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opencc-by-4.0Jun 2024View details →

Trophic state resilience to hurricane disturbance of Lake Yojoa, Honduras (DATA)

Datasets for manuscript entitled "Trophic state resilience to hurricane disturbance of Lake Yojoa, Honduras" Abstract: Cyclones are a poorly described disturbance in tropical lakes, with the potential to alter ecosystems and compromise the services they provide. In November 2020, Hurricanes Eta and Iota made landfall near the Nicaragua-Honduras border, inundating the region with a large amount of late-season precipitation. To understand the impact of these storms on Lake Yojoa, Honduras, we compared 2020 and 2021 conditions using continuous (every 16 days) data collected from five pelagic locations. The storms resulted in increased Secchi depth and decreased algal abundance in December 2020, and January and February 2021, and lower-than-average accumulation of hypolimnetic nutrients from the onset of stratification (April 2021) until mixus in November 2021. Despite the reduced hypolimnetic nutrient concentrations, epilimnetic nutrient concentrations returned to (and in some cases exceeded) pre-hurricane levels following annual water column turnover in 2021. This response suggests that Lake Yojoa’s trophic state had only an ephemeral response to the disturbance imposed by the two hurricanes, likely due to internal input of sediment derived nutrients. These aseasonal storms acted as a large-scale experiment that resulted in nutrient dilution and demonstrated the resilience of Lake Yojoa’s trophic state to temporary nutrient reductions.

Fig. 4 in Body size differentiation in selected carabid species inhabiting Puszcza Piska forest stands disturbed by the hurricane

Fig. 4. The differences between the mean body length and the median value of body length for Pterostichus niger individuals inhabiting post-hurricane (Pisz) and control (Maskulińskie) stands in years 2003-2007.

Fig. 6 in Body size differentiation in selected carabid species inhabiting Puszcza Piska forest stands disturbed by the hurricane

Fig. 6. The differences between the mean body length and the median value of body length for Carabus violaceus individuals inhabiting post-hurricane (Pisz) and control (Maskulińskie) stands in years 2003-2007.

Fig. 5 in Body size differentiation in selected carabid species inhabiting Puszcza Piska forest stands disturbed by the hurricane

Fig. 5. The mean body length for Carabus violaceus individuals inhabiting post-hurricane (Pisz) and control (Maskulińskie) stands in years 2003-2007.

Fig. 3 in Body size differentiation in selected carabid species inhabiting Puszcza Piska forest stands disturbed by the hurricane

Fig. 3. The mean body length for Pterostichus niger individuals inhabiting post-hurricane (Pisz) and control (Maskulińskie) stands in years 2003-2007.

Fig. 2 in Body size differentiation in selected carabid species inhabiting Puszcza Piska forest stands disturbed by the hurricane

Fig. 2. The differences between the mean body length and the median value of body length for Carabus arcensis individuals inhabiting post-hurricane (Pisz) and control (Maskulińskie) stands in years 2003-2007.

Fig. 1 in Body size differentiation in selected carabid species inhabiting Puszcza Piska forest stands disturbed by the hurricane

Fig. 1. The mean body length for Carabus arcensis individuals inhabiting post-hurricane (Pisz) and control (Maskulińskie) stands in years 2003-2007.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2023View details →

Hurricane Disturbance Vegetation Anomaly (HDVA) [Data set for Turner et al.]

The Hurricane Disturbance Vegetation Anomaly (HDVA) is a rapid assessment approach to understand the severity of ecological damage from a high intensity storm event on an otherwise healthy, mature mangrove forest. Data archived here focuses on Cuba, where Hurricane Irma (Category 5) hit the northern coast in September 2017 and caused wide-spread damage to mangroves and coastal forests. Local scientists were not able to assess the full extent or severity of damages through field work due to limited infrastructure and resources, so they turned to remote sensing analysis. We developed a multitemporal, multiresolution approach to assess the damage 1) extent and 2) relative severity using changes from the typical green-leaf phenology represented by the Enhanced Vegetation Index with MODIS and Sentinel-2 data. All data was processed in Google Earth Engine API to access and utilize large amounts of historical data, as well as compare sensors’ spatial resolution impacts on results. This data set includes the HDVA products and categorization of data by quartile of damage (catastrophic, severe, moderate, mild, no loss).

opencc-zeroMar 2024View details →

Data from: Long-term climate and hydrologic regimes shape stream invertebrate community responses to a hurricane disturbance

