GPS tracking data of Eurasian oystercatchers () from the Netherlands and Belgium.

We describe six datasets that contain GPS and accelerometer data of 202 Eurasian oystercatchers () spanning the period 2008-2021. Birds were equipped with GPS trackers in breeding and wintering areas in the Netherlands and Belgium. We used GPS trackers from the University of Amsterdam Bird Tracking System (UvA-BiTS) for several study purposes, including the study of space use during the breeding season, habitat use and foraging behaviour in the winter season, and impacts of human disturbance.

The demographic causes of population change vary across four decades in a long-lived shorebird.

Understanding which factors cause populations to decline begins with identifying which parts of the life cycle, and which vital rates, have changed over time. However, in a world where humans are altering the environment both rapidly and in different ways, the demographic causes of decline likely vary over time. Identifying temporal variation in demographic causes of decline is crucial to assure that conservation actions target current and not past threats.

Conceptualizing and quantifying body condition using structural equation modelling: A user guide.

Body condition is an important concept in behaviour, evolution and conservation, commonly used as a proxy of an individual's performance, for example in the assessment of environmental impacts. Although body condition potentially encompasses a wide range of health state dimensions (nutritional, immune or hormonal status), in practice most studies operationalize body condition using a single (univariate) measure, such as fat storage. One reason for excluding additional axes of variation may be that multivariate descriptors of body condition impose statistical and analytical challenges.

Insect biomass decline scaled to species diversity: General patterns derived from a hoverfly community.

Reports of declines in biomass of flying insects have alarmed the world in recent years. However, how biomass declines reflect biodiversity loss is still an open question. Here, we analyze the abundance (19,604 individuals) of 162 hoverfly species (Diptera: Syrphidae), at six locations in German nature reserves in 1989 and 2014, and generalize the results with a model varying decline rates of common vs.

Biodiversity increases multitrophic energy use efficiency, flow and storage in grasslands.

The continuing loss of global biodiversity has raised questions about the risk that species extinctions pose for the functioning of natural ecosystems and the services that they provide for human wellbeing. There is consensus that, on single trophic levels, biodiversity sustains functions; however, to understand the full range of biodiversity effects, a holistic and multitrophic perspective is needed. Here, we apply methods from ecosystem ecology that quantify the structure and dynamics of the trophic network using ecosystem energetics to data from a large grassland biodiversity experiment.

A multitrophic perspective on biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research.

Concern about the functional consequences of unprecedented loss in biodiversity has prompted biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research to become one of the most active fields of ecological research in the past 25 years. Hundreds of experiments have manipulated biodiversity as an independent variable and found compelling support that the functioning of ecosystems increases with the diversity of their ecological communities. This research has also identified some of the mechanisms underlying BEF relationships, some context-dependencies of the strength of relationships, as well as implications for various ecosystem services that mankind depends upon.

Limited evidence for spatial resource partitioning across temperate grassland biodiversity experiments.

Locally, plant species richness supports many ecosystem functions. Yet, the mechanisms driving these often-positive biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships are not well understood. Spatial resource partitioning across vertical resource gradients is one of the main hypothesized causes for enhanced ecosystem functioning in more biodiverse grasslands.

Effects of extreme rainfall events are independent of plant species richness in an experimental grassland community.

Global climate models predict more frequent periods of drought stress alternated by heavier, but fewer rainfall events in the future. Biodiversity studies have shown that such changed drought stress may be mitigated by plant species richness. Here, we investigate if grassland communities, differing in species richness, respond differently to climatic extremes within the growing season.

Signs of stabilisation and stable coexistence.

Many empirical studies motivated by an interest in stable coexistence have quantified negative density dependence, negative frequency dependence, or negative plant-soil feedback, but the links between these empirical results and ecological theory are not straightforward. Here, we relate these analyses to theoretical conditions for stabilisation and stable coexistence in classical competition models. By stabilisation, we mean an excess of intraspecific competition relative to interspecific competition that inherently slows or even prevents competitive exclusion.

