Articles

Floral traits influence pollen vectors’ choices in higher elevation communities in the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains

How floral traits and community composition influence plant specialization is poorly understood and the existing evidence is restricted to regions where plant diversity is low. Here, we assessed whether plant ...

Authors: Yan-Hui Zhao, Zong-Xin Ren, Amparo Lázaro, Hong Wang, Peter Bernhardt, Hai-Dong Li and De-Zhu Li

Fire-severity effects on plant–fungal interactions after a novel tundra wildfire disturbance: implications for arctic shrub and tree migration

Vegetation change in high latitude tundra ecosystems is expected to accelerate due to increased wildfire activity. High-severity fires increase the availability of mineral soil seedbeds, which facilitates recr...

Authors: Rebecca E. Hewitt, Teresa N. Hollingsworth, F. Stuart Chapin III and D. Lee Taylor

Rodent-avoidance, topography and forest structure shape territory selection of a forest bird

Understanding the factors underlying habitat selection is important in ecological and evolutionary contexts, and crucial for developing targeted conservation action in threatened species. However, the key fact...

Authors: Gilberto Pasinelli, Alex Grendelmeier, Michael Gerber and Raphaël Arlettaz

A test of priority effect persistence in semi-natural grasslands through the removal of plant functional groups during community assembly

It is known that during plant community assembly, the early colonizing species can affect the establishment, growth or reproductive success of later arriving species, often resulting in unpredictable assembly ...

Authors: Kenny Helsen, Martin Hermy and Olivier Honnay

Spatial patterns of genetic diversity, community composition and occurrence of native and non-native amphipods in naturally replicated tributary streams

Worldwide, natural communities are invaded by non-native species, with potentially devastating effects on the native communities. A large part of past research aimed at finding traits and characteristics of th...

Authors: Florian Altermatt, Roman Alther and Elvira Mächler

Predatory beetles feed more pest beetles at rising temperature

Climate warming is a challenge for many plants and animals as they have to respond to rising temperature. Rising temperature was observed to affect herbivores and predators. Activity-density of abundant predat...

Authors: Thomas Frank and Martin Bramböck

Host choice in a bivoltine bee: how sensory constraints shape innate foraging behaviors

Many insects have multiple generations per year and cohorts emerging in different seasons may evolve their own phenotypes if they are subjected to different selection regimes. The bivoltine bee Andrena bicolor is...

Authors: Paulo Milet-Pinheiro, Kerstin Herz, Stefan Dötterl and Manfred Ayasse

Convergence of soil microbial properties after plant colonization of an experimental plant diversity gradient

Several studies have examined the effects of plant colonization on aboveground communities and processes. However, the effects of plant colonization on soil microbial communities are less known. We addressed t...

Authors: Katja Steinauer, Britta Jensen, Tanja Strecker, Enrica de Luca, Stefan Scheu and Nico Eisenhauer

Microbial diversity in the floral nectar of Linaria vulgaris along an urbanization gradient

Microbes are common inhabitants of floral nectar and are capable of influencing plant-pollinator interactions. All studies so far investigated microbial communities in floral nectar in plant populations that w...

Authors: Jacek Bartlewicz, Bart Lievens, Olivier Honnay and Hans Jacquemyn

Vertebrate bacterial gut diversity: size also matters

One of the central issues in microbial ecology is to understand the parameters that drive diversity. Among these parameters, size has often been considered to be the main driver in many different ecosystems. S...

Authors: Jean-Jacques Godon, Pugazhendi Arulazhagan, Jean-Philippe Steyer and Jérôme Hamelin

Seasonal cues induce phenotypic plasticity of Drosophila suzukii to enhance winter survival

As global climate change and exponential human population growth intensifies pressure on agricultural systems, the need to effectively manage invasive insect pests is becoming increasingly important to global ...

Authors: Peter W. Shearer, Jessica D. West, Vaughn M. Walton, Preston H. Brown, Nicolas Svetec and Joanna C. Chiu

Skeletal light-scattering accelerates bleaching response in reef-building corals

At the forefront of ecosystems adversely affected by climate change, coral reefs are sensitive to anomalously high temperatures which disassociate (bleaching) photosynthetic symbionts (Symbiodinium) from coral ho...

