Hollens-Kuhr, Hilke van der Niet, Timotheüs Cozien, Ruth Kuhlmann, Michael
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractThe impact of pollinator community diversity on trait matching in plant-pollinator interactions is poorly studied, even though many mutualisms involve multiple interaction partners. We studied 10 communities in which one to three species of oil-collecting Rediviva bees pollinate the long-spurred, oil-producing flowers of Diascia "floribunda...
Fuller, Rebecca C
Published in
The American naturalist
Bytnerowicz, Thomas A Menge, Duncan N L
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractNitrogen-fixing trees are a major potential source of nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems. The degree to which they persist in older forests has considerable implications for forest nitrogen budgets. We characterized nitrogen-fixing tree abundance across stand age in the contiguous United States and analyzed a theoretical model to help under...
Chaparro Pedraza, P Catalina Matthews, Blake de Meester, Luc Dakos, Vasilis
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractThere is growing concern about the dire socioecological consequences of abrupt transitions between alternative ecosystem states in response to environmental changes. At the same time, environmental change can trigger evolutionary responses that could stabilize or destabilize ecosystem dynamics. However, we know little about how coupled ecol...
Montgomerie, Robert Hemmings, Nicola Thompson, Jamie E Birkhead, Tim R
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractWe studied the shapes of eggs from 955 extant bird species across the avian phylogeny, including 39 of 40 orders and 78% of 249 families. We show that the elongation component of egg shape (length relative to width) is largely the result of constraints imposed by the female's anatomy during egg formation, whereas asymmetry (pointedness) is ...
Wilber, Mark Q Pfab, Ferdinand Ohmer, Michel E Briggs, Cheryl J
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractInfection intensity can dictate disease outcomes but is typically ignored when modeling infection dynamics of microparasites (e.g., bacteria, virus, and fungi). However, for a number of pathogens of wildlife typically categorized as microparasites, accounting for infection intensity and within-host infection processes is critical for predic...
Brewster, Casey L Gifford, Matthew Ortega, Jason Beaupre, Steven J
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractAccelerated extinction rates have prompted an increased focus on the interplay between environmental change and species response. The effects of environmental change on thermal opportunity are typically considered through a climate change context. However, habitat alteration can also have strong effects on the thermal environment. Additiona...
Thompson, Patrick Hürlemann, Samuel Altermatt, Florian
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractPredicting how ecological communities will respond to environmental change is challenging but highly relevant in this era of global change. Ecologists commonly use current spatial relationships between species and environmental conditions to make predictions about the future. This assumes that species will track conditions by shifting their...
Thunell, Viktor Lindmark, Max Huss, Magnus Gårdmark, Anna
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractSpecies interactions mediate how warming affects community composition via individual growth and population size structure. While predictions on how warming affects composition of size- or stage-structured communities have so far focused on linear (food chain) communities, mixed competition-predation interactions, such as intraguild predati...
Huey, Raymond B Miles, Donald B Pianka, Eric R
Published in
The American naturalist
AbstractAn ecological issue can best be studied by gathering original data that are specifically targeted for that issue. But ascertaining-a priori-whether a novel issue will be worth exploring can be problematic without background data. However, an issue's potential merit can sometimes be evaluated by repurposing legacy or other data that had been...
