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Wetlands are habitats where variation in soil moisture content and associated environmental conditions can strongly affect the survival of herbivorous insects by changing host plant quality and natural enemy d...
During electricity generation of nuclear power plant, heat energy cannot be completely converted into electrical energy, and a part of it is lost in the form of thermal discharge into the environment. The ther...
Forage nutritive value plays an important role in livestock nutrition and maintaining sustainable grassland ecosystems, and grazing management can affect the quality of forage. In this study, we investigated t...
Shrub cover in arctic and alpine ecosystems has increased in recent decades, and is predicted to further increase with climate change. Changes in shrub abundance may alter ecosystem carbon (C) sequestration an...
A large proportion of the flowers and ovules of plants do not develop into fruits and seeds. Plant reproduction may be limited because of pollen limitation and resource limitation. Medicago sativa L. is an ecolog...
Permafrost degradation may develop thermokarst landforms, which substantially change physico–chemical characteristics in the soil as well as the soil carbon stock. However, little is known about changes of bac...
Biotic interactions are ubiquitous and require information from ecology, evolutionary biology, and functional genetics in order to be understood. However, study systems that are amenable to investigations acro...
The exotic fish Poecilia reticulata is promoted in the tropics as a biological control agent for aquatic pathogenic carriers, such as mosquitoes. Such control measures are often adopted blindly, ignoring the pote...
For capital breeding Lepidoptera, larval food quality is a key determinant of their fitness. A series of studies have suggested that the larval host species or varieties dramatically impact their development a...
The Spanish slug (Arion vulgaris, also known as A. lusitanicus) is considered one of the most invasive species in agriculture, horticulture and private gardens all over Europe. Although this slug has been problem...
Various factors, such as climate, body size and sociality are often linked to parasitism. This constrains the identification of other determinants driving parasite infections. Here, we investigate for the firs...
We challenge the oft-repeated claim that the beetles (Coleoptera) are the most species-rich order of animals. Instead, we assert that another order of insects, the Hymenoptera, is more speciose, due in large p...
Species coexistence mechanisms and maintenance of biodiversity have long been considered important components of community ecology research. As one of the important mechanisms, species coexistence theory based...
Chironomids, a major invertebrate taxon in many standing freshwaters, rely on adult flight to reach new suitable sites, yet the impact of weather conditions on their flight activity is little understood. We in...
Diversity patterns result from ecological to evolutionary processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Species trait variation determine the spatial scales at which organisms perceive the envi...
Drought may become one of the greatest challenges for cereal production under future warming scenarios, and its impact on insect pest outbreaks is still controversial. To address this issue, life-history respo...
Polyploidy and apomixis are important factors influencing plant distributions often resulting in range shifts, expansions and geographical parthenogenesis. We used the Ranunculus auricomus complex as a model to a...
Montane birds which engage in elevational movements have evolved to cope with fluctuations in environmental hypoxia, through changes in physiological parameters associated with blood oxygen-carrying capacity s...
In fish, morphological colour changes occur from variations in pigment concentrations and in the morphology, density, and distribution of chromatophores in the skin. However, the underlying mechanisms remain u...
Localised patterns of species diversity can be influenced by many factors, including regional species pools, biogeographic features and interspecific interactions. Despite recognition of these issues, we still...
Communication between individuals of the same species is an important aspect of mating and reproduction in most animals. In simultaneously hermaphroditic species with the ability to self-fertilize, communicati...
The effects of grazing on soil methane (CH4) uptake in steppe ecosystems are important for understanding carbon sequestration and cycling because the role of grassland soil for CH4 uptake can have major impacts a...
The ecosystems across Tibetan Plateau are changing rapidly under the influence of climate warming, which has caused substantial changes in spatial and temporal environmental patterns. Stipa purpurea, as a dominan...
Mixed forests are believed to enhance ecosystem functioning and sustainability due to complementary resource use, environmental benefits and improved soil properties. The facilitation between different species...
The spatial distribution of mangrove crabs has been commonly associated with tree zonation and abiotic factors such as ground temperature and soil granulometry. Conversely, no studies were designed to investig...
