Elemental composition and potential toxicity of the riverine macrophyte Podostemum ceratophyllum Michx. reflects land use in eastern North America.

Land use influences surface water quality, often alleviating stoichiometric constraints on primary production and altering biogeochemical cycling. However, land use effects on nutrient content and potential trace metal accumulation in aquatic plants remain unclear, and high concentrations of metals and altered nutrient ratios could impact the health of herbivores and detritivores. We tested for land use effects on nutrient and trace metal accumulation in a widespread riverine macrophyte, Podostemum ceratophyllum, collected from 91 locations from Georgia to Maine, USA in 2014-2016.

Temperature dependence of leaf breakdown in streams differs between organismal groups and leaf species.

Increased temperatures are altering rates of organic matter (OM) breakdown in stream ecosystems with implications for carbon (C) cycling in the face of global change. The metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) provides a framework for predicting temperature effects on OM breakdown, but differences in the temperature dependence of breakdown driven by different organismal groups (i.e.

Reimagining infrastructure for a biodiverse future.

Civil infrastructure will be essential to face the interlinked existential threats of climate change and rising resource demands while ensuring a livable Anthropocene for all. However, conventional infrastructure planning largely neglects the contributions and maintenance of Earth's ecological life support systems, which provide irreplaceable services supporting human well-being. The stability and performance of these services depend on biodiversity, but conventional infrastructure practices, narrowly focused on controlling natural capital, have inadvertently degraded biodiversity while perpetuating social inequities.

Assessing relationships between onsite wastewater treatment system maintenance patterns and system-level variables.

Globally, millions of households rely on onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTSs), such as septic systems, to safely treat and dispose of wastewater. Conventional subsurface OWTSs are a common and affordable option for many landowners, and effectively remove pathogenic and nutrient pollution from wastewater when properly sited and maintained. However, OWTSs can also be a source of nonpoint pollution in watersheds when they are not functioning properly.

Simple statistical models can be sufficient for testing hypotheses with population time-series data.

Time-series data offer wide-ranging opportunities to test hypotheses about the physical and biological factors that influence species abundances. Although sophisticated models have been developed and applied to analyze abundance time series, they require information about species detectability that is often unavailable. We propose that in many cases, simpler models are adequate for testing hypotheses.

Not just trash birds: Quantifying avian diversity at landfills using community science data.

Landfills provide seasonally reliable food resources to many bird species, including those perceived to be pest or invasive species. However, landfills often contain multiple habitat types that could attract diverse species, including those of conservation concern. To date, little is known about the characteristics and composition of bird communities at landfills relative to local and regional pools.

Phylogenetic conservatism drives nutrient dynamics of coral reef fishes.

The relative importance of evolutionary history and ecology for traits that drive ecosystem processes is poorly understood. Consumers are essential drivers of nutrient cycling on coral reefs, and thus ecosystem productivity. We use nine consumer "chemical traits" associated with nutrient cycling, collected from 1,572 individual coral reef fishes (178 species spanning 41 families) in two biogeographic regions, the Caribbean and Polynesia, to quantify the relative importance of phylogenetic history and ecological context as drivers of chemical trait variation on coral reefs.

Application of multiple-population viability analysis to evaluate species recovery alternatives.

Population viability analysis (PVA) is a powerful conservation tool, but it remains impractical for many species, particularly species with multiple, broadly distributed populations for which collecting suitable data can be challenging. A recently developed method of multiple-population viability analysis (MPVA), however, addresses many limitations of traditional PVA. We built on previous development of MPVA for Lahontan cutthroat trout (LCT) (Oncorhynchus clarkii henshawi), a species listed under the U.

Hierarchical multi-population viability analysis.

Population viability analysis (PVA) uses concepts from theoretical ecology to provide a powerful tool for quantitative estimates of population dynamics and extinction risks. However, conventional statistical PVA requires long-term data from every population of interest, whereas many species of concern exist in multiple isolated populations that are only monitored occasionally. We present a hierarchical multi-population viability analysis model that increases inference power from sparse data by sharing information among populations to assess extinction risks while accounting for incomplete detection and sampling biases with explicit observation and sampling sub-models.

The influence of land cover on the sensitivity of streams to metal pollution.

Identifying freshwater systems that are at risk from anthropogenic stressors is a pressing management problem. In particular, the detection of metal pollution is often constrained by data availability and resources. To address this challenge and develop a tool to identify susceptible systems, we tested whether land cover could be predictive of stream sensitivity to metal pollution, as determined by the biotic ligand model (BLM).

Big biology meets microclimatology: defining thermal niches of ectotherms at landscape scales for conservation planning.

