Community efforts in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging benefit from dialogue between faculty and students for long-term efficacy. Drawing from a dialogue-based approach to organizational communication, this practice brief aims to promote student-faculty collaborative action to improve campus diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging efforts. To this end, this article presents (a) dialogic departmental committees comprised of students and faculty members in two academic disciplines, (b) the endeavors informed by research on community change, and (c) lessons learned from our initiatives for future efforts.

Creating new assessments in biology courses for every student cohort is difficult. To address this issue, we build assessments around scenarios we write that are inspired by current primary literature. Here, we describe how to find source material for scenarios, how to write them, and how we use scenarios together with their associated questions in the classroom. Students responded positively to scenario-based question sets on tests, as survey respondents reported reduced test anxiety and increased appreciation for real-world applications of course content.

Creating new assessments in biology courses for every student cohort is difficult. To address this issue, we build assessments around scenarios we write that are inspired by current primary literature. Here, we describe how to find source material for scenarios, how to write them, and how we use scenarios together with their associated questions in the classroom. Students responded positively to scenario-based question sets on tests, as survey respondents reported reduced test anxiety and increased appreciation for real-world applications of course content.

Tools that teach quantitative skills and foster positive student attitudes toward these skills are important in biology curricula. Math and statistics anxiety is common and can interfere with student learning in biology courses. We describe a new framework for alleviating this anxiety. In our module, students watch a cute internet cat video, which inspires them to ask scientific questions about animal behavior and collect, analyze, and interpret data. We developed two freely available interactive tools to implement our module. We successfully implemented these tools with undergraduate students at two institutions. Based on this experience, we provide ideas for extension along with assessment.

Student-centered pedagogies increase learning and retention. Quantifying change in both student learning gains and student perception of their experience allows faculty to evaluate curricular transformation more fully. Student buy-in, particularly how much students value and enjoy the active learning process, has been positively associated with engagement in active learning and increased learning gains. We hypothesize that as the frequency of students who have successfully completed the course increases in the student population, current students may be more likely to buy-in to the curriculum because this common experience could create a sense of community. We measured learning gains and attitudes during the transformation of an introductory biology course at a small, liberal arts college using our novel curriculum, Integrating Biology and Inquiry Skills (IBIS). Students perceived substantial learning gains in response to this curriculum, and concept assessments confirmed these gains. Over time, buy-in increased with each successive cohort, as demonstrated by the results of multiple assessment instruments, and students increasingly attributed specific components of the curriculum to their learning. These findings support our hypothesis and should encourage the adoption of curricular transformation using IBIS or other student-centered approaches.

In August of 2018, we held a workshop for ecological educators on best practices for writing multiple-choice questions at the annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting. Here, we summarize the highlights from the pedagogical literature and our own experiences that we shared with workshop participants, along with their insights. The feedback we received at the end of the workshop suggested a need for more pedagogical training opportunities at future conferences.

Frugivores shape plant communities via seed dispersal of fleshy-fruited plant species. However, the structural characteristics that frugivores impart to plant communities are little understood. Evaluating how frugivores structure plant communities via the nonproportional use of available fruit resources is critical to understand the functioning of ecosystems where fleshy-fruited plant species are dominant, such as tropical forests. We performed a seed-addition field experiment to investigate how frugivorous birds shape the composition and richness of forests during early stages of secondary succession in cleared areas in Puerto Rico. The experiment tested whether the bird-generated seed rain and the subsequent early successional plant communities were proportional representations of the fleshy-fruited species that dominated the surrounding community. Experimental treatments consisted of patches with (a) seed-additions by wild birds attracted to experimental patches with pole perches, (b) manual seed-additions proportional to fruit abundance at the local scale (50m from experimental plots) and (c) manual seed-additions proportional to fruit abundance at the landscape scale (entire study site). Birds' seed-additions differed in composition and abundance to expectations based on fruit availability at local and landscape scales. Treatments with seeds added by birds had the highest species richness in both the seed rain and the emergence stages despite how, on average, the monthly richness in the landscape-scale treatment was double that of birds and the local-scale treatment. This phenomenon was explained by the highest heterogeneity from the bird seed-addition treatment across months, and the lowest seed per capita emergence rates in landscape treatments. Rather than reflecting relative fruit abundance, birds biased seed rain and per capita emergence towards a non-random mixture of both small- and large-seeded species, resulting in richer and distinct plant communities. Because frugivory and seed dispersal patterns depart from random encounters between frugivores and plants in communities, successional forests are characterized by an overrepresentation of proportionally rare plant species, and decreases in the dominance of many common species. Thus, for regenerating tropical forests, frugivory can function as mechanism that promotes persistence of rare plant species and their coexistence with more abundant plants.