With the resurgence of tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease and the emergence of new tick-borne pathogens such as Powassan virus, understanding what distinguishes vectors from non-vectors, and predicting u...
A crucial step in conserving biodiversity is to identify the distributions of threatened species and the factors associated with species threat status. In the biodiversity hotspot of the Himalaya, very little ...
Camellia nitidissima, a rare and endangered shrub is narrowly distributed in South China and North Vietnam occurring in forest understory. Their light tolerance mechanism is unclear. We measured photosynthesis an...
Understanding the effects of habitat modification on the feeding strategies of threatened species is essential to designing effective conservation management plans. Bale monkeys (Chlorocebus djamdjamensis) are en...
Identifying and understanding the mechanisms that shape barriers to dispersal and resulting biogeographic boundaries has been a longstanding, yet challenging, goal in ecology, evolution and biogeography. Chara...
Higher temperatures and increased environmental variability under climate change could jeopardize the persistence of species. Organisms that rely on short windows of rainfall to complete their life-cycles, lik...
For many fish species, retinal function changes between life history stages as part of an encoded developmental program. Retinal change is also known to exhibit plasticity because retinal form and function can...
Population genetic diversity and structure are determined by past and current evolutionary processes, among which spatially limited dispersal, genetic drift, and shifts in species distribution boundaries have ...
The species pool concept was formulated over the past several decades and has since played an important role in explaining multi-scale ecological patterns. Previous statistical methods were developed to identi...
Carnivores are re-establishing in many human-populated areas, where their presence is often contentious. Reaching consensus on management decisions is often hampered by a dispute over the size of the local car...
The drivers of species co-existence in local communities are especially enigmatic for assemblages of morphologically cryptic species. Here we characterize the colonization dynamics and abundance of nine specie...
Endozoochory is, in grazing systems, a substantial vector for seed dispersal. It can play an important role in vegetation dynamics, especially in colonization processes through seed input on the vegetation and...
Root-knot nematodes (RKN) are major pest of olive tree (Olea europaea ssp. europaea), especially in nurseries and high-density orchards. Soil samples were collected from main olive growing areas of Morocco, to ch...
The persistence of high genetic variability in natural populations garners considerable interest among ecologists and evolutionary biologists. One proposed hypothesis for the maintenance of high levels of gene...
Population differentiation and their adaptation to a particular environment depend on their ability to respond to a new environment. This, in turn is governed to an extent, by the degree of phenotypic plastici...
The importance of intraspecific trait variation (ITV) is increasingly acknowledged among plant ecologists. However, our understanding of what drives ITV between individual plants (ITVBI) at the population level i...
Invasive ecosystem engineers can facilitate their invasions by modifying the physical environment to improve their own performance, but this positive feedback process has rarely been tested empirically except ...
Sustainable use of our soils is a key goal for environmental protection. As many ecosystem services are supported belowground at different trophic levels by nematodes, soil nematodes are expected to provide ob...
Figs are widely distributed key resources to many tropical-subtropical animals, and flying-foxes are major consumers and seed dispersers of figs. Bat-fig interrelationships, however, may vary among species dif...
Conditions experienced by a female during early life may affect her reproductive strategies and maternal investment later in life. This effect of early environmental conditions is a potentially important mecha...
One of the core issues of forest community ecology is the exploration of how ecological processes affect community structure. The relative importance of different processes is still under debate. This study ad...
High latitude ecosystems are at present changing rapidly under the influence of climate warming, and specialized Arctic species at the southern margin of the Arctic may be particularly affected. The Arctic fox (V...
The castor bean tick (Ixodes ricinus) transmits infectious diseases such as Lyme borreliosis, which constitutes an important ecosystem disservice. Despite many local studies, a comprehensive understanding of the ...
Glucocorticoid hormones are known to play a key role in mediating a cascade of physiological responses to social and ecological stressors and can therefore influence animals’ behaviour and ultimately fitness. ...
For the fifth year, BMC Ecology is proud to present the winning images from our annual image competition. The 2017 edition received entries by talented shutterbug-ecologists from across the world, showcasing rese...
