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177 results for “ecological interactions”
Data from: Interactive effects of predator and prey harvest on ecological resilience of rocky reefs
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Ecological fitting is a sufficient driver of tight interactions between sunbirds and ornithophilous plants
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Ecological interactions shape the evolution of flower colour in communities across a temperate biodiversity hotspot
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Data from: Not just females: the socio-ecology of social interactions between spider monkey males
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Data from: Using a newly introduced framework to measure ecological stressor interactions
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Ecological and social Interactions in urban parks: bird surveys in local parks in the central Arizona-Phoenix metropolitan area
Our central objective is to use small, neighborhood parks in Phoenix to study: (1) the ways in which ecological processes are influenced by human values, use, and management; and (2) the ways in which human attitudes and activities, and the services valued by humans, are influenced by ecological characteristics and processes. Elucidating this coupling in Phoenix parks will itself be a significant step towards understanding the complexities of human-nature interactions. The information gathered in addressing the central objective, though, can and should be used to assess potential trajectories for ecological processes. Our second objective is to develop trajectories for potential changes in ecosystem services in the Phoenix metropolitan area, given economic and demographic trends, and given the signal of human-nature interactions among different social groups.
Ecological and social interactions in urban parks in central Arizona-Phoenix: site locations
Our central objective is to use small, neighborhood parks in Phoenix to study: (1) the ways in which ecological processes are influenced by human values, use, and management; and (2) the ways in which human attitudes and activities, and the services valued by humans, are influenced by ecological characteristics and processes. Elucidating this coupling in Phoenix parks will itself be a significant step towards understanding the complexities of human-nature interactions. The information gathered in addressing the central objective, though, can and should be used to assess potential trajectories for ecological processes. Our second objective is to develop trajectories for potential changes in ecosystem services in the Phoenix metropolitan area, given economic and demographic trends, and given the signal of human-nature interactions among different social groups.
Molecular ecological network analyses: An effective conservation tool for the assessment of biodiversity, trophic interactions, and community structure
<p>Global biodiversity is threatened by the anthropogenic restructuring of animal communities, which rewires species interaction networks in real-time as individuals are extirpated or introduced. Conservation science and adaptive ecosystem management demands more rapid, quantitative, and non-invasive technologies for robustly capturing changing biodiversity and quantifying species interactions. Here we develop molecular ecological network analyses (MENA) as an ecosystem assessment tool to address these needs. To construct the ecological network, we used environmental DNA from feces to identify the plant and mammal diet of two carnivores: puma (<i>Puma concolor</i>) and bobcat (<i>Lynx rufus</i>); two omnivores: coyote (<i>Canis latrans</i>) and gray fox (<i>Urocyon cinereoargenteus</i>); and two herbivores: black-tailed deer (<i>Odocoileus hemionus</i>) and black-tailed jackrabbit (<i>Lepus californicus)</i> in a well-studied Californian reserve<i>. </i>To evaluate MENA as a comprehensive biodiversity tool, we applied our framework to identify the structure of the network, patterns of trophic interactions, key species, and to assess its utility in capturing the biodiversity of the area. The high dietary taxonomic resolution enabled the assessment of species diversity, niche breadth and overlap. The network analysis revealed a dense ecological network with a high diversity of weakly connected species and a community that is highly modular and non-nested. The significant prevalence of tri-trophic chain and exploitative competition patterns indicates (i) the removal or reintroduction of a top predator would trigger a trophic cascade within this community, directly affecting their prey and indirectly the plant communities, and (ii) the potential impact of indirect effects between two predators that consume the same prey. These results suggest that the recent resurgence of puma in the study area may impact the herbaceous and woody vegetation and the population size of other predators. This effect of fluctuating predator populations and plant communities could be predicted through MENA's fine-scale assessment of the diet selection and the identified keystone species. Although just using a subset of species, MENA more rapidly, accurately, and effectively captured the broader biodiversity of the area in comparison to other methodologies. MENA reconstructed and unveiled the hidden complexity in trophic structure and interaction networks within the community, providing a promising toolkit for biodiversity and ecosystem management.</p>