Vision & Change recommends transformation in undergraduate biology education, but some faculty may be reluctant to reform their courses for fear of student resistance, or a perception that such change is unnecessary. This student resistance may arise because of an unfamiliarity with an active-learning environment, or from non-STEM students who believe they are disadvantaged in a mixed-majors introductory biology course. Faculty may use many measures to evaluate the extent of student resistance, such as student evaluations of teaching or verbal comments from students or colleagues. It is less common for faculty to use a thorough assessment of both student learning gains and self-efficacy to inform curricular change. We assessed both of these measures in a mixed-majors biology course at a small liberal arts college. Students self-reported increases in learning gains on surveys, and preand post-course concept assessment demonstrated actual learning and performance gains. Because we found that STEM majors were more likely to report positive opinions than non-STEM majors, we suggest that offering a non-majors introductory biology course may be more successful in engaging these students. Overall, we found that positive student opinions were more frequent than negative opinions regardless of major; we conclude that student resistance was much less than some faculty expected. Without a thorough use of assessments, the extent of positive student opinions may not become apparent, and a disproportionate bias toward negative opinions may instead drive curricular decisions.

Summary The interplay between dispersal and adaptation to local environments ultimately determines the distribution of plant species, but their relative contribution remains little understood. Tropical mistletoes provide the opportunity to dissect these contributions of dispersal and adaptation, because as hemiparasitic plants, they are typically adapted to grow on a handful of species within diverse tropical communities and are non‐randomly dispersed by mutualistic frugivorous birds. Here we hypothesized that the primary determinant of the abundance of a tropical mistletoe (Dendropemon caribaeus, Loranthaceae) in Puerto Rico will be the compatibility between the mistletoe and plant species in a community. Alternatively, the mistletoe's abundance could be primarily shaped by other factors such as the availability of potential host plants, or factors that determine how mistletoe seeds are dispersed by avian frugivores. We conducted surveys and experiments to assess the capacity of this mistletoe to grow on trees available in the local community, and measured the monthly phenology and seed dispersal patterns of the mistletoe and other bird‐dispersed plants in the community over a period of 4 years. A path model was used to evaluate how the abundance of the mistletoe was shaped by host abundance, fruiting phenology, bird dispersal and compatibilities with host plants. Our analyses show that the compatibility between mistletoe and host tree species, measured by mistletoe survival and growth rate, was the most important factor for mistletoe abundance. The next most important factor was the phenological characteristics of the hosts; this outcome likely arose because frugivory and seed dispersal services for mistletoes and hosts are performed by the same birds. Synthesis. Mistletoes often parasitize only a subset of the suitable plant species that are available in a given community. Our results indicate that such patterns are not only determined by host quality and abundance but also by the phenological patterns of trees that influence the probabilities of mistletoe seeds being deposited on them by shared avian seed dispersers.

Network motifs are generally studied to characterize the local interaction patterns of networks. Here, we apply the concept of a motif profile to a synchronous Boolean network model of the formation of mutualistic ecological communities, focusing on four-node subgraphs. We consider the process by which networks dynamically progress from a random initial condition to an attractor (steady state or limit cycle, collectively viewed in this context as a stable community). While the subgraphs are not classified as motifs in the usual sense of the term, we show that subgraphs with predominantly stabilizing (i.e. beneficial for species persistence) interactions are generally composed of species that are present in the attractor. The converse also holds: subgraphs with predominantly destabilizing (i.e. detrimental for species persistence) interactions are more commonly composed of species that are present in the community only transiently. We discuss our findings in the context of mutualistic ecological networks, and argue that the dynamic motif profile may provide a valuable analytical tool in other networks representing complex dynamic systems.

