Interactions between large-scale and local factors influence seed predation rates and seed loss.

Herbivores often have highly variable impacts on plant fecundity. The relative contribution of different environmental factors operating at varying spatial scales in affecting this variability is often unclear. We examined how density-dependent seed predation at local scales and regional differences in primary productivity are associated with variation in the magnitude of pre-dispersal seed predation on (Lamiaceae).

Long-term, large-scale experiment reveals the effects of seed limitation, climate, and anthropogenic disturbance on restoration of plant communities in a biodiversity hotspot.

Ecological restoration is essential for maintaining biodiversity in the face of dynamic, global changes in climate, human land use, and disturbance regimes. Effective restoration requires understanding bottlenecks in plant community recovery that exist today, while recognizing that these bottlenecks may relate to complex histories of environmental change. Such understanding has been a challenge because few long-term, well-replicated experiments exist to decipher the demographic processes influencing recovery for numerous species against the backdrop of multiyear variation in climate and management.

Suitability of Formulated Entomopathogenic Fungi Against Hibiscus Mealybug, Nipaecoccus viridis (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae), Deployed Within Mesh Covers Intended to Protect Citrus From Huanglongbing.

Mesh exclusion bags are increasingly being adopted by Florida citrus growers to protect young citrus trees from Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri Kuwayama, and Huanglongbing disease. These mesh bags exclude larger insects such as D. citri but may allow entry of minute insects.

Large ecosystem-scale effects of restoration fail to mitigate impacts of land-use legacies in longleaf pine savannas.

Ecological restoration is a global priority, with potential to reverse biodiversity declines and promote ecosystem functioning. Yet, successful restoration is challenged by lingering legacies of past land-use activities, which are pervasive on lands available for restoration. Although legacies can persist for centuries following cessation of human land uses such as agriculture, we currently lack understanding of how land-use legacies affect entire ecosystems, how they influence restoration outcomes, or whether restoration can mitigate legacy effects.

Evaluating unintended consequences of intentional species introductions and eradications for improved conservation management.

Increasingly intensive strategies to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem function are being deployed in response to global anthropogenic threats, including intentionally introducing and eradicating species via assisted migration, rewilding, biological control, invasive species eradications, and gene drives. These actions are highly contentious because of their potential for unintended consequences. We conducted a global literature review of these conservation actions to quantify how often unintended outcomes occur and to elucidate their underlying causes.

Effects of Lethal Bronzing Disease, Palm Height, and Temperature on Abundance and Monitoring of .

Insect vector feeding preference and behavior play important roles in pathogen transmission, especially for pathogens that solely rely on insect vector transmission. This study aims to examine the effects of the 16SrIV-D phytoplasma, the causal agent of lethal bronzing (LB) disease of palms, on associated auchenorrhynchan insects. The numbers of auchenorrhynchans collected during weekly surveys during a yearlong study using yellow sticky traps were analyzed.

Seedling recruitment correlates with seed input across seed sizes: implications for coexistence.

Understanding controls on recruitment is critical to predicting community assembly, diversity, and coexistence. Theory posits that at mean fecundity, recruitment of highly fecund small-seeded plants should be primarily microsite limited, which is indicated by a saturating recruitment function. In contrast, species that produce fewer large seeds are more likely to be seed-limited, which is characterized by a linear recruitment function.

Corrigendum: Effects of Short- and Long-Term Variation in Resource Conditions on Soil Fungal Communities and Plant Responses to Soil Biota.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2018.

Effects of Short- and Long-Term Variation in Resource Conditions on Soil Fungal Communities and Plant Responses to Soil Biota.

Soil biota can strongly influence plant performance with effects ranging from negative to positive. However, shifts in resource availability can influence plant responses, with soil pathogens having stronger negative effects in high-resource environments and soil mutualists, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), having stronger positive effects in low-resource environments. Yet the relative importance of long-term vs.

Trait differences in responses to arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are stronger and more consistent than fixed differences among populations of Asclepias speciosa.

Premise Of The Study: Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can promote plant growth and reproduction, but other plant physiological traits or traits that provide defense against herbivores can also be affected by AM fungi. However, whether responses of different traits to AM fungi are correlated and whether these relationships vary among plants from different populations are unresolved.

Methods: In a common garden experiment, we grew Asclepias speciosa plants from seed collected from populations found along an environmental gradient with and without AM fungi to assess whether the responses of six growth and defense traits to AM fungi are correlated.

Neighbor palatability generates associational effects by altering herbivore foraging behavior.

Despite increasing evidence that herbivory on a focal plant may hinge upon the identity of its neighbors, it is not clear whether predictable mechanisms govern the nature and magnitude of such associational effects. Using a factorial field experiment replicated at 14 sites across 80,000 hectares, we evaluated the mechanisms driving associational effects between two plant species mediated by grasshopper herbivores. Our experiment manipulated local neighborhood plant density (two levels) and frequency (three levels), nested within two larger-scale habitat contexts (habitats that did or did not have past agricultural land use).

A Framework for Predicting Intraspecific Variation in Plant Defense.

One of the most well-supported theories regarding the evolution of plant defenses is the resource availability hypothesis (RAH). RAH posits that species from high-resource environments grow fast and allocate little to herbivore-resistance traits, whereas those species in low-resource environments grow slow and are highly resistant to herbivores. However, within species, how resources influence defense is unclear and existing theories make opposing predictions.

Land-use history alters contemporary insect herbivore community composition and decouples plant-herbivore relationships.

Past land use can create altered soil conditions and plant communities that persist for decades, although the effects of these altered conditions on consumers are rarely investigated. Using a large-scale field study at 36 sites in longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) woodlands, we examined whether historic agricultural land use leads to differences in the abundance and community composition of insect herbivores (grasshoppers, families Acrididae and Tettigoniidae). We measured the cover of six plant functional groups and several environmental variables to determine whether historic agricultural land use affects the relationships between plant cover or environmental conditions and grasshopper assemblages.

Land-use history and contemporary management inform an ecological reference model for longleaf pine woodland understory plant communities.

Ecological restoration is frequently guided by reference conditions describing a successfully restored ecosystem; however, the causes and magnitude of ecosystem degradation vary, making simple knowledge of reference conditions insufficient for prioritizing and guiding restoration. Ecological reference models provide further guidance by quantifying reference conditions, as well as conditions at degraded states that deviate from reference conditions. Many reference models remain qualitative, however, limiting their utility.