Temperature profoundly affects ecology, a fact ever more evident as the ability to measure thermal environments increases and global changes alter these environments. The spatial structure of thermalscapes is especially relevant to the distribution and abundance of ectothermic organisms, but the ability to describe biothermal relationships at extents and grains relevant to conservation planning has been limited by small or sparse data sets. Here, we combine a large occurrence database of >23 000 aquatic species surveys with stream microclimate scenarios supported by an equally large temperature database for a 149 000-km mountain stream network to describe thermal relationships for 14 fish and amphibian species.

Slow climate velocities of mountain streams portend their role as refugia for cold-water biodiversity.

The imminent demise of montane species is a recurrent theme in the climate change literature, particularly for aquatic species that are constrained to networks and elevational rather than latitudinal retreat as temperatures increase. Predictions of widespread species losses, however, have yet to be fulfilled despite decades of climate change, suggesting that trends are much weaker than anticipated and may be too subtle for detection given the widespread use of sparse water temperature datasets or imprecise surrogates like elevation and air temperature. Through application of large water-temperature databases evaluated for sensitivity to historical air-temperature variability and computationally interpolated to provide high-resolution thermal habitat information for a 222,000-km network, we estimate a less dire thermal plight for cold-water species within mountains of the northwestern United States.

Metabolic theory and taxonomic identity predict nutrient recycling in a diverse food web.

Reconciling the degree to which ecological processes are generalizable among taxa and ecosystems, or contingent on the identity of interacting species, remains a critical challenge in ecology. Ecological stoichiometry (EST) and metabolic theory of ecology (MTE) are theoretical approaches used to evaluate how consumers mediate nutrient dynamics and energy flow through ecosystems. Recent theoretical work has explored the utility of these theories, but empirical tests in species-rich ecological communities remain scarce.

Probabilistic accounting of uncertainty in forecasts of species distributions under climate change.

Forecasts of species distributions under future climates are inherently uncertain, but there have been few attempts to describe this uncertainty comprehensively in a probabilistic manner. We developed a Monte Carlo approach that accounts for uncertainty within generalized linear regression models (parameter uncertainty and residual error), uncertainty among competing models (model uncertainty), and uncertainty in future climate conditions (climate uncertainty) to produce site-specific frequency distributions of occurrence probabilities across a species' range. We illustrated the method by forecasting suitable habitat for bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) in the Interior Columbia River Basin, USA, under recent and projected 2040s and 2080s climate conditions.

Modelling dendritic ecological networks in space: an integrated network perspective.

Dendritic ecological networks (DENs) are a unique form of ecological networks that exhibit a dendritic network topology (e.g. stream and cave networks or plant architecture).

Flow regime, temperature, and biotic interactions drive differential declines of trout species under climate change.

Broad-scale studies of climate change effects on freshwater species have focused mainly on temperature, ignoring critical drivers such as flow regime and biotic interactions. We use downscaled outputs from general circulation models coupled with a hydrologic model to forecast the effects of altered flows and increased temperatures on four interacting species of trout across the interior western United States (1.01 million km(2)), based on empirical statistical models built from fish surveys at 9,890 sites.

Estimating species occurrence, abundance, and detection probability using zero-inflated distributions.

Researchers have developed methods to account for imperfect detection of species with either occupancy (presence absence) or count data using replicated sampling. We show how these approaches can be combined to simultaneously estimate occurrence, abundance, and detection probability by specifying a zero-inflated distribution for abundance. This approach may be particularly appropriate when patterns of occurrence and abundance arise from distinct processes operating at differing spatial or temporal scales.

Use of surrogates to predict the stressor response of imperiled species.

Rare or narrowly distributed species may be threatened by stressors to which they have never been exposed or for which data are very limited. In such cases the species response cannot be predicted on the basis of directly measured data, but may be inferred from the response of one or more appropriate surrogate species. Here, I propose a practical way to use the stressor response of one or more surrogate species to develop a working hypothesis or model of the stressor response of the target species.

Impediments and solutions to sustainable, watershed-scale urban stormwater management: lessons from Australia and the United States.

In urban and suburban areas, stormwater runoff is a primary stressor on surface waters. Conventional urban stormwater drainage systems often route runoff directly to streams and rivers, thus exacerbating pollutant inputs and hydrologic disturbance, and resulting in the degradation of ecosystem structure and function. Decentralized stormwater management tools, such as low impact development (LID) or water sensitive urban design (WSUD), may offer a more sustainable solution to stormwater management if implemented at a watershed scale.

Importance of riparian forests in urban catchments contingent on sediment and hydrologic regimes.

Forested riparian corridors are thought to minimize impacts of landscape disturbance on stream ecosystems; yet, the effectiveness of streamside forests in mitigating disturbance in urbanizing catchments is unknown. We expected that riparian forests would provide minimal benefits for fish assemblages in streams that are highly impaired by sediment or hydrologic alteration. We tested this hypothesis in 30 small streams along a gradient of urban disturbance (1-65% urban land cover).