We describe an alternative to the kinds of observation-based lab exercises that are often used to cover animal and plant evolution with respect to transitioning from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. We wrote this activity to address these objectives, but also to model the process of scientific inquiry and to require students to collect and analyze quantitative data. Additionally, we designed this activity so that students must consider the evolution of plant and animal traits in an integrated fashion.

Network theory has provided a general way to understand mutualistic plant-animal interactions at the community level. However, the mechanisms responsible for interaction patterns remain controversial. In this study we use a combination of statistical models and probability matrices to evaluate the relative importance of species morphological and nutritional (phenotypic) traits and species abundance in determining interactions between fleshy-fruited plants and birds that disperse their seeds. The models included variables associated with species abundance, a suite of variables associated with phenotypic traits (fruit diameter, bird bill width, fruit nutrient compounds), and the species identity of the avian disperser. Results show that both phenotypic traits and species abundance are important determinants of pairwise interactions. However, when considered separately, fruit diameter and bill width were more important in determining seed dispersal interactions. The effect of fruit compounds was less substantial and only important when considered together with abundance-related variables and/or the factor 'animal species'.

The effect of an invasive species on the species richness of its host community can range from catastrophic to negligible to beneficial. Here, we use a network model of plant–pollinator community formation to consider the influence of invader and invasion‐related properties (including physical characteristics, assignment and type of interacting partners, and number of independent introductions of the species into the community) and community properties (including connectance and nestedness) on the outcome of an invasion. As expected from empirical work, invaders with properties atypical of the regional species pool drive the strongest changes in species richness. However, we find that an increase in species richness corresponds to an increase in the community's spectral nestedness coupled with a decrease in connectance. While such a response has been observed in real invaded systems, these results differ from previous theoretical studies in which these two measures respond in a similar way outside the context of species invasions.

The recent decline in pollinator biodiversity, notably in the case of wild bee populations, puts both wild and agricultural ecosystems at risk of ecological community collapse. This has triggered calls for further study of these mutualistic communities in order to more effectively inform restoration of disturbed plant–pollinator communities. Here, we use a dynamic network model to test a variety of translocation strategies for restoring a community after it experiences the loss of some of its species. We consider the reintroduction of extirpated species, both immediately after the original loss and after the community has reequilibrated, as well as the introduction of other native species that were originally absent from the community. We find that reintroducing multiple highly interacting generalist species best restores species richness for lightly disturbed communities. However, for communities that experience significant losses in biodiversity, introducing generalist species that are not originally present in the community may most effectively restore species richness, although in these cases the resultant community often shares few species with the original community. We also demonstrate that the translocation of a single species has a minimal impact on both species richness and the frequency of community collapse. These results have important implications for restoration practices in the face of varying degrees of community perturbations, the refinement of which is crucial for community management.

Plant‐animal mutualistic interactions such as frugivory and seed dispersal display great variation in time due to fluctuations in fruit abundance, animal abundance, and behavior. In particular, some species participate in interactions with other species only transiently, while other species are active for longer periods of time. Species with a longer period of activity are able to interact with more species, and thus engage in constant participation in an interaction network. Species with high constancy would thus be expected to help maintain the biodiversity of a community; however, the manner in which constant species link to their partners may be critical to species coexistence. Because species that interact with many partners concurrently could create more competition compared to those species that interact sequentially with many partners, evaluating the concurrence in an interaction network sheds light on how the network can maintain biodiversity. In this study, we investigate how phenological patterns of fruit production and frugivore presence affect the temporal variation of a plant‐frugivore network, and focus on the manner in which high degree species collect their interactions over time. We found a clear separation of activity periods: most species appeared only briefly and participated in relatively few interactions, or showed activity for longer time periods and participated in more interactions. Species that were active for longer time periods often shifted interactions, resulting in a sequential collection of their partners in time, rather than concurrence. For the seed dispersal mutualism in particular, sequential accumulation of partners may allow plant species more opportunities to disperse their seeds compared to concurrence. We suggest that for temporally and spatially heterogeneous landscapes, sequential accumulation of partners would serve to reduce competition and facilitate coexistence of species.