Authors: Timothy D. Swain, Emily DuBois, Andrew Gomes, Valentina P. Stoyneva, Andrew J. Radosevich, Jillian Henss, Michelle E. Wagner, Justin Derbas, Hannah W. Grooms, Elizabeth M. Velazquez, Joshua Traub, Brian J. Kennedy, Arabela A. Grigorescu, Mark W. Westneat, Kevin Sanborn, Shoshana Levine…

What´s in the tank? Nematodes and other major components of the meiofauna of bromeliad phytotelms in lowland Panama

Nematodes are a very diverse and extremely abundant group of animals, but their occurrence in the tropics is surprisingly little understood. We investigated the meiofauna of epiphytic tank bromeliads in the lo...

Authors: Gerhard Zotz and Walter Traunspurger

A metabarcoding framework for facilitated survey of endolithic phototrophs with tufA

In spite of their ecological importance as primary producers and microbioeroders of marine calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) substrata, endolithic phototrophs spanning both prokaryotic (the cyanobacteria) and eukaryotic ...

Authors: Thomas Sauvage, William E. Schmidt, Shoichiro Suda and Suzanne Fredericq

Effects of salinity on nest-building behaviour in a marine fish

Parental allocation and reproductive success are often strongly influenced by environmental factors. In this respect, salinity is a key factor influencing species distributions and community structure in aquat...

Authors: Topi K. Lehtonen, Bob B. M. Wong and Charlotta Kvarnemo

Social structure and Escherichia coli sharing in a group-living wild primate, Verreaux’s sifaka

Epidemiological models often use information on host social contacts to predict the potential impact of infectious diseases on host populations and the efficiency of control measures. It can be difficult, howe...

Authors: Andrea Springer, Alexander Mellmann, Claudia Fichtel and Peter M. Kappeler

BMC Ecology reviewer acknowledgement 2015

The editors of BMC Ecology would like to thank all our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in Volume 15 (2015).

Authors: Julia Simundza

Strategies of offspring investment and dispersal in a spatially structured environment: a theoretical study using ants

Offspring investment strategies vary markedly between and within taxa, and much of this variation is thought to stem from the trade-off between offspring size and number. While producing larger offspring can i...

Authors: Adam L. Cronin, Nicolas Loeuille and Thibaud Monnin

Optimal methods for fitting probability distributions to propagule retention time in studies of zoochorous dispersal

Propagule retention time is a key factor in determining propagule dispersal distance and the shape of “seed shadows”. Propagules dispersed by animal vectors are either ingested and retained in the gut until de...

Authors: Duarte S. Viana, Luis Santamaría and Jordi Figuerola

Group size, survival and surprisingly short lifespan in socially foraging bats

The relationships between group size, survival, and longevity vary greatly among social species. Depending on demographic and ecological circumstances, there are both positive and negative effects of group siz...

Authors: Yann Gager, Olivier Gimenez, M. Teague O’Mara and Dina K. N. Dechmann

Correspondence between the habitat of the threatened pudú (Cervidae) and the national protected-area system of Chile

Currently, many species are facing serious conservation problems due to habitat loss. The impact of the potential loss of biodiversity associated with habitat loss is difficult to measure. This is particularly...

Authors: Melissa Pavez-Fox and Sergio A. Estay

Spatio-temporal patterns of an anthrax outbreak in white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginanus, and associated genetic diversity of Bacillus anthracis

Anthrax, a soil-borne zoonosis caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, is enzootic in areas of North America with frequent outbreaks in west Texas. Despite a long history of study, pathogen transmission durin...

Authors: Jocelyn C. Mullins, Matthew Van Ert, Ted Hadfield, Mikeljon P. Nikolich, Martin E. Hugh-Jones and Jason K. Blackburn

Genetic censusing identifies an unexpectedly sizeable population of an endangered large mammal in a fragmented forest landscape

As habitat degradation and fragmentation continue to impact wildlife populations around the world, it is critical to understand the behavioral flexibility of species in these environments. In Uganda, the mostl...

Authors: Maureen S McCarthy, Jack D Lester, Eric J Howe, Mimi Arandjelovic, Craig B Stanford and Linda Vigilant

BMC Ecology Image Competition 2015: the winning images

For the third time, BMC Ecology is delighted to announce the winners of our Image Competition. This year featured entries from all over the world and showcased not only the creativity and talent of the participan...

Authors: Catherine J Potenski, Ana Luz Porzecanski, Michel Baguette, Jean Clobert, David Hughes and Josef Settele

Increased efficiency in identifying mixed pollen samples by meta-barcoding with a dual-indexing approach

Meta-barcoding of mixed pollen samples constitutes a suitable alternative to conventional pollen identification via light microscopy. Current approaches however have limitations in practicability due to low sa...

