What does the future look like for kelp when facing multiple stressors?

As primary producers and ecosystem engineers, kelp (generally Order Laminariales) are ecologically important, and their decline could have far-reaching consequences. Kelp are valuable in forming habitats for fish and invertebrates and are crucial for adaptation to climate change by creating coastal defenses and in providing key functions, such as carbon sequestration and food provision. Kelp are threatened by multiple stressors, such as climate change, over-harvesting of predators, and pollution.

Measuring the shape of mortality across animals and plants: Alternatives to entropy metrics reveal hidden type IV survivorship curves and associations with parental care at macro-ecological scales.

The shape of mortality, or how mortality is spread across an organism's life course, is fundamental to a range of biological processes, with attempts to quantify it rooted in ecology, evolution, and demography. One approach to quantify the distribution of mortality over an organism's life is the use of entropy metrics whose values are interpreted within the classical framework of survivorship curves ranging from type I distributions, with mortality concentrated in late life stages, to type III survivorship curves associated with high early stage mortality. However, entropy metrics were originally developed using restricted taxonomic groups and the behavior of entropy metrics over larger scales of variation may make them unsuitable for wider-ranging contemporary comparative studies.

Opposing community assembly patterns for dominant and nondominant plant species in herbaceous ecosystems globally.

Biotic and abiotic factors interact with dominant plants-the locally most frequent or with the largest coverage-and nondominant plants differently, partially because dominant plants modify the environment where nondominant plants grow. For instance, if dominant plants compete strongly, they will deplete most resources, forcing nondominant plants into a narrower niche space. Conversely, if dominant plants are constrained by the environment, they might not exhaust available resources but instead may ameliorate environmental stressors that usually limit nondominants.

Reviewing research priorities in weed ecology, evolution and management: a horizon scan.

Weedy plants pose a major threat to food security, biodiversity, ecosystem services and consequently to human health and wellbeing. However, many currently used weed management approaches are increasingly unsustainable. To address this knowledge and practice gap, in June 2014, 35 weed and invasion ecologists, weed scientists, evolutionary biologists and social scientists convened a workshop to explore current and future perspectives and approaches in weed ecology and management.