Inferring quantitative species interactions of seeds and seed-feeding carabid beetles from ecological survey data
<p>Here, we develop a trait-based approach suitable for creating quantitative networks, i.e. with varying interaction strengths. We applied this method to existing ecological survey data from an arable field of carabid ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) from pitfall traps and plant seeds from seed rain traps. We used existing data in the literature to predict a per-individual interaction cost index from carabid and seed size, based on frequency-dependent prey selection and the energetic intake of seeds by carabids. This was scaled up to the population level to create predicted inferred weighted networks using the sampled abundance of carabids and seeds, energetic intake rates in the literature, and assuming bottom up control. From this we calculated a novel predation pressure ratio which was the predicted seed predation (the sum of interaction strengths) relative to seed abundance.</p> <p>This is made available as an R markdown file with associated data files.</p>
Links between prey assemblages and poison frog toxins: a landscape ecology approach to assess how biotic interactions affect species phenotypes
<p>Ecological studies of species pairs showed that biotic interactions promote phenotypic change and eco-evolutionary feedbacks. However, it is unclear how phenotypes respond to synergistic interactions with multiple taxa. We investigate whether interactions with multiple prey species explain spatially structured variation in the skin toxins of the Neotropical poison frog <i>Oophaga pumilio</i>. Specifically, we assess how dissimilarity (i.e., beta diversity) of alkaloid-bearing arthropod prey assemblages (68 ant species) and evolutionary divergence between frog populations (from a neutral genetic marker) contribute to frog poison dissimilarity (toxin profiles composed of 230 different lipophilic alkaloids sampled from 934 frogs at 46 sites). We find that models that incorporate spatial turnover in the composition of ant assemblages explain part of the frog alkaloid variation, and we infer unique alkaloid combinations across the range of <i>O. pumilio</i>. Moreover, we find that alkaloid variation increases weakly with the evolutionary divergence between frog populations. The analytical framework proposed here can be extended to other multi-trophic systems, coevolutionary mosaics, microbial assemblages, and ecosystem services.</p>
Data from: Incorporating anthropogenic effects into trophic ecology: predator-prey interactions in a human-dominated landscape
Apex predators perform important functions that regulate ecosystems worldwide. However, little is known about how ecosystem regulation by predators is influenced by human activities. In particular, how important are top-down effects of predators relative to direct and indirect human-mediated bottom-up and top-down processes? Combining data on species' occurrence from camera traps and hunting records, we aimed to quantify the relative effects of top-down and bottom-up processes in shaping predator and prey distributions in a human-dominated landscape in Transylvania, Romania. By global standards this system is diverse, including apex predators (brown bear and wolf), mesopredators (red fox) and large herbivores (roe and red deer). Humans and free-ranging dogs represent additional predators in the system. Using structural equation modelling, we found that apex predators suppress lower trophic levels, especially herbivores. However, direct and indirect top-down effects of humans affected the ecosystem more strongly, influencing species at all trophic levels. Our study highlights the need to explicitly embed humans and their influences within trophic cascade theory. This will greatly expand our understanding of species interactions in human-modified landscapes, which compose the majority of the Earth's terrestrial surface.
Data from: Sexual conflict and ecology: species composition and male density interact to reduce male mating harassment and increase female survival
Sexual conflict is a pervasive evolutionary force that can reduce female fitness. Experimental evolution studies in the laboratory might overestimate the importance of sexual conflict since the ecological conditions in such settings typically include only a single species. Here, we experimentally manipulated conspecific male density (high or low) and species composition (sympatric or allopatric) to investigate how ecological conditions affect female survival in a sexually dimorphic insect, the banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens). Female survival was strongly influenced by an interaction between male density and species composition. Specifically, at low conspecific male density, female survival increased in the presence of heterospecific males (C. virgo). Behavioural mating experiments showed that interspecific interference competition reduced conspecific male mating success with large females. These findings suggest that reproductive interference competition between con- and heterospecific males might indirectly facilitate female survival by reducing mating harassment from conspecific males. Hence, interspecific competitors can show contrasting effects on the two sexes thereby influencing sexual conflict dynamics. Our results call for incorporation of more ecological realism in sexual conflict research, particularly how local community context and reproductive interference competition between heterospecific males can affect female fitness.