Hatching failure and accumulation of organic pollutants through the terrestrial food web of a declining songbird in Western Europe.

Population growth in passerine birds is largely driven by fecundity. If fecundity is affected, for instance by hatching failure, populations may decline. We noted high hatching failure of up to 27% per year in relict populations of the Northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe) in The Netherlands, a strongly declining, migratory passerine in Europe.

Lost in diversity: the interactions between soil-borne fungi, biodiversity and plant productivity.

There is consensus that plant species richness enhances plant productivity within natural grasslands, but the underlying drivers remain debated. Recently, differential accumulation of soil-borne fungal pathogens across the plant diversity gradient has been proposed as a cause of this pattern. However, the below-ground environment has generally been treated as a 'black box' in biodiversity experiments, leaving these fungi unidentified.

More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas.

Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning.

Root chemistry and soil fauna, but not soil abiotic conditions explain the effects of plant diversity on root decomposition.

Plant diversity influences many ecosystem functions including root decomposition. However, due to the presence of multiple pathways via which plant diversity may affect root decomposition, our mechanistic understanding of their relationships is limited. In a grassland biodiversity experiment, we simultaneously assessed the effects of three pathways-root litter quality, soil biota, and soil abiotic conditions-on the relationships between plant diversity (in terms of species richness and the presence/absence of grasses and legumes) and root decomposition using structural equation modeling.

Environmental factors constraining adventitious root formation during flooding of Solanum dulcamara.

Flooding is a compound stress, imposing strong limitations on plant development. The expression of adaptive traits that alleviate flooding stress may be constrained if floodwater levels are too deep. For instance, adventitious root outgrowth is typically less profound in completely submerged plants than in partially submerged plants, suggesting additional constraints in full submergence.

Benefits of flooding-induced aquatic adventitious roots depend on the duration of submergence: linking plant performance to root functioning.

Background And Aims: Temporal flooding is a common environmental stress for terrestrial plants. Aquatic adventitious roots (aquatic roots) are commonly formed in flooding-tolerant plant species and are generally assumed to be beneficial for plant growth by supporting water and nutrient uptake during partial flooding. However, the actual contribution of these roots to plant performance under flooding has hardly been quantified.

Surviving in a Cosexual World: A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Dioecy in Tropical Trees.

Dioecy has a demographic disadvantage compared with hermaphroditism: only about half of reproductive adults produce seeds. Dioecious species must therefore have fitness advantages to compensate for this cost through increased survival, growth, and/or reproduction. We used a full life cycle approach to quantify the demographic costs and benefits associated with dioecy while controlling for demographic differences between dioecious and hermaphroditic species related to other functional traits.

Plants are less negatively affected by flooding when growing in species-rich plant communities.

Flooding is expected to increase in frequency and severity in the future. The ecological consequences of flooding are the combined result of species-specific plant traits and ecological context. However, the majority of past flooding research has focused on individual model species under highly controlled conditions.

Scale-dependent bi-trophic interactions in a semi-arid savanna: how herbivores eliminate benefits of nutrient patchiness to plants.

The scale of resource heterogeneity may influence how resources are locally partitioned between co-existing large and small organisms such as trees and grasses in savannas. Scale-related plant responses may, in turn, influence herbivore use of the vegetation. To examine these scale-dependent bi-trophic interactions, we varied fertilizer [(nitrogen (N)/phosphorus (P)/potassium (K)] applications to patches to create different scales of nutrient patchiness (patch size 2 × 2 m, 10 × 10 m, or whole-plot 50 × 50 m) in a large field experiment in intact African savanna.

Fast-slow continuum and reproductive strategies structure plant life-history variation worldwide.

The identification of patterns in life-history strategies across the tree of life is essential to our prediction of population persistence, extinction, and diversification. Plants exhibit a wide range of patterns of longevity, growth, and reproduction, but the general determinants of this enormous variation in life history are poorly understood. We use demographic data from 418 plant species in the wild, from annual herbs to supercentennial trees, to examine how growth form, habitat, and phylogenetic relationships structure plant life histories and to develop a framework to predict population performance.