ABSTRACT Wetlands support disproportionately high biodiversity, including waterbirds, which underpin key ecological functions and regulatory services. This has led to efforts to protect these crucial sites, but whether these protections can maintain waterbird assemblages in the face of new threats such as climate change is poorly understood. Here, we calculated functional redundancy and three metrics of functional diversity from over 45,000 waterbird censuses, spanning four decades of rising winter temperatures for 2792 protected and unprotected sites in Europe. We modelled the effect of average winter temperature and the trend over time for each of these metrics. Our results suggest functional diversity generally increased in warmer winters and over time, but redundancy declined, and the effect of temperature varied spatially and between levels of protection. This suggests abundance and distribution shifts due to climate change are altering functional diversity and resilience of waterbird assemblages both inside and outside protected areas across Europe.
ABSTRACT Understanding and projecting forest carbon responses to climate change remains challenging. The widely used space‐for‐time substitution (SFTS) approach assumes that ecological responses along spatial climate gradients can substitute for temporal relationships, yet agreement among spatial, temporal, and mechanistic approaches remains largely unknown. Using global satellite‐derived aboveground biomass (AGB) data, we quantified forest AGB sensitivities to spatial versus temporal climate variability, projected climate‐driven AGB changes under future emission scenarios, and compared results with Earth system models (ESMs). Spatial climate gradients explain substantially more AGB variation than temporal anomalies, with strong divergence across regions and forest ages. ESMs better reproduce spatial sensitivities than temporal ones. Temporal extrapolation generally projects future AGB gains, whereas spatial extrapolation often indicates AGB declines. These contrasts demonstrate that spatial, temporal, and model‐based approaches capture distinct facets of forest–climate coupling, and integrating them can better constrain uncertainty in carbon–climate feedbacks and improve future ecosystem projections.
ABSTRACT Fire is a fundamental process that structures community assembly and biodiversity patterns; however, altered disturbance regimes associated with anthropogenic change present a major threat to fire‐adapted systems. Reintroducing fire to increase pyrodiversity (spatiotemporal diversity in fire) has been identified as an important step in restoring fire‐adapted western temperate forests. Here, we utilize phylogenetic and taxonomic metrics to assess how pyrodiversity influences plant community assembly dynamics and diversity patterns in the central Sierra Nevada, California, USA. Compared to fire exclusion, regional taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity generally increased after fire. Further, with increased pyrodiversity, community assembly mechanisms diversified and occurrences of diverse plant lineages and local phylogenetic endemism increased, illustrating how evolutionary history influences responses of plants to pyrodiversity. These results demonstrate the importance of restoring mixed‐severity fire to these systems and how phylogenetic tools can provide a valuable way to understand and monitor restoration impacts.
ABSTRACT Seasonal thermal fluctuation is a dominant environmental force in temperate ecosystems, yet its role in shaping community dynamics and persistence remains poorly understood. We addressed this question by tracking high‐resolution seasonal dynamics of a model system composed of host Drosophila flies and two parasitoid species attacking hosts at larval and pupal stages respectively. Both parasitoid species increased in abundance steadily during the spring. The pupal parasitoid declined in summer but resurged in autumn, whereas the larval parasitoid declined after a summer peak. The host population remained relatively stable after an initial spring increase. Modelling predicted that the system would collapse under constant cool environments due to excessive parasitism on hosts, whereas pupal parasitoids would be excluded under constant warmth. These predictions were validated by controlled laboratory mesocosm experiments. Life history assays clearly revealed that cool and warm seasons favour different parasitoid species: cooler temperatures resulted in higher mortality of immature larval parasitoids due to host immunity, whereas warmer temperatures narrowed the host exposure window and increased mortality of immature pupal parasitoids. These results demonstrate that seasonal temperature fluctuation maintains a fragile multi‐trophic motif by preventing resource overexploitation and competitive exclusion, highlighting that intra‐annual periodic forcing sustains biodiversity.
ABSTRACT Understanding the overlooked ecology of our homes can provide ecologists with unprecedented data and fresh ideas while also informing broader societal concerns. By studying the biodiversity we interact with most often, ecologists can foster appreciation for the significance of ecological and evolutionary insights in our everyday lives.