Authors: Wiebke Sickel, Markus J Ankenbrand, Gudrun Grimmer, Andrea Holzschuh, Stephan Härtel, Jonathan Lanzen, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter and Alexander Keller

Travelling at a slug’s pace: possible invertebrate vectors of Caenorhabditis nematodes

How do very small animals with limited long-distance dispersal abilities move between locations, especially if they prefer ephemeral micro-habitats that are only available for short periods of time? The free-l...

Authors: Carola Petersen, Ruben Joseph Hermann, Mike-Christoph Barg, Rebecca Schalkowski, Philipp Dirksen, Camilo Barbosa and Hinrich Schulenburg

The devil is in the detail: estimating species richness, density, and relative abundance of tropical island herpetofauna

One of the basic premises of drawing samples from populations is that the samples are representative of the populations. However, error in sampling is poorly recognized, and it goes unnoticed especially in com...

Authors: Harikrishnan Surendran and Karthikeyan Vasudevan

Floral volatiles interfere with plant attraction of parasitoids: ontogeny-dependent infochemical dynamics in Brassica rapa

The role of plant ontogeny on investment in direct defense against herbivores is well accepted, but the transition from the vegetative to the reproductive stage can also affect indirect resistance traits (i.e....

Authors: Gaylord A Desurmont, Diane Laplanche, Florian P Schiestl and Ted C J Turlings

A global perspective on decadal challenges and priorities in biodiversity informatics

Biodiversity informatics is a field that is growing rapidly in data infrastructure, tools, and participation by researchers worldwide from diverse disciplines and with diverse, innovative approaches. A recent ...

Authors: A Townsend Peterson, Jorge Soberón and Leonard Krishtalka

Utilizing associational resistance for biocontrol: impacted by temperature, supported by indirect defence

Associational herbivore resistance is potentiated by neighbouring heterogenic plant species that impact a focal plant’s attraction to herbivores or the damage that they cause. One mechanism to confer associati...

Authors: Sari J Himanen, Thuy Nga T Bui, Mengistu M Maja and Jarmo K Holopainen

Novel species interactions: American black bears respond to Pacific herring spawn

In addition to the decline and extinction of the world’s species, the decline and eventual loss of species interactions is one of the major consequences of the biodiversity crisis. On the Pacific coast of Nort...

Authors: Caroline Hazel Fox, Paul Charles Paquet and Thomas Edward Reimchen

Sterile males in a parasitoid wasp with complementary sex determination: from fitness costs to population extinction

Single-locus complementary sex determination (sl-CSD), which occurs in some insects of the order Hymenoptera, imposes a heavy genetic load that can drive small populations to extinction. The core process in th...

Authors: Xavier Fauvergue, Anna Chuine, Chloé Vayssade, Alexandra Auguste and Emmanuel Desouhant

Commonness and ecology, but not bigger brains, predict urban living in birds

Several life history and ecological variables have been reported to affect the likelihood of species becoming urbanized. Recently, studies have also focused on the role of brain size in explaining ability to a...

Authors: Svein Dale, Jan T Lifjeld and Melissah Rowe

The effect of peatland drainage and restoration on Odonata species richness and abundance

Restoration aims at reversing the trend of habitat degradation, the major threat to biodiversity. In Finland, more than half of the original peatland area has been drained, and during recent years, restoration...

Authors: Merja Elo, Jouni Penttinen and Janne S Kotiaho

Effects of elevated temperature and CO₂ on intertidal microphytobenthos

Microphytobenthos (MPB) are the main primary producers of many intertidal and shallow subtidal environments. Although these coastal ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic activities, little is...

Authors: Paulo Cartaxana, Sónia Vieira, Lourenço Ribeiro, Rui JM Rocha, Sónia Cruz, Ricardo Calado and Jorge Marques da Silva

Reproductive natural history and successful juvenile propagation of the threatened Caribbean Pillar Coral Dendrogyra cylindrus

The Caribbean pillar coral Dendrogyra cylindrus was recently listed as a threatened species under the United States Endangered Species Act. One of the major threats to this species is its low, virtually undetecta...

Authors: Kristen L Marhaver, Mark JA Vermeij and Mónica M Medina

Efficacy of neem chippings for mosquito larval control under field conditions

An in depth understanding of mosquito breeding biology and factors regulating population sizes is fundamental for vector population control. This paper presents results from a survey of mosquito breeding habit...

Authors: Susan S Imbahale and Wolfgang R Mukabana

Agent-mediated spatial storage effect in heterogeneous habitat stabilizes competitive mouse lemur coexistence in Menabe Central, Western Madagascar

Spatio-temporal distribution patterns of species in response to natural and anthropogenic drivers provide insight into the ecological processes that determine community composition. We investigated determinant...