Data from: Interactions between ecological factors in the developmental environment modulate pupal and adult traits in a polyphagous fly
1. In holometabolous insects, adult fitness depends on the quantity and quality of resource acquired at the larval stage. Diverse ecological factors can influence larval resource acquisition, but little is known about how these factors in the larval environment interact to modulate larval development and adult traits. 2. Here, we addressed this gap by considering how key ecological factors of larval density, diet nutritional composition, and microbial growth interact to modulate pupal and adult traits in a polyphagous tephritid fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni (aka 'Queensland fruit fly'). 3. Larvae were allowed to develop at two larval densities (low and high), on diets that were protein-rich, standard, or sugar-rich and prepared with or without preservatives to inhibit or encourage microbial growth, respectively. 4. Percentage of adult emergence and adult sex ratio were not affected by the interaction between diet composition, larval density and preservative treatments, although low preservative content increased adult emergence in sugar-rich diets but decreased adult emergence in protein-rich and standard diets. 5. Pupal weight, male and female adult dry weight, and female (but not male) body energetic reserves were affected by a strong three-way interaction between diet composition, larval density and preservative treatment, whereby in general, low preservative content increased pupal weight and female lipid storage in sugar-rich diets particularly at low-larval density, and differentially modulated the decrease in adult body weight caused by larval density across diets. 6. Our findings provide insights into the ecological factors modulating larval development of a polyphagous fly species, and shed light into the ecological complexity of the larval developmental environment in frugivorous insects.
Data from: Inferring species interactions in ecological communities: a comparison of methods at different levels of complexity
1. Natural communities commonly contain many different species and functional groups, and multiple types of species interactions act simultaneously, such as competition, predation, commensalism or mutualism. However, experimental and theoretical investigations have generally been limited by focusing on one type of interaction at a time or by a lack of a common methodological and conceptual approach to measure species interactions. 2. We compared four methods to measure and express species interactions. These approaches are, with increasing degree of model complexity, an extinction-based model, a relative yield model and two generalized Lotka-Volterra (LV) models. All four approaches have been individually applied in different fields of community ecology, but rarely integrated. We provide an overview of the definitions, assumptions and data needed for the specific methods and apply them to empirical data by experimentally deriving the interaction matrices among 11 protist and rotifer species, belonging to three functional groups. Furthermore, we compare their advantages and limitations to predict multispecies community dynamics and ecosystem functioning. 3. The relative yield method is, in terms of final biomass production, the best method in predicting the 11-species community dynamics from the pairwise competition experiments. The LV model, which is considering equilibrium among the species, suffers from experimental constraints given the strict equilibrium assumption, and this may be rarely satisfied in ecological communities. 4. We show how simulations of a LV stochastic community model, derived from an empirical interaction matrix, can be used to predict multispecies community dynamics across multiple functional groups. 5. Our work unites available tools to measure species interactions under one framework. This improves our ability to make management-oriented predictions of species coexistence/extinction and to compare ecosystem processes across study systems.
Data from: Interactions between genetic and ecological effects on the evolution of life cycles
Sexual reproduction leads to an alternation between haploid and diploid phases, whose relative length varies widely across taxa. Previous genetical models showed that diploid or haploid life cycles may be favored, depending on dominance interactions and on effective recombination rates. By contrast, niche differentiation between haploids and diploids may favor biphasic life cycles, in which development occurs in both phases. In this paper, we explore the interplay between genetical and ecological factors, assuming that deleterious mutations affect the competitivity of individuals within their ecological niche, and allowing different effects of mutations in haploids and diploids (including antagonistic selection). We show that selection on a modifier gene affecting the relative length of both phases can be decomposed into a direct selection term favoring the phase with the highest mean fitness (either due to ecological differences or to differential effects of mutations), and an indirect selection term favoring the phase in which selection is more efficient. When deleterious alleles occur at many loci and in the presence of ecological differentiation between haploids and diploids, evolutionary branching often occurs and leads to the stable coexistence of alleles coding for haploid and diploid cycles, while temporal variations in niche sizes may stabilize biphasic cycles.
