Trees adjust nutrient acquisition strategies across tropical forest secondary succession.

Nutrient limitation may constrain the ability of recovering and mature tropical forests to serve as a carbon sink. However, it is unclear to what extent trees can utilize nutrient acquisition strategies - especially root phosphatase enzymes and mycorrhizal symbioses - to overcome low nutrient availability across secondary succession. Using a large-scale, full factorial nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization experiment of 76 plots along a secondary successional gradient in lowland wet tropical forests of Panama, we tested the extent to which root phosphatase enzyme activity and mycorrhizal colonization are flexible, and if investment shifts over succession, reflective of changing nutrient limitation.

Ecological relevance of flagellar motility in soil bacterial communities.

Flagellar motility is a key bacterial trait as it allows bacteria to navigate their immediate surroundings. Not all bacteria are capable of flagellar motility, and the distribution of this trait, its ecological associations, and the life history strategies of flagellated taxa remain poorly characterized. We developed and validated a genome-based approach to infer the potential for flagellar motility across 12 bacterial phyla (26 192 unique genomes).

Forging just ecologies: 25 years of urban long-term ecological research collaboration.

We ask how environmental justice and urban ecology have influenced one another over the past 25 years in the context of the US Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) project. BES began after environmental justice emerged through activism and scholarship in the 1980s but spans a period of increasing awareness among ecologists and environmental practitioners. The work in Baltimore provides a detailed example of how ecological research has been affected by a growing understanding of environmental justice.

From urban ecology to urban enquiry: How to build cumulative and context-sensitive understandings.

This paper positions urban ecology as increasingly conversant with multiple perspectives and methods for understanding the functions and qualities of diverse cities and urban situations. Despite progress in the field, we need clear pathways for positioning, connecting and synthesising specific knowledge and to make it speak to more systemic questions about cities and the life within them. These pathways need to be able to make use of diverse sources of information to better account for the diverse relations between people, other species and the ecological, social, cultural, economic, technical and increasingly digital structures that they are embedded in.

A transformative shift in urban ecology toward a more active and relevant future for the field and for cities.

This paper builds on the expansion of urban ecology from a biologically based discipline-ecology in the city-to an increasingly interdisciplinary field-ecology of the city-to a transdisciplinary, knowledge to action endeavor-an ecology for and with the city. We build on this "prepositional journey" by proposing a transformative shift in urban ecology, and we present a framework for how the field may continue this shift. We conceptualize that urban ecology is in a state of flux, and that this shift is needed to transform urban ecology into a more engaged and action based field, and one that includes a diversity of actors willing to participate in the future of their cities.

The relational shift in urban ecology: From place and structures to multiple modes of coproduction for positive urban futures.

This perspective emerged from ongoing dialogue among ecologists initiated by a virtual workshop in 2021. A transdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners conclude that urban ecology as a science can better contribute to positive futures by focusing on relationships, rather than prioritizing urban structures. Insights from other relational disciplines, such as political ecology, governance, urban design, and conservation also contribute.

Shifting forward: Urban ecology in perspective.

The world has become urban; cities increasingly shape our worldviews, relation to other species, and the large-scale, long-term decisions we make. Cities are nature, but they need to align better with other ecosystems to avoid accelerating climate change and loss of biodiversity. We need a science to guide urban development across the diverse realities of global cities.

A review of emerging health threats from zoonotic New World mammarenaviruses.

Despite repeated spillover transmission and their potential to cause significant morbidity and mortality in human hosts, the New World mammarenaviruses remain largely understudied. These viruses are endemic to South America, with animal reservoir hosts covering large geographic areas and whose transmission ecology and spillover potential are driven in part by land use change and agriculture that put humans in regular contact with zoonotic hosts.We compiled published studies about Guanarito virus, Junin virus, Machupo virus, Chapare virus, Sabia virus, and Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis virus to review the state of knowledge about the viral hemorrhagic fevers caused by New World mammarenaviruses.

The Anthropogenic Salt Cycle.

Increasing salt production and use is shifting the natural balances of salt ions across Earth systems, causing interrelated effects across biophysical systems collectively known as freshwater salinization syndrome. In this Review, we conceptualize the natural salt cycle and synthesize increasing global trends of salt production and riverine salt concentrations and fluxes. The natural salt cycle is primarily driven by relatively slow geologic and hydrologic processes that bring different salts to the surface of the Earth.

Effects of residential acaricide treatments on patterns of pathogen coinfection in blacklegged ticks.

Medically important ixodid ticks often carry multiple pathogens, with individual ticks frequently coinfected and capable of transmitting multiple infections to hosts, including humans. Acquisition of multiple zoonotic pathogens by immature blacklegged ticks () is facilitated when they feed on small mammals, which are the most competent reservoir hosts for (which causes anaplasmosis in humans), (babesiosis) and (Lyme disease). Here, we used data from a large-scale, long-term experiment to ask whether patterns of single and multiple infections in questing nymphal ticks from residential neighbourhoods differed from those predicted by independent assortment of pathogens, and whether patterns of coinfection were affected by residential application of commercial acaricidal products.

