Incorporating Ecosystem Services into Solar Energy Siting to Enhance Sustainable Energy Transitions.

Solar energy is expected to play a large role in decarbonization of the energy sector globally. In the United States, solar energy is forecasted to generate roughly 45% of the electricity by 2050. Although solar energy mitigates the negative effects of climate change by providing electricity without releasing greenhouse gases, little is known about the implications of solar energy development for ecosystem services.

When and how can we predict adaptive responses to climate change?

Predicting if, when, and how populations can adapt to climate change constitutes one of the greatest challenges in science today. Here, we build from contributions to the special issue on evolutionary adaptation to climate change, a survey of its authors, and recent literature to explore the limits and opportunities for predicting adaptive responses to climate change. We outline what might be predictable now, in the future, and perhaps never even with our best efforts.

Macroecological predictors of evolutionary and plastic potential do not apply at microgeographic scales for a freshwater cladoceran under climate change.

Rapid evolutionary adaptation could reduce the negative impacts of climate change if sufficient heritability of key traits exists under future climate conditions. Plastic responses to climate change could also reduce negative impacts. Understanding which populations are likely to respond via evolution or plasticity could therefore improve estimates of extinction risk.

A global horizon scan for urban evolutionary ecology.

Research on the evolutionary ecology of urban areas reveals how human-induced evolutionary changes affect biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. In a rapidly urbanizing world imposing many selective pressures, a time-sensitive goal is to identify the emergent issues and research priorities that affect the ecology and evolution of species within cities. Here, we report the results of a horizon scan of research questions in urban evolutionary ecology submitted by 100 interdisciplinary scholars.

Asynchrony, density dependence, and persistence in an amphibian.

Understanding drivers of metapopulation dynamics remains a critical challenge for ecology and conservation. In particular, the degree of synchrony in metapopulation dynamics determines how resilient a metapopulation is to a widespread disturbance. In this study, we used 21 years of egg mass count data across 64 nonpermanent freshwater ponds in Connecticut, USA to evaluate patterns of abundance and growth and to assess regional as well as local factors in shaping the population dynamics of wood frogs (Rana sylvatica = Lithobates sylvaticus).

Cool microrefugia accumulate and conserve biodiversity under climate change.

A major challenge in climate change biology is to explain why the impacts of climate change vary around the globe. Microclimates could explain some of this variation, but climate change biologists often overlook microclimates because they are difficult to map. Here, we map microclimates in a freshwater rock pool ecosystem and evaluate how accounting for microclimates alters predictions of climate change impacts on aquatic invertebrates.

Microgeographic evolution of metabolic physiology in a salamander metapopulation.

The Metabolic Theory of Ecology explains ecological variation spanning taxonomic organization, space, and time based on universal physiological relationships. The theory depends on two core parameters: the normalization constant, a mass-independent measure of metabolic rate expected to be invariant among similar species, and the scaling coefficient, a measure of metabolic change with body mass commonly assumed to follow the universal 3/4 scaling law. However, emerging evidence for adaptive microevolution of metabolic rates led us to hypothesize that metabolic rate might exhibit evolved variation among populations on microgeographic scales.

Balancing selection and drift in a polymorphic salamander metapopulation.

Understanding how genetic variation is maintained in a metapopulation is a longstanding problem in evolutionary biology. Historical resurveys of polymorphisms have offered efficient insights about evolutionary mechanisms, but are often conducted on single, large populations, neglecting the more comprehensive view afforded by considering all populations in a metapopulation. Here, we resurveyed a metapopulation of spotted salamanders () to understand the evolutionary drivers of frequency variation in an egg mass colour polymorphism.

Adaptation reduces competitive dominance and alters community assembly.

A growing body of theory predicts that evolution of an early-arriving species in a new environment can produce a competitive advantage against later arriving species, therefore altering community assembly (i.e. the community monopolization hypothesis).

Socio-eco-evolutionary dynamics in cities.

Cities are uniquely complex systems regulated by interactions and feedbacks between nature and human society. Characteristics of human society-including culture, economics, technology and politics-underlie social patterns and activity, creating a heterogeneous environment that can influence and be influenced by both ecological and evolutionary processes. Increasing research on urban ecology and evolutionary biology has coincided with growing interest in eco-evolutionary dynamics, which encompasses the interactions and reciprocal feedbacks between evolution and ecology.

Microgeographic divergence of functional responses among salamanders under antagonistic selection from apex predators.

A predator's functional response determines predator-prey interactions by describing the relationship between the number of prey available and the number eaten. Its shape and parameters fundamentally govern the dynamic equilibrium of predator-prey interactions and their joint abundances. Yet, estimates of these key parameters generally assume stasis in space and time and ignore the potential for local adaptation to alter feeding responses and the stability of trophic dynamics.

Seasonality and uncertainty in global COVID-19 growth rates.

The virus causing COVID-19 has spread rapidly worldwide and threatens millions of lives. It remains unknown, as of April 2020, whether summer weather will reduce its spread, thereby alleviating strains on hospitals and providing time for vaccine development. Early insights from laboratory studies and research on related viruses predicted that COVID-19 would decline with higher temperatures, humidity, and ultraviolet (UV) light.

Evolutionary origins for ecological patterns in space.

Historically, many biologists assumed that evolution and ecology acted independently because evolution occurred over distances too great to influence most ecological patterns. Today, evidence indicates that evolution can operate over a range of spatial scales, including fine spatial scales. Thus, evolutionary divergence across space might frequently interact with the mechanisms that also determine spatial ecological patterns.

Author Correction: A global database for metacommunity ecology, integrating species, traits, environment and space.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Maladapted Prey Subsidize Predators and Facilitate Range Expansion.

Dispersal of prey from predator-free patches frequently supplies a trophic subsidy to predators by providing more prey than are produced locally. Prey arriving from predator-free patches might also have evolved weaker defenses against predators and thus enhance trophic subsidies by providing easily captured prey. Using local models assuming a linear or accelerating trade-off between defense and population growth rate, we demonstrate that immigration of undefended prey increased predator abundances and decreased defended prey through eco-evolutionary apparent competition.