Authors: Livia Schäffler, Joachim Saborowski and Peter M Kappeler

Effects of growth rate, size, and light availability on tree survival across life stages: a demographic analysis accounting for missing values and small sample sizes

Plant survival is a key factor in forest dynamics and survival probabilities often vary across life stages. Studies specifically aimed at assessing tree survival are unusual and so data initially designed for ...

Authors: Aristides Moustakas and Matthew R Evans

Limited impacts of extensive human land use on dominance, specialization, and biotic homogenization in boreal plant communities

Niche theory predicts that human disturbance should influence the assembly of communities, favouring functionally homogeneous communities dominated by few but widespread generalists. The decline and loss of sp...

Authors: Stephen J Mayor, Stan Boutin, Fangliang He and James F Cahill Jr

BMC Ecology reviewer acknowledgement 2014

Authors: Catherine J Potenski

High-throughput sequencing of nematode communities from total soil DNA extractions

Nematodes are extremely diverse and numbers of species are predicted to be more than a million. Studies on nematode diversity are difficult and laborious using classical methods and therefore high-throughput s...

Authors: Rumakanta Sapkota and Mogens Nicolaisen

Nectar sugars and bird visitation define a floral niche for basidiomycetous yeast on the Canary Islands

Studies on the diversity of yeasts in floral nectar were first carried out in the late 19^th century. A narrow group of fermenting, osmophilous ascomycetes were regarded as exclusive specialists able to populate t...

Authors: Moritz Mittelbach, Andrey M Yurkov, Daniele Nocentini, Massimo Nepi, Maximilian Weigend and Dominik Begerow

Suppression of the invasive plant mile-a-minute (Mikania micrantha) by local crop sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) by means of higher growth rate and competition for soil nutrients

There are a variety of ways of increasing crop diversity to increase agricultural sustainability and in turn having a positive influence on nearby natural ecosystems. Competitive crops may provide potent manag...

Authors: Shicai Shen, Gaofeng Xu, David Roy Clements, Guimei Jin, Aidong Chen, Fudou Zhang and Hisashi Kato-Noguchi

Experimental infection of a periodical cicada (Magicicada cassinii) with a parasitoid (Emblemasoma auditrix) of a proto-periodical cicada (Okanagana rimosa)

The proto-periodical cicada Okanagana rimosa is subject to infection by the acoustically orientating parasitoid fly Emblemasoma auditrix. Furthermore, it is also the only known host of E. auditrix. Here we test t...

Authors: Reinhard Lakes-Harlan and Thomas de Vries

Dissecting the multi-scale spatial relationship of earthworm assemblages with soil environmental variability

Studying the drivers and determinants of species, population and community spatial patterns is central to ecology. The observed structure of community assemblages is the result of deterministic abiotic (enviro...

Authors: Juan J Jiménez, Thibaud Decaëns, Patrick Lavelle and Jean-Pierre Rossi

Gastrointestinal helminths may affect host susceptibility to anthrax through seasonal immune trade-offs

Most vertebrates experience coinfections, and many pathogen-pathogen interactions occur indirectly through the host immune system. These interactions are particularly strong in mixed micro-macroparasite infect...

Authors: Carrie A Cizauskas, Wendy C Turner, Bettina Wagner, Martina Küstersrs, Russell E Vance and Wayne M Getz

Coexistence mechanisms at multiple scales in mosquito assemblages

Species coexistence in mosquito assemblages may depend on mechanisms related to interspecific resource partitioning occurring at multiple scales. In the present work we investigated co-occurrence or spatial se...

Authors: Gabriel Zorello Laporta and Maria Anice Mureb Sallum

Phosphorus limitation enhances parasite impact: feedback effects at the population level

Nutrient deficiency affects the growth and population dynamics of consumers. Endoparasites can be seen as consumers that drain carbon (C) or energy from their host while simultaneously competing for limiting r...

Authors: Katja Pulkkinen, Marcin W Wojewodzic and Dag O Hessen

The Hawaiian freshwater algae biodiversity survey (2009-2014): systematic and biogeographic trends with an emphasis on the macroalgae

A remarkable range of environmental conditions is present in the Hawaiian Islands due to their gradients of elevation, rainfall and island age. Despite being well known as a location for the study of evolution...

Authors: Alison R Sherwood, Amy L Carlile, Jessica M Neumann, J Patrick Kociolek, Jeffrey R Johansen, Rex L Lowe, Kimberly Y Conklin and Gernot G Presting