Disturbances can produce a spectrum of short- and long-term ecological consequences that depend on complex interactions of the characteristics of the event, antecedent environmental conditions, and the intrinsic properties of resistance and resilience of the affected biological system. We used Hurricane Harvey's impact on coastal rivers of Texas to examine the roles of storm-related changes in hydrology and long-term precipitation regime on the response of stream invertebrate communities to hurricane disturbance. We detected declines in richness, diversity, and total abundance following the storm, but responses were strongly tied to direct and indirect effects of long-term aridity and short-term changes in stream hydrology. The amount of rainfall a site received drove both flood duration and flood magnitude across sites, but lower annual rainfall amounts (i.e., aridity) increased flood magnitude and decreased flood duration. Across all sites, flood duration was positively related to the time it took for invertebrate communities to return to a long-term baseline and flood magnitude drove larger invertebrate community responses (i.e., changes in diversity and total abundance). However, invertebrate response per unit flood magnitude was lower in sub-humid sites, potentially because of differences in refuge availability or ecological-evolutionary interactions. Interestingly, sub-humid streams had temporary large peaks in invertebrate total abundance and diversity following recovery period that may be indicative of the larger organic matter pulses expected in these systems because of their comparatively well-developed riparian vegetation. Our findings show that hydrology and long-term precipitation regime predictably affected invertebrate community responses and, thus, our work underscores the important influence of local climate to ecosystem sensitivity to disturbances.

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Data from: Tropical understory herbaceous community responds more strongly to hurricane disturbance than to experimental warming

The effects of climate change on tropical forests may have global consequences due to the forests' high biodiversity and major role in the global carbon cycle. In this study, we document the effects of experimental warming on the abundance and composition of a tropical forest floor herbaceous plant community in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico. This study was conducted within Tropical Responses to Altered Climate Experiment (TRACE) plots, which use infrared heaters under free-air, open-field conditions, to warm understory vegetation and soils +4 °C above nearby control plots. Hurricanes Irma and María damaged the heating infrastructure in the second year of warming, therefore, the study included one pre-treatment year, one year of warming, and one year of hurricane response with no warming. We measured percent leaf cover of individual herbaceous species, fern population dynamics, and species richness and diversity within three warmed and three control plots. Results showed that one year of experimental warming did not significantly affect the cover of individual herbaceous species, fern population dynamics, species richness, or species diversity. In contrast, herbaceous cover increased from 20% to 70%, bare ground decreased from 70% to 6%, and species composition shifted pre- to post-hurricane. The negligible effects of warming may have been due to the short duration of the warming treatment or an understory that is somewhat resistant to higher temperatures. Our results suggest that climate extremes that are predicted to increase with climate change, such as hurricanes and droughts, may cause more abrupt changes in tropical forest understories than longer-term sustained warming.

opencc-zeroMay 2023View details →

Heliconia-dwelling invertebrate abundances following a simulated hurricane disturbance

Disturbances like hurricanes can affect diversity and community composition, which may in turn affect ecosystem function. We examined how a simulated hurricane disturbance affected insect communities inhabiting the phytotelma (plant-held waters) of Heliconia caribaea in the Luquillo Experimental Forest of eastern Puerto Rico, a tropical island that frequently experiences hurricanes. We hypothesized that disturbance would alter diversity and that larger Heliconia would attract more species following disturbance due to the area-diversity relationship described by the Theory of Island Biogeography. Individual flower parts (bracts) of Heliconia inflorescences (racemes) were artificially disturbed via removal of existing insect communities, then after refilling with water, cohorts of Heliconia were destructively sampled biweekly for six weeks to assess recolonization patterns of α (bract level), β, and γ (summed across bracts; raceme level) diversity over time and across raceme sizes. Although we found no support for our hypothesis about the effect of raceme size on recolonization, our hypothesis regarding recolonization patterns over time was supported; species richness, evenness, and abundance of bracts increased directly after the disturbance and then decreased below pre-disturbance levels, and community composition at the raceme level changed significantly over time during recolonization. β diversity was also greater in smaller racemes compared to larger racemes, suggesting high heterogeneity across bracts of Heliconia racemes exacerbated by raceme size and age. Overall, our results highlight the importance of scale and appropriate measurements of diversity (particularly α) in experiments aiming to extrapolate conclusions about the ecological impacts of disturbances across different habitats and ecosystems.

publicMay 2023View details →

Heliconia-dwelling invertebrate abundances following a simulated hurricane disturbance

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publicJul 2021View details →

Data from: Tropical understory herbaceous community responds more strongly to hurricane disturbance than to experimental warming

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publicMar 2024View details →

Data from: Long-term climate and hydrologic regimes shape stream invertebrate community responses to a hurricane disturbance

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opencc-zeroAug 2020View details →

Data from: Framework for quantifying population responses to disturbance reveals that coastal birds are highly resilient to hurricanes

