Mammal responses to global changes in human activity vary by trophic group and landscape.

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amount and timing of animal activity varied widely.

Marine fishes experiencing high-velocity range shifts may not be climate change winners.

Climate change is driving the global redistribution of species. A common assumption is that rapid range shifts occur in tandem with overall stable or positive abundance trends throughout the range and thus these species may be considered as climate change 'winners'. However, although establishing the link between range shift velocities and population trends is crucial for predicting climate change impacts it has not been empirically tested.

The cumulative niche approach: A framework to assess the performance of ecological niche model projections.

Ecological Niche Models (ENMs) are often used to project species distributions within alien ranges and in future climatic scenarios. However, ENMs depend on species-environment equilibrium, which may be absent for actively expanding species. We present a novel framework to estimate whether species have reached environmental equilibrium in their native and alien ranges.

A biome-dependent distribution gradient of tree species range edges is strongly dictated by climate spatial heterogeneity.

Understanding the causes of the arrest of species distributions has been a fundamental question in ecology and evolution. These questions are of particular interest for trees owing to their long lifespan and sessile nature. A surge in data availability evokes a macro-ecological analysis to determine the underlying forces limiting distributions.

Invading bivalves replaced native Mediterranean bivalves, with little effect on the local benthic community.

Unlabelled: The construction of the Suez Canal connected the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed rapid marine bio-invasion. Over the last century, several bivalve species have invaded the Levantine basin, yet their distribution and impact on the benthic community have not been thoroughly studied. Large-scale benthic surveys along the rocky substrate of the Israeli Mediterranean coastline indicate that invading bivalves, such as , and , now dominate the rocky environment, with densities of tens to hundreds of individuals per m.

Eco-Geography and Phenology Are the Major Drivers of Reproductive Isolation in the Royal Irises, a Species Complex in the Course of Speciation.

The continuous nature of speciation implies that different species are found at different stages of divergence, from no- to complete reproductive isolation. This process and its underlying mechanisms are best viewed in incipient species. Moreover, the species complex can offer unique insight into how reproductive isolation (RI) has evolved.

Distance decay 2.0 - A global synthesis of taxonomic and functional turnover in ecological communities.

Aim: Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances (i.e., β-diversity) is at the heart of community ecology.

Shift and homogenization of gut microbiome during invasion in marine fishes.

Biological invasion is one of the main components of global changes in aquatic ecosystems. Unraveling how establishment in novel environments affects key biological features of animals is a key step towards understanding invasion. Gut microbiome of herbivorous animals is important for host health but has been scarcely assessed in invasive species.

An invasive herbivorous fish (Siganus rivulatus) influences both benthic and planktonic microbes through defecation and nutrient excretion.

Direct and indirect impacts by invasive animals on plants and other animals through predation and competition have been evidenced in many ecosystems. For instance, the rabbitfish Siganus rivulatus, originating from the Red Sea, is now the most abundant species in costal habitats of South-Eastern Mediterranean Sea where it overgrazes algae. However, little is known about its impacts on microbes through release of metabolic wastes and feces.

A meta-analysis reveals edge effects within marine protected areas.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) play a leading role in conserving and restoring marine environments. MPAs can benefit both marine populations within their boundaries and external populations owing to a net export of organisms (spillover). However, little is known about variation in performance within MPAs.

Reduced human activity in shallow reefs during the COVID-19 pandemic increases fish evenness.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a rare opportunity to examine effects of people on natural systems and processes. Here, we collected fish diversity data from coral reefs at the Israeli Gulf of Aqaba during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. We examined beach entrances to the reef, nearby shallow reefs and deeper areas exposed mostly to divers.

Expanding conservation culturomics and iEcology from terrestrial to aquatic realms.

The ongoing digital revolution in the age of big data is opening new research opportunities. Culturomics and iEcology, two emerging research areas based on the analysis of online data resources, can provide novel scientific insights and inform conservation and management efforts. To date, culturomics and iEcology have been applied primarily in the terrestrial realm.

Are we ready to track climate-driven shifts in marine species across international boundaries? - A global survey of scientific bottom trawl data.

