20 000 years of african vegetation change

By Leanne Phelps

Understanding the effects of climate-disturbance-ecosystem interactions is essential for producing accurate predictions of vegetation change. Yet large uncertainties exist in future projections of biodiversity and ecosystem...

European fish stocks on the move

Map of the northeast Atlantic showing the changes in spatial occurrence per species identified by the presence–absence analysis. In each ICES division, the results are showed with a petal plot. Each petal corresponds to a species, and these are ordered from top to bottom by...

One thousand camera traps reveal that forest mammal communities have a consistent structure and similar vulnerability across the tropics

By Francesco Rovero

That biological communities in similar environments but distant regions share forms and functions is a known pattern of diversity attributed to convergent evolution. For tropical forest mammals, which include some of the most...

The koala was a victim of prehistoric climate change

Image by John Llewelyn (Global Ecology @Flinders)

By Farzin Shabani, Frédérik Saltré, Corey Bradshaw, Katharina Peters and Antoine Champreux

Along with the kangaroo and the emu, the tree-living marsupial koala is the most recognised...

Passerine assemblages show niche expansion from natural to urban areas

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...

Shorebirds are important plant vectors via endozoochory

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...

Determinants of reef fish assemblages in tropical Oceanic islands

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:...

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

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...

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

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...