Supplementary material 3 from: Assmann T, Boutaud E, Buse J, Drees C, Friedman A-L, Harry I, Khoury F, Orbach E, Renan I, Schmidt C, Schmidt K, Wrase DW, Zumstein P (2021) The ground beetle tribe Platynini Bonelli, 1810 (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in the southern Levant: dichotomous and interactive identification tools, ecological traits, and distribution. In: Spence J, Casale A, Assmann T, Liebherr JК, Penev L (Eds) Systematic Zoology and Biodiversity Science: A tribute to Terry Erwin (1940-2020). ZooKeys 1044: 449-478. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1044.62615
Exported knowledge database 'Platynini, southern Levant' file in sdd generated by Xper3
Figures 22- 23 from: Assmann T, Boutaud E, Buse J, Drees C, Friedman A-L, Harry I, Khoury F, Orbach E, Renan I, Schmidt C, Schmidt K, Wrase DW, Zumstein P (2021) The ground beetle tribe Platynini Bonelli, 1810 (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in the southern Levant: dichotomous and interactive identification tools, ecological traits, and distribution. In: Spence J, Casale A, Assmann T, Liebherr JК, Penev L (Eds) Systematic Zoology and Biodiversity Science: A tribute to Terry Erwin (1940-2020). ZooKeys 1044: 449-478. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1044.62615
Figures 22- 23 Apical margins of elytra of Platynini species 22Atranus ruficollis23Orthotrichus cymindoides.
Figures 24-26 from: Assmann T, Boutaud E, Buse J, Drees C, Friedman A-L, Harry I, Khoury F, Orbach E, Renan I, Schmidt C, Schmidt K, Wrase DW, Zumstein P (2021) The ground beetle tribe Platynini Bonelli, 1810 (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in the southern Levant: dichotomous and interactive identification tools, ecological traits, and distribution. In: Spence J, Casale A, Assmann T, Liebherr JК, Penev L (Eds) Systematic Zoology and Biodiversity Science: A tribute to Terry Erwin (1940-2020). ZooKeys 1044: 449-478. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1044.62615
Figures 24-26 Apical part of left elytron with 5th stria and adjacent intervals of Platynini species 24Agonum monachum syriacum: depressed 25A. mesostictum: not depressed 26A. nigrum: not depressed, but see Fig. 4 for an A. nigrum individual with depression.
Figures 27-30 from: Assmann T, Boutaud E, Buse J, Drees C, Friedman A-L, Harry I, Khoury F, Orbach E, Renan I, Schmidt C, Schmidt K, Wrase DW, Zumstein P (2021) The ground beetle tribe Platynini Bonelli, 1810 (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in the southern Levant: dichotomous and interactive identification tools, ecological traits, and distribution. In: Spence J, Casale A, Assmann T, Liebherr JК, Penev L (Eds) Systematic Zoology and Biodiversity Science: A tribute to Terry Erwin (1940-2020). ZooKeys 1044: 449-478. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1044.62615
Figures 27-30 Apical part of Head of Platynini species 27Olisthopus glabricollis28Agonum rugicolle29Anchomenus alcedo30Atranus ruficollis. Abbreviations: la: labrum, mdb: mandible.
Figures 9-12 from: Assmann T, Boutaud E, Buse J, Drees C, Friedman A-L, Harry I, Khoury F, Orbach E, Renan I, Schmidt C, Schmidt K, Wrase DW, Zumstein P (2021) The ground beetle tribe Platynini Bonelli, 1810 (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in the southern Levant: dichotomous and interactive identification tools, ecological traits, and distribution. In: Spence J, Casale A, Assmann T, Liebherr JК, Penev L (Eds) Systematic Zoology and Biodiversity Science: A tribute to Terry Erwin (1940-2020). ZooKeys 1044: 449-478. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1044.62615
Figures 9-12 Platynini species 9Anchomenus alcedo10Anchomenus bellus11Anchomenus dorsalis infuscatus12Atranus ruficollis.
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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.