Long-term data reveal widespread phenological change across major US estuarine food webs.

Climate change is shifting the timing of organismal life-history events. Although consequential food-web mismatches can emerge if predators and prey shift at different rates, research on phenological shifts has traditionally focused on single trophic levels. Here, we analysed >2000 long-term, monthly time series of phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish abundance or biomass for the San Francisco, Chesapeake, and Massachusetts bays.

Isolation controls reestablishment mechanisms and post-drying community structure in an intermittent stream.

Biota in disturbance-prone landscapes have evolved a variety of strategies to persist long term, either locally (resistance) or by regional recolonization (resilience). Habitat fragmentation and isolation can limit the availability of recolonization pathways, and thus the dynamics of post-disturbance community reestablishment. However, empirical studies on how isolation may control the mechanisms that enable community recovery remain scarce.

Drought and nutrient pollution produce multiple interactive effects in stream ecosystems.

Drought and nutrient pollution can affect the dynamics of stream ecosystems in diverse ways. While the individual effects of both stressors are broadly examined in the literature, we still know relatively little about if and how these stressors interact. Here, we performed a mesocosm experiment that explores the compounded effects of seasonal drought via water withdrawals and nutrient pollution (1.

Modeling effects of disturbance across life history strategies of stream fishes.

A central goal of population ecology is to establish linkages between life history strategy, disturbance, and population dynamics. Globally, disturbance events such as drought and invasive species have dramatically impacted stream fish populations and contributed to sharp declines in freshwater biodiversity. Here, we used RAMAS Metapop to construct stage-based demographic metapopulation models for stream fishes with periodic, opportunistic, and equilibrium life history strategies and assessed their responses to the effects of invasion (reduced carrying capacity), extended drought (reduced survival and fecundity), and the combined effects of both disturbances.

A review and synthesis of late Pleistocene extinction modeling: progress delayed by mismatches between ecological realism, interpretation, and methodological transparency.

Late Pleistocene extinctions occurred globally over a period of about 50,000 years, primarily affecting mammals of > or = 44 kg body mass (i.e., megafauna) first in Australia, continuing in Eurasia and, finally, in the Americas.