Coefficients in Taylor's law increase with the time scale of water clarity measurements in a global suite of lakes.

Identifying the scaling rules describing ecological patterns across time and space is a central challenge in ecology. Taylor's law of fluctuation scaling, which states that the variance of a population's size or density is proportional to a positive power of the mean size or density, has been widely observed in population dynamics and characterizes variability in multiple scientific domains. However, it is unclear if this phenomenon accurately describes ecological patterns across many orders of magnitude in time, and therefore links otherwise disparate observations.

Avian communities show distinct responses to forest-to-bog restoration.

Since the 1990's, attempted restoration of blanket bogs which have been previously afforested with non-native conifers has taken place in Ireland and Britain, with the aim of reinstating hydrological functioning and hence, peatland biodiversity. Here, we assess the conservation benefit of these restoration measures at sites in the west of Ireland, 16-20 years post works, by comparing avian communities between trios of restored (n = 6), near-natural (n = 6), and afforested (n = 6) lowland blanket bogs. We assessed avian community response in terms of differences in the richness and density of all bird species and of Birds of Conservation Concern in Ireland (BoCCI), as well as community composition.

Examining fish scale biomineral from Atlantic salmon populations.

Fish scale microchemistry can be used to make life-history inferences, although ecological studies examining scale composition are relatively rare. Salmon scales have an external layer of calcium phosphate hydroxyl apatite (HAP). The structure, hardness, and calcium content of this layer have been shown to vary within and between species.

Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics.

Humans impact terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems, yet many broad-scale studies have found no systematic, negative biodiversity changes (for example, decreasing abundance or taxon richness). Here we show that mixed biodiversity responses may arise because community metrics show variable responses to anthropogenic impacts across broad spatial scales. We first quantified temporal trends in anthropogenic impacts for 1,365 riverine invertebrate communities from 23 European countries, based on similarity to least-impacted reference communities.