Synthesising the Relationships Between Food Web Structure and Robustness.

For many decades, ecologists have sought to understand the extent to which species losses lead to secondary extinctions-that is, the additional loss of species that occurs when resources or key interactions are lost (i.e. robustness).

Quantifying co-extinctions and ecosystem service vulnerability in coastal ecosystems experiencing climate warming.

Climate change is negatively impacting ecosystems and their contributions to human well-being, known as ecosystem services. Previous research has mainly focused on the direct effects of climate change on species and ecosystem services, leaving a gap in understanding the indirect impacts resulting from changes in species interactions within complex ecosystems. This knowledge gap is significant because the loss of a species in a food web can lead to additional species losses or "co-extinctions," particularly when the species most impacted by climate change are also the species that play critical roles in food web persistence or provide ecosystem services.

A comparison of survey method efficiencies for estimating densities of zebra mussels ().

Abundance surveys are commonly used to estimate plant or animal densities and frequently require estimating detection probabilities to account for imperfect detection. The estimation of detection probabilities requires additional measurements that take time, potentially reducing the efficiency of the survey when applied to high-density populations. We conducted quadrat, removal, and distance surveys of zebra mussels () in three central Minnesota lakes and determined how much survey effort would be required to achieve a pre-specified level of precision for each abundance estimator, allowing us to directly compare survey design efficiencies across a range of conditions.

Decision-making under uncertainty for species introductions into ecological networks.

Ecological communities are increasingly subject to natural and human-induced additions of species, as species shift their ranges under climate change, are introduced for conservation and are unintentionally moved by humans. As such, decisions about how to manage ecosystems subject to species introductions and considering multiple management objectives need to be made. However, the impacts of gaining new species on ecological communities are difficult to predict due to uncertainty in introduced species characteristics, the novel interactions that will be produced by that species, and the recipient ecosystem structure.

Merging theory and experiments to predict and understand coextinctions.

In an era of mass extinction, predicting the consequences of species loss has become a priority for ecologists. Extinction of one species can trigger the loss of dependent species, sometimes leading to cascades of extinctions. Simulations predict that cascading extinctions should be commonplace, but empirical observations of extinction cascades rarely match those predicted by simulation.

Conceptualizing ecosystem services using social-ecological networks.

Social-ecological networks (SENs) represent the complex relationships between ecological and social systems and are a useful tool for analyzing and managing ecosystem services. However, mainstreaming the application of SENs in ecosystem service research has been hindered by a lack of clarity about how to match research questions to ecosystem service conceptualizations in SEN (i.e.

Analyzing ecosystem services as part of ecological networks in three salt marsh ecosystems.

Biodiversity plays important roles in nature's contributions to people (i.e., ecosystem services), but the critical details of how biodiversity contributes are challenging to determine.

An ecological network approach to predict ecosystem service vulnerability to species losses.

Human-driven threats are changing biodiversity, impacting ecosystem services. The loss of one species can trigger secondary extinctions of additional species, because species interact-yet the consequences of these secondary extinctions for services remain underexplored. Herein, we compare robustness of food webs and the ecosystem services (hereafter 'services') they provide; and investigate factors determining service responses to secondary extinctions.