Ecological and metabolomic responses of plants to deer exclosure in a suburban forest.

Trees and shrubs in suburban forests can be subject to chronic herbivory from abundant white-tailed deer, influencing survival, growth, secondary metabolites, and ecological success in the community. We investigated how deer affect the size, cover, and metabolomes of four species in the understory of a suburban forest in central New Jersey, USA: the woody shrubs and , the tree , and the semi-woody shrub . For each species, we compared plants in 38 16 m plots with or without deer exclosure, measuring proportion cover and mean height after 6.

Meta-analysis suggests negative, but CO-specific, effects of ocean acidification on the structural and functional properties of crustacean biomaterials.

Crustaceans comprise an ecologically and morphologically diverse taxonomic group. They are typically considered resilient to many environmental perturbations found in marine and coastal environments, due to effective physiological regulation of ions and hemolymph pH, and a robust exoskeleton. Ocean acidification can affect the ability of marine calcifying organisms to build and maintain mineralized tissue and poses a threat for all marine calcifying taxa.

Woody plant secondary chemicals increase in response to abundant deer and arrival of invasive plants in suburban forests.

Plants in suburban forests of eastern North America face the dual stressors of high white-tailed deer density and invasion by nonindigenous plants. Chronic deer herbivory combined with strong competition from invasive plants could alter a plant's stress- and defense-related secondary chemistry, especially for long-lived juvenile trees in the understory, but this has not been studied. We measured foliar total antioxidants, phenolics, and flavonoids in juveniles of two native trees, (green ash) and (American beech), growing in six forests in the suburban landscape of central New Jersey, USA.