Changes in the frequency and severity of extreme weather may introduce new threats to species that are already under stress from gradual habitat loss and climate change. We provide a probabilistic framework that quantifies potential threats by applying concepts from ecological resilience to single populations. Our approach uses computation to compare disturbance-impacted projections to a population's normal range of variation, quantifying the full range of potential impacts. We illustrate this framework with projection models for coastal birds, which are commonly depicted as vulnerable to disturbances, especially hurricanes and oil spills. We found that populations of coastal specialists are resilient to extreme disturbances, with high resistance to the effects of short-term reductions in vital rates and recovery within 20 years. Applying the general framework presented here across disturbance-prone species and ecosystems would improve understanding of population resilience and generate specific projections of resilience that are needed for effective conservation planning.

opencc-zeroDec 2019View details →

Maintaining historic disturbance regimes increases species' resilience to catastrophic hurricanes

As habitat loss and fragmentation, urbanization, and global climate change accelerate, conservation of rare ecosystems increasingly relies on human intervention. However, any conservation strategy is vulnerable to unpredictable, catastrophic events. Whether active management increases or decreases a system's resilience to these events remains unknown. Following Hurricane Irma's landfall in our habitat restoration study sites, we found that rare ecosystems with active, human-imposed management suffered less damage in a hurricane's path than unmanaged systems. At the center of Irma's landfall, we found Croton linearis' (a locally rare plant that is the sole host for two endangered butterfly species) survival and population growth rates in the year of the hurricane were higher in previously managed plots than in un-managed controls. In the periphery of Irma's circulation, the effect of prior management was stronger than that of the hurricane. Maintaining the historical disturbance regime thus increased the resilience of the population to major hurricane disturbance. As climate change increases the probability and intensity of severe hurricanes, human management of disturbance-adapted landscapes will become increasingly important for maintaining populations of threatened species in a storm's path. Doing nothing will accelerate extinction.

opencc-zeroMay 2022View details →

Hurricane disturbance accelerated the thermophilization of a Jamaican montane forest

Thermophilization – changes in community composition towards greater relative abundances of species associated with warmer environments – has been described for plants and animals in many locations around the world. Disturbances of various kinds have increased rates of thermophilization in temperate sites, and this has been proposed, but not demonstrated, for some tropical environments. In this study, we tested whether disturbance by a Category four hurricane in 1988 (Hurricane Gilbert) increased thermophilization in a Jamaican montane forest by using pre- and post-hurricane data collected over four decades (1974–2014). We analysed tree species composition in permanent plots at c. 1580 m elevation in Jamaica's Blue Mountains. There were 66 tree species with stem diameters ≥3 cm at breast height. We used published data on the altitudinal distribution of 62 species (94% of genetic individuals (genets)) to calculate the mean community altitude scores (MCAS) of the trees recorded in each census, as well as the MCAS of the survivors, recruits and dead trees after each decade. We found that thermophilization did occur (i.e., MCAS decreased significantly over time), and that this was due both to a decreasing MCAS of recruits through the four decades (significantly lower than expected in the last three decades) as well as a high MCAS of trees that died. Thermophilization was fastest in the post-hurricane decade, during which time there was marked and significant increase in the MCAS of dead trees; this change was above and beyond expectations of long-term successional dynamics. The rate of compositional change equates to an overall decrease in MCAS of 1.6 m yr-1 over the forty-year study period. We conclude that this Jamaican montane forest is undergoing thermophilization (likely due to rising temperature) and that the hurricane-caused disturbance accelerated thermophilization through differential mortality.

opencc-zeroJul 2022View details →

No evidence of predicted phenotypic changes after hurricane disturbance in a shade-specialist Caribbean anole

Extreme climatic events (ECE) such as hurricanes have been hypothesized to be a major driving force of natural selection. Recent studies argue that, following strong hurricane disturbance, Anolis lizards in the Caribbean undergo selection for traits such as longer forelimbs or smaller body sizes that improve their clinging ability to their substrates increasing their chances of surviving hurricane wind gusts. Some authors challenge the generalization of this hypothesis arguing that other mechanisms may explain these phenotypic changes or that they may not necessarily be generalizable due to system-specific idiosyncrasies. To address this issue, we compared body size and relative forelimb length of Anolis gundlachi, a trunk-ground anole living in closed canopy forests in Puerto Rico, before, four months after, and 15 months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Overall, our results show no clear evidence of a temporal decrease in body size or increase forelimb length (relative to body size) challenging the generalizability of the clinging ability hypothesis. Understanding how animals adapt to ECE is an emerging field. Still, we are quickly learning that this process is complex and nuanced.