The production of diverse and affordable agricultural crop species depends on pollination services provided by bees. Indeed, the proportion of pollinator-dependent crops is increasing globally. Agriculture relies heavily on the domesticated honeybee; the services provided by this single species are under threat and becoming increasingly costly. Importantly, the free pollination services provided by diverse wild bee communities have been shown to be sufficient for high agricultural yields in some systems. However, stable, functional wild bee communities require floral resources, such as pollen and nectar, throughout their active season, not just when crop species are in flower. To target floral provisioning efforts to conserve and support native and managed bee species, we apply network theoretical methods incorporating plant and pollinator phenologies. Using a two-year dataset comprising interactions between bees (superfamily Apoidea, Anthophila) and 25 native perennial plant species in floral provisioning habitat, we identify plant and bee species that provide a key and central role to the stability of the structure of this community. We also examine three specific case studies: how provisioning habitat can provide temporally continuous support for honeybees (Apis mellifera) and bumblebees (Bombus impatiens), and how resource supplementation strategies might be designed for a single genus of important orchard pollinators (Osmia). This framework could be used to provide native bee communities with additional, well-targeted floral resources to ensure that they not only survive, but also thrive.

The loss of a species from an ecological community can trigger a cascade of additional extinctions; the complex interactions that comprise ecological communities make the dynamics and impacts of such a cascade challenging to predict. Previous studies have typically considered global extinctions, where a species cannot re-enter a community once it is lost. However, in some cases a species only becomes locally extinct, and may be able to reinvade from surrounding communities. Here, we use a dynamic, Boolean network model of plant–pollinator community assembly to analyze the differences between global and local extinction events in mutualistic communities. As expected, we find that compared to global extinctions, communities respond to local extinctions with lower biodiversity loss, and less variation in topological network properties. We demonstrate that in the face of global extinctions, larger communities suffer greater biodiversity loss than smaller communities when similar proportions of species are lost. Conversely, smaller communities suffer greater loss in the face of local extinctions. We show that targeting species with the most interacting partners causes more biodiversity loss than random extinctions in the case of global, but not local, extinctions. These results extend our understanding of how mutualistic communities respond to species loss, with implications for community management and conservation efforts.

The ability to predict the collapse of ecological communities is of significant concern in light of global patterns of rapid species extinctions. Here, we use a recently developed dynamic Boolean network-based model of mutualistic plant-pollinator community formation to investigate the stability of simulated ecological communities in the face of sequential species extinctions. We assess communities in terms of the relative change in biodiversity after species loss, and find that communities that experience a significant loss of biodiversity differ from more robust communities according to a number of topological characteristics. Notably, we show that high nestedness, a property commonly believed to promote community stability, may in extreme circumstances promote a critical over-reliance on individual species. Furthermore, the species important to the survival of the rest of the ecosystem occupy different positions in the network than less important species. Our results suggest that network measures may be applied to real ecosystems to yield insight into both their stability and the identity of potentially critical species.

Network models of frugivory and seed dispersal are usually static. To date, most studies on mutualistic networks assert that interaction properties such as species' degree (k) and strength (s) are strongly influenced by species abundances. We evaluated how species' degree and strength change as a function of temporal variation not only in species abundance, but also in species persistence (i.e., phenology length). In a two-year study, we collected community-wide data on seed dispersal by birds and examined the seasonal dynamics of the above-mentioned interaction properties. Our analyses revealed that species abundance is an important predictor for plant strength within a given sub-network. However, our analyses also reveal that species' degree can often be best explained by the length of fruiting phenology (for plants degree) or by the number of fruiting species (for dispersers degree), which are factors that can be decoupled from the relative abundance of the species participating in the network. Moreover, our results suggest that generalist dispersers (when total study period is considered) act as temporal generalists, with degree constrained by the number of plant species displaying fruits in each span. Along with species identity, our findings underscore the need for a temporal perspective, given that seasonality is an inherent property of many mutualistic networks.