skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


Title: Community Physiological Ecology
The effects of animal homeostatic function on ecological interactions have not been well-integrated into community ecology. Animals mediate environmental change and stressors through homeostatic shifts in physiology and behavior, which likely shape ecological interactions and plant communities. Animal responses to stressors can alter their habitat use, selective foraging, and stoichiometry, which can in turn affect trophic interactions, plant growