-dead mismatch in ostracode assemblages thus may be a reliable indicator of human impact at the sample-level with the potential to be a widely-applicable tool for identifying impacted habitats, and perhaps, monitor the progress of their recovery.
Data from a flexible framework to assess patterns and drivers of beta diversity across spatial scales
<p><span>The patterns and underlying ecological (e.g., environmental filtering) and </span><span>historical</span><span> (e.g., priority effects) drivers of beta diversity are scale-dependent but generally difficult to distinguish</span> <span>and rarely explored with a sufficiently broad range of spatial scales. We propose a general scale-explicit framework to assess and contrast the patterns and drivers of beta diversity across hierarchical spatial scales ranging from within fine-scale ecoregion-scale to among broad-scale ecoregion-scale. By applying this framework to aquatic macroinvertebrate datasets, we show that beta diversity generally increases with spatial extent.</span> <span>With an increasing spatial extent, beta diversity shifts from being more influenced by environmental filtering to being more influenced by recent historical factors (i.e., past beta diversity). Such recent historical effects may result from past environmental variation rather than priority effects.</span><span> We also found that the small-scale and large-scale environmental drivers act differently on beta diversity across spatial extents. Our research reveals a complex spatial-scale dependence in beta diversity patterns and their drivers and provides a more holistic understanding of beta diversity dynamics. Our framework represents a flexible way to unravel the internal structure of beta diversity across scales by partitioning of entire beta diversity variation into scale-specific differences and may have broad application in community ecology, landscape planning and biodiversity conservation.</span></p>
Data from: Spatial scale matters for predicting plant invasions along roads
<p>Biological invasions threaten global biodiversity and can have severe economic and social impacts. The complexity of this problem challenges effective management of invasive alien species as the contribution of many factors involved in the invasion processes across different spatial scales is not well understood.</p> <p>Here, we identify the most important determinants associated with the occurrence of two invasive alien plants, the North American goldenrods (<em>Solidago canadensis</em> and <em>S. gigantea</em>), commonly found in agricultural landscapes of Europe. We used Google Street View images to perform a remote, large-scale inventory of goldenrods along 1,347 roadside transects across Poland. Using open access geospatial data and machine learning techniques, we investigated the relative role of nearly 50 variables potentially affecting the distribution of studied species at five spatial scales (from within 0.25 km to 5 km of the studied locations).</p> <p>We found that the occurrence of goldenrods along roadsides was simultaneously associated with multiple drivers among which those related to human impacts, climate, soil properties and landscape structure were the most important, while local characteristics, such as road parameters or the presence of other alien plants were less influential. However, the relative contribution of different variables in predicting goldenrod distribution changed across spatial scales.</p> <p><em>Synthesis</em>:<em> </em>Mechanisms underlying plant invasions are highly complex and a number of factors can jointly influence the outcomes of this process. However, since different invasion drivers operate at different spatial scales, some important associations may be overlooked when focusing on a single spatial context. Although associations were consistent in direction (positive or negative) across scales, their relative influence on goldenrod occurrence often changed. Socio-economic factors were largely important at local scales, while the effect of landscape factors broadly increased with increasing spatial scale. We highlight that using multi-scale approaches involving a wide range of variables may enable setting priorities for the management of invasive alien plants.</p>
Unraveling the cavity-nesting network at large spatial scales: The biogeographic role of woodpeckers as ecosystem engineers
<p><strong>Aim</strong>: Cavities are usually a limiting resource for several forest-dwelling vertebrates, with effects that propagate through ecological networks. Although diverse assemblages of primary excavators (e.g., woodpeckers) are assumed to increase cavities, other forest resources can also limit populations of primary excavators and cavity users, thus undermining the ecological role of excavators over different scales. We aim to test the biogeographical-scale relationships between primary excavators and cavity users by distinguishing the contribution of forest characteristics.</p> <p><strong>Location</strong>: Southern South America</p> <p><strong>Methods</strong>: We used species distribution models, which combine bioclimatic and remote sensing derived variables, to map the richness of vertebrates composing the cavity network of temperate and Mediterranean forests of South America. Based on a resampling procedure for ensuring spatial independence, we fitted structural equation models to estimate causal relationships between forest characteristics and cavity-user vertebrates.</p> <p><strong>Results</strong>: Secondary cavity users (obligated, habitat generalists and forest specialists) were positively and strongly influenced by the richness of primary excavators, while mammal richness was more influenced by tree richness. The richness of trees and <em>Nothofagus</em> tree species influenced positively the richness of primary excavators and secondary cavity users. Canopy height and net primary productivity affected positively secondary cavity users.</p> <p><strong>Main conclusions</strong>: Our results confirm the role of primary excavators as ecosystem engineers but highlight the importance of considering large spatial scales when analyzing cavity-nesting networks. Biogeographical patterns of tree diversity and forest structure can be important drivers of cavity-nesting networks that remain hidden when studies are conducted over fine spatial scales. </p>
Additional files for 'spatial scales of tropical isotope change' project
<p>Additional files for tropical-d18O-scales repository on github. Associated code and other files are associated with DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11053701.</p>
A matter of scale: Identifying the best spatial and temporal scale of environmental variables to model the distribution of a small cetacean
<p>The importance of scale when investigating ecological patterns and processes is recognised across many species. In marine ecosystems, the processes that drive species distribution have a hierarchical structure over multiple nested spatial and temporal scales. Hence, multi-scale approaches should be considered when developing accurate distribution models to identify key habitats, particularly for populations of conservation concern. Here, we propose a modelling procedure to identify the best spatial and temporal scale for each modelled and remotely sensed oceanographic variable to model harbour porpoise (<em>Phocoena phocoena</em>) distribution. Harbour porpoise sightings were recorded during dedicated line-transect aerial surveys conducted in the summer of 2016, 2021 and 2022 in the Northeast Atlantic. Binary generalised additive models were used to assess the relationships between porpoise presence and oceanographic variables at different spatial (5, 20 and 40 km) and temporal (daily, monthly and across survey period) scales. Selected variables included sea surface temperature, thermal fronts, chlorophyll-a, sea surface height, mixed layer depth and salinity. A total of 30,514 km was covered on-effort with 216 harbour porpoise sightings recorded. Overall, the best spatial scale corresponded to the coarsest resolution considered in this study (40 km), while porpoise presence showed stronger association with oceanographic variables summarised at a longer temporal scale (monthly and averaged over survey period). Habitat models including covariates at coarse spatial and temporal scales may better reflect the processes driving availability and abundance of prey resources at the large scales covered during the surveys. These findings support the hypothesis that a multi-scale approach should be applied when investigating species distribution. Identifying suitable spatial and temporal scale would improve the functional interpretation of the underlying relationships, particularly when studying how a small marine predator interacts with its environment and responds to climate and ecosystem changes. </p>
Fine-scale spatial patterns of wildlife disease are common and understudied
<p>1. All parasites are heterogeneous in space, yet little is known about the prevalence and scale of this spatial variation, particularly in wild animal systems. To address this question, we sought to identify and examine spatial dependence of wildlife disease across a wide range of systems.</p> <p>2. Conducting a broad literature search, we collated 31 such datasets featuring 89 replicates and 71 unique host-parasite combinations, only 51% of which had previously been used to test spatial hypotheses. We analysed these datasets for spatial dependence within a standardised modelling framework using Bayesian linear models, and we then meta-analysed the results to identify generalised determinants of the scale and magnitude of spatial autocorrelation.</p> <p>3. We detected spatial autocorrelation in 48/89 model replicates (54%) across 21/31 datasets (68%), spread across parasites of all groups. Even some very small study areas (under 0.01km2) exhibited substantial spatial variation.</p> <p>4. Despite the common manifestation of spatial variation, our meta-analysis was unable to identify host-, parasite-, or sampling-level determinants of this heterogeneity across systems. Parasites of all transmission modes had easily detectable spatial patterns, implying that structured contact networks and susceptibility effects are potentially as important in spatially structuring disease as are environmental drivers of transmission efficiency.</p> <p>5. Our findings demonstrate that fine-scale spatial patterns of infection manifest frequently and across a range of wild animal systems, and many studies are able to investigate them – whether or not the original aim of the study was to examine spatially varying processes. Given the widespread nature of these findings, studies should more frequently record and analyse spatial data, facilitating development and testing of spatial hypotheses in disease ecology. Ultimately, this may pave the way for an a priori predictive framework for spatial variation in novel host-parasite systems.</p>
Fine-scale spatial segregation in a pelagic seabird driven by differential use of tidewater glacier fronts
<div class="WordSection1"> <p><span><span>In colonially breeding marine predators, individual movements and colonial segregation are influenced by seascape characteristics. Tidewater glacier fronts are important features of the Arctic seascape and are often described as foraging hotspots. Albeit their documented importance for wildlife, little is known about their structuring effect on arctic predator movements and space use. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that tidewater glacier fronts can influence marine bird foraging patterns and drive spatial segregation among adjacent colonies. We analysed movements of black-legged kittiwakes (<i>Rissa tridactyla</i>) in a glacial fjord by tracking breeding individuals from five colonies. Although breeding kittiwakes were observed to travel up to <i>ca</i>. 280 km from the colony, individuals were more likely to use glacier fronts located closer to their colony and rarely used glacier fronts located farther away than 18 km. Such variation in the use of glacier fronts created fine-scale spatial segregation among the four closest (<i>ca</i>. 7 km distance on average) kittiwake colonies. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that spatially predictable foraging patches like glacier fronts can have strong structuring effects on predator movements and can modulate the magnitude of intercolonial spatial segregation in central-place foragers.</span></span></p> </div> <p> </p>
Community patch‐dynamics governs direct and indirect nutrient recycling by aggregated animals across spatial scales
<p>Animals can have pervasive effects on ecosystems as they modify their biogeochemical and physical environments. In particular, when animals occur in high densities these effects can result in dramatic changes in the physical environment and biogeochemical hotspots or hot moments. While most research to date has focused on the direct role of animals in biogeochemical cycles, few have examined how animals indirectly influence biogeochemical cycles across scales.</p> <p>Freshwater mussels occur as spatially heterogeneous, dense and species-rich aggregations in many river ecosystems worldwide. Here we examined how mussel communities (1) directly influence the flux of particulate and dissolved nutrients and (2) indirectly effect the flux of N<sub>2</sub> production, via denitrification, across a gradient of mussel biomass and differences in community composition at the patch- (0.25 m<sup>2</sup>) and stream reach-scales (60-80 m).</p> <p>We combined measurements of ammonia (N) and soluble reactive phosphorous (P) excretion and C, N, and P biodeposition rates for ten species with biomass and distribution estimates for seven mixed-species aggregations to quantify direct mussel contributions to biogeochemical cycling and the spatial heterogeneity of their impact. Additionally, we sampled sediments at a fine spatial scale to determine how mussel biomass and richness influence potential denitrification (indirect flux) rates at the patch- and reach-scales.</p> <p>We predicted that increasing mussel biomass would lead to greater direct and indirect fluxes of nutrients, manifesting in heterogeneous nutrient redistribution within and among stream reaches. We also predicted that variation in community composition would result in differential nutrient excretion and egestion stoichiometries.</p> <p>Our results indicate that mussel aggregations directly influence soluble and particulate nutrient fluxes with community composition, particularly phylogenetic tribe composition, controlling the stoichiometry. Mussel aggregations also indirectly influenced nutrient fluxes as greater mussel biomass and species richness resulted in higher denitrification rates as mediated by their interactions with the sediments and enhancement of nutrient availability. Our results underscore the importance of patchy communities in acting as biogeochemical control points.</p>
Data and code from: Traits and phylogenies modulate the environmental responses of wood-inhabiting fungal communities across spatial scales
<p>Identifying the spatial scales at which community assembly processes operate is fundamental for gaining a mechanistic understanding of the drivers shaping ecological communities. In this study, we examined whether and how traits and phylogenetic relationships structure fungal community assembly across spatial scales.</p> <p>We applied joint species distribution modelling to a European-scale dataset on 215 wood-inhabiting fungal species, which includes data on traits, phylogeny and environmental variables measured at the local (log-level) and regional (site-level) scales.</p> <p>At the local scale, wood-inhabiting fungal communities were mostly structured by deadwood decay stage, and the trait and phylogenetic patterns along this environmental gradient suggested the lack of diversifying selection.</p> <p>At regional scales, fungal communities and their trait distributions were influenced by climatic and connectivity-related variables. The fungal climatic niches were not phylogenetically structured, suggesting that diversifying selection or stabilizing selection for climatic niches has played a strong role in wood-inhabiting communities. In contrast, we found a strong phylogenetic signal in the responses to connectivity-related variables, revealing phylogenetic homogenization in small and isolated forests.</p> <p>Altogether, our results show that species-level traits and phylogenies modulate the responses of wood-inhabiting fungi to environmental processes acting at different scales. This result suggests that the evolutionary histories of fungal traits diverge along different environmental axes.</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.