Using Knowledge-Guided Machine Learning To Assess Patterns of Areal Change in Waterbodies across the Contiguous United States.

Lake and reservoir surface areas are an important proxy for freshwater availability. Advancements in machine learning (ML) techniques and increased accessibility of remote sensing data products have enabled the analysis of waterbody surface area dynamics on broad spatial scales. However, interpreting the ML results remains a challenge.

Mutualisms weaken the latitudinal diversity gradient among oceanic islands.

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) dominates global patterns of diversity, but the factors that underlie the LDG remain elusive. Here we use a unique global dataset to show that vascular plants on oceanic islands exhibit a weakened LDG and explore potential mechanisms for this effect. Our results show that traditional physical drivers of island biogeography-namely area and isolation-contribute to the difference between island and mainland diversity at a given latitude (that is, the island species deficit), as smaller and more distant islands experience reduced colonization.

Geographic range of plants drives long-term climate change.

Long computation times in vegetation and climate models hamper our ability to evaluate the potentially powerful role of plants on weathering and carbon sequestration over the Phanerozoic Eon. Simulated vegetation over deep time is often homogenous, and disregards the spatial distribution of plants and the impact of local climatic variables on plant function. Here we couple a fast vegetation model (FLORA) to a spatially-resolved long-term climate-biogeochemical model (SCION), to assess links between plant geographical range, the long-term carbon cycle and climate.

The more, the healthier: Tree diversity reduces forest pests and pathogens.

How frequently, and under what conditions, biodiversity reduces disease through "dilution effects" has been a subject of ongoing research. A new study of forest pests in PLOS Biology provides strong evidence for their generality.

Toward a coordinated understanding of hydro-biogeochemical root functions in tropical forests for application in vegetation models.

Tropical forest root characteristics and resource acquisition strategies are underrepresented in vegetation and global models, hampering the prediction of forest-climate feedbacks for these carbon-rich ecosystems. Lowland tropical forests often have globally unique combinations of high taxonomic and functional biodiversity, rainfall seasonality, and strongly weathered infertile soils, giving rise to distinct patterns in root traits and functions compared with higher latitude ecosystems. We provide a roadmap for integrating recent advances in our understanding of tropical forest belowground function into vegetation models, focusing on water and nutrient acquisition.

Satellite-based aerosol optical depth estimates over the continental U.S. during the 2020 wildfire season: Roles of smoke and land cover.

Wildfires produce smoke that can affect an area >1000 times the burn extent, with far-reaching human health, ecologic, and economic impacts. Accurately estimating aerosol load within smoke plumes is therefore crucial for understanding and mitigating these impacts. We evaluated the effectiveness of the latest Collection 6.

The role of tropical rainfall in driving range dynamics for a long-distance migratory bird.

Predicting how the range dynamics of migratory species will respond to climate change requires a mechanistic understanding of the factors that operate across the annual cycle to control the distribution and abundance of a species. Here, we use multiple lines of evidence to reveal that environmental conditions during the nonbreeding season influence range dynamics across the life cycle of a migratory songbird, the American redstart (). Using long-term data from the nonbreeding grounds and breeding origins estimated from stable hydrogen isotopes in tail feathers, we found that the relationship between annual survival and migration distance is mediated by precipitation, but only during dry years.

Spatial variation in risk for tick-borne diseases in residential areas of Dutchess County, New York.

Although human exposure to the ticks that transmit Lyme-disease bacteria is widely considered to occur around people's homes, most studies of variation in tick abundance and infection are undertaken outside residential areas. Consequently, the patterns of variation in risk of human exposure to tick-borne infections in these human-dominated landscapes are poorly understood. Here, we report the results of four years of sampling for tick abundance, tick infection, tick encounters, and tick-borne disease reports on residential properties nested within six neighborhoods in Dutchess County, New York, USA, an area of high incidence for Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.

Competition and habitat availability interact to structure arboreal ant communities across scales of ecological organization.

Understanding how resource limitation and biotic interactions interact across spatial scales is fundamental to explaining the structure of ecological communities. However, empirical studies addressing this issue are often hindered by logistical constraints, especially at local scales. Here, we use a highly tractable arboreal ant study system to explore the interactive effects of resource availability and competition on community structure across three local scales: an individual tree, the nest network created by each colony and the individual ant nest.

A synergistic future for AI and ecology.

Research in both ecology and AI strives for predictive understanding of complex systems, where nonlinearities arise from multidimensional interactions and feedbacks across multiple scales. After a century of independent, asynchronous advances in computational and ecological research, we foresee a critical need for intentional synergy to meet current societal challenges against the backdrop of global change. These challenges include understanding the unpredictability of systems-level phenomena and resilience dynamics on a rapidly changing planet.