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Mapping the puzzle of herbivore diversity across the Arctic: Functions and relationships matter

editor
22 May 2019

 

 

Figure 1 – A phylogenetically diverse Arctic herbivore community including rock ptarmigan and reindeer. Photo: Nicolas Lecomte​

By James D. M. Speed and coauthors

Understanding which species we find where, and why, is...

Passerine assemblages show niche expansion from natural to urban areas

editor
11 April 2019
Pictures of six common passerine species in our study locations. Species were increasingly tolerant to habitat transformation from left to right. Left-up: Red-billed Leiothrix Leiothrix lutea. Left-down: Grey-cheeked Fulvetta Alcippe morrisonia. Middle-up...

Finding the ‘best’ habitat suitability model

editor
5 March 2019

By Edward Gregr and Kai Chan

How is a habitat model’s complexity related to its forecasting skill? Our recent Ecography paper addressed this question using multiple data...

Shorebirds are important plant vectors via endozoochory

editor
10 December 2018
Figure 1. A flock of black-tailed godwit in one of our study sites in England, shortly after returning from breeding grounds in Iceland. Photo by A. J. Green​.

By Andy J. Green and Ádám Lovas-Kiss

 

The potential importance of...

Defaunation and fragmentation erode small mammal diversity dimensions in tropical forests

editor
26 November 2018
Figure 1: Best-fitting structural equation model (full direct + indirect model). Positive and negative pathways are indicated by black and gray lines, respectively. Arrow thickness is scaled to illustrate the relative strength of effects and significant coefficients are...

Determinants of reef fish assemblages in tropical Oceanic islands

editor
22 November 2018
Oceanic islands. A. St Paul and St Peter, Brazil, photo: Lucas Nunes, B. Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, photo: Juan J. Alvarado, C. Fernando de Noronha, Brazil, photo: Sergio R. Floeter, D. Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, João P. Krajewski, E. St Paul and St Peter, Brazil, photo:...

A parsimonious view of the parsimony principle in ecology and evolution

editor
20 November 2018
The curve-fitting problem. The choice of the most plausible hypothesis is based on an arbitrary balance between goodness-of-fit and simplicity criteria. The red curve is the simplest, indicating a linear relationship between the two variables, but also the worst-fit. The...

The seascape ecology of tropical islands: can we characterize and predict reef community patterns across scales?

editor
5 November 2018
Figure 1. The towed-diver survey method. Graphics credit: NOAA Ecosystem Sciences Division (ESD).

By Gareth J. Williams, Eoghan A. Aston, Andrew J. Davies, Jamison M. Gove

Landscape ecological theory, applied to the marine realm, can...

recurse: an R package to analyze spatiotemporal patterns in revisitations from animal movement data

editor
23 October 2018

by Chloe Bracis

Animal movements are linked to both quotidian activities as well as larger questions of survival and reproduction. For example, one might think of an animal moving to locate food, or, on the other side of the coin, moving to avoid...

Space & Time matter: spatial ecology in non-euclidean spaces

editor
22 October 2018

By Luis Gimenez Noya

Patterns of distribution of organisms have been traditionally interpreted as resulting from the balance of reproduction and mortality. However, populations of many organisms occupy fragmented landscapes; for instance, animals...

Tropical moths in the mountains are larger

editor
18 October 2018

By Gunnar Brehm

New study in biodiversity hotspot studied correlation between size of tropical moths and their elevational distribution

Researchers from three universities have measured more than 19 000 tropical moths from 1100 species...

Exciting new partnership between Frontiers for Young Minds and Ecography

editor
17 October 2018

A new collaboration between Ecography and Frontiers for Young Minds will be bringing the latest ecological research for dissemination with the Frontiers for Young Minds audience.  

 

By the Frontiers for Young Minds team

We are...

Using simplified settings to advance ecological theory: a lesson from the subterranean world

editor
27 September 2018

by Stefano Mammola

E4 award

A wise man named Socrates once stated a famous aphorism: "I know that I know nothing". Some thousands years later, in the era of internet, satellites and artificial intelligence,...

Phylogeny and species traits predict bird detectability

editor
26 September 2018

by Péter Sólymos (solymos [at] ualberta [dot] ca)

Video abstract: https://vimeo.com/291323964

Birds use songs to attract...

Accessibility maps as a tool to predict sampling bias in historical biodiversity records

editor
3 September 2018
The King’s Map, a unique map of South Africa produced in 1790 for the King Louis XVI of France, on the observations of the French ornithologist and explorer Francois Levaillant, by M. de Laborde. By publishing journals about his voyages, Levaillant provided us with...

There and back again: genetic trials enable the transfer of Douglas-fir distribution models across continents

editor
29 June 2018
Figure 1. Role of seed origin in buffering the effects of climate change on potential distribution. Potential distribution of two provenances, Darrington originating from cascade region of Washington in North America and Adams lake originating from interior British...

Is there such a thing as "flying ant day"?

editor
27 June 2018
We found that ants emerge throughout the summer, not just on one set day a year. Photo credit: thesun.co.uk.

By Adam Hart

Back in 2012, while digging up a leaf-cutting ant nest in Trinidad for a BBC documentary I was making, I got an...

The litter-sifting lifestyle: Capturing ant diversity on Middle American mountains

editor
15 June 2018
Fidel Vega, Saslaya National Park, Nicaragua, May 2011. Photo by Michael Branstetter.

 

By John Longino

MIGUEL! The shout echoes through the forest. It is dawn, in a cloud forest on an isolated group of mountains in eastern...

The challenge of modeling niches and distributions for data‐poor species

editor
22 May 2018
Optimal and default Maxent models for the Malagasy rodent Eliurus majori (logistic output). Results correspond to the unfiltered dataset (top) and filtered dataset (bottom), and three ways of determining model settings: AICc (left), sequential criteria based on...

Introduced megafauna are rewilding the Anthropocene

editor
16 May 2018
A wild donkey (Equus asinus) in the Sonoran Desert, Arizona. Photograph by Michael Lundgren.

Editor's Choice June

By Erick Lundgren et al. 

The world was once home to an astounding diversity of...

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