Marine biota are redistributing at a rapid pace in response to climate change and shifting seascapes. While changes in fish populations and community structure threaten the sustainability of fisheries, our capacity to adapt by tracking and projecting marine species remains a challenge due to data discontinuities in biological observations, lack of data availability, and mismatch between data and real species distributions. To assess the extent of this challenge, we review the global status and accessibility of ongoing scientific bottom trawl surveys.

Ecological pleiotropy and indirect effects alter the potential for evolutionary rescue.

Invading predators can negatively affect naïve prey populations due to a lack of evolved defenses. Many species therefore may be at risk of extinction due to overexploitation by exotic predators. Yet the strong selective effect of predation might drive evolution of imperiled prey toward more resistant forms, potentially allowing the prey to persist.

The global biogeography of polyploid plants.

Deciphering the global distribution of polyploid plants is fundamental for understanding plant evolution and ecology. Many factors have been hypothesized to affect the uneven distribution of polyploid plants across the globe. Nevertheless, the lack of large comparative datasets has restricted such studies to local floras and to narrow taxonomical scopes, limiting our understanding of the underlying drivers of polyploid plant distribution.

Comparison of wormlions and their immediate habitat under man-made and natural shelters: suggesting factors making wormlions successful in cities.

Wormlions are fly larvae that construct pit-traps in loose soil and ambush prey that fall into their pits. They occur in high numbers in cities, below any man-made shelter providing protection from direct sunlight, such as a concrete roof with a thin layer of sand at the ground. Their natural habitat is either caves or any natural structure that provides full shade.

Geographic isolation and larval dispersal shape seascape genetic patterns differently according to spatial scale.

Genetic variation, as a basis of evolutionary change, allows species to adapt and persist in different climates and environments. Yet, a comprehensive assessment of the drivers of genetic variation at different spatial scales is still missing in marine ecosystems. Here, we investigated the influence of environment, geographic isolation, and larval dispersal on the variation in allele frequencies, using an extensive spatial sampling (47 locations) of the striped red mullet () in the Mediterranean Sea.

BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene.

Motivation: The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series.

Does scale matter? A systematic review of incorporating biological realism when predicting changes in species distributions.

Background: There is ample evidence that biotic factors, such as biotic interactions and dispersal capacity, can affect species distributions and influence species' responses to climate change. However, little is known about how these factors affect predictions from species distribution models (SDMs) with respect to spatial grain and extent of the models.

Objectives: Understanding how spatial scale influences the effects of biological processes in SDMs is important because SDMs are one of the primary tools used by conservation biologists to assess biodiversity impacts of climate change.

Tropical bird species have less variable body sizes.

Ecologists have often predicted that species' niche breadths should decline towards the Equator. Dan Janzen arrived at this prediction based on climatic constraints, while Robert MacArthur argued that a latitudinal gradient in resource specialization drives the pattern. This idea has some support when it comes to thermal niches, but has rarely been explored for other niche dimensions.

Global reef fish richness gradients emerge from divergent and scale-dependent component changes.

Biodiversity varies from place to place due to environmental and historical factors. To improve our understanding of how history and the environment influence observed patterns, we need to address the limitations of the most commonly used biodiversity metric, species richness. Here, we show that scale-dependent dissections of species richness into components of total abundance, species relative abundances and spatial aggregations of species reveal that two well-known biogeographic reef fish species richness gradients emerge from very different underlying component patterns.

Habitat niche breadth predicts invasiveness in solitary ascidians.

A major focus of invasion biology is understanding the traits associated with introduction success. Most studies assess these traits in the invaded region, while only few compare nonindigenous species to the pool of potential invaders in their native region. We focused on the , commonly evoked but seldom tested, which states that generalist species are more likely to become introduced as they are capable of thriving under a wide set of conditions.

Remarkable size-spectra stability in a marine system undergoing massive invasion.

The Mediterranean Sea is an invasion hotspot, with non-indigenous species suspected to be a major driver behind community changes. We used size spectra, a reliable index of food web structure, to examine how the influx of Red Sea fishes into the Mediterranean Sea has impacted the indigenous species community. This is the first attempt to use changes in the size spectra to reveal the effect of biological invasions.