Treesearch

Plant invasions can alter food resources and habitat conditions that structure animal communities. These effects are negative for many native animals, but neutral or even positive for others. Understanding why we see this variation in responses is critical for mitigating invasion outcomes, yet we lack a synthetic framework to explain and potentially predict effects of invasive plants on native animals. We propose a trait-based framework for understanding how invasive plants affect native fauna, which draws on community assembly, niche, and trait theories to define the mechanisms by which...

Microbes are ubiquitous residents of the atmosphere, including the air that we breathe. They are also widely present in terrestrial, marine, and aquatic environments. Typical microbes include viruses, fungi, archaea, bacteria, algae, and bryophytes. Many are of edaphic origin and play significant ecological roles in the soil. Propagules are exceedingly lightweight and small, generally measured in microns (millionths of a meter). Propagules achieve airborne status in the wind, where they may travel from a few millimeters to thousands of kilometers. Most have been recorded at least as high...

Currently, a change in the species composition of the Bialowieza Forest, eastern Poland, is occurring. Parallel to the dying of spruce (Picea abies L. Karst.), caused by Ips typographus (L.), there is a spread of deciduous tree species, among which hornbeam (Carpinus betulus L.) is the most active. Against the background of climate change, it is of interest to consider the possibility of reintroducing relict species in areas occupied until recently by spruce. One of these is silver fir (Abies alba Mill.), which is biologically and ecologically very similar to spruce. The Tisovik tract (the...

The Seedlot Selection Tool and Climate-Smart Restoration Tool are web-based tools designed to match seedlots with planting sites assuming that seedlots are adapted to the past climates in which they evolved, primarily with respect to temperature and aridity. The tools map the climatic match of seedlots with the past or projected climates of planting sites. The challenge is that future climates are a moving target, which means that seedlots must be adapted to the near-term climates as well as the climates of the mid- to late-21st century. Because climate projections are uncertain, the...

This Proceedings contains the abstracts in English and Spanish of papers presented at the 4th conference on the Madrean Archipeligo held May 14-18, 2018, in Tucson, Arizona. it also contains several full-length papers that expand on the abstracts. The report presents updates on research presently going on in the Madrean Archipeligo region of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua. The region is known as the “Sky Islands” of southern Arizona and New Mexico and the Sierra Madre Occidental of Sonora and Chihuahua. in between the mountain ranges are the grasslands and desert lands that...

In the face of a growing human footprint, understanding interactions among threatened large carnivores is fundamental to effectively mitigating anthropogenic threats and managing species. Using data from a large-scale camera trap survey, we investigated the effects of environmental and anthropogenic variables on the interspecific interaction of a carnivore guild comprising of tiger, leopard and dhole in Bhutan. We demonstrate the complex effects of human settlement density on large carnivore interactions. Specifically, we demonstrate that leopard-dhole co-occupancy probability was higher...

Wildlife pedigrees provide insights into ecological and evolutionary processes. DNA obtained from noninvasively collected hair is often used to determine individual identities for pedigrees and other genetic analyses. However, detection rates associated with some noninvasive DNA studies can be relatively low, and genetic data do not provide information on individual birth year. Supplementing hair DNA stations with video cameras should increase the individual detection rate, assuming accurate identification of individuals via video data. Video data can also provide birth year information...

Increased fire size and frequency coupled with annual grass invasion pose major challenges to sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystem conservation, which is currently focused on protecting sagebrush community composition and structure. A common strategy for mitigating potential fire is to use fuel treatments that alter the structure and amount of burnable material, thus reducing fire behavior and creating access points for fire suppression resources. While there is some recent information on the impacts of fuel treatments on ecological communities, we have little information on fuel treatment...

Low-severity prescribed fire is an important tool to manage fire-maintained forests across North America. In dry conifer forests of the western USA, prescribed fire is often used to reduce fuel loads in forests characterized historically by mixed- and low-severity fire regimes. Understanding the ecological effects of prescribed fire treatments is important for predicting the impacts of these management actions on wildlife communities. Few studies, however, have estimated small landbird responses to forest treatments at spatial scales relevant to their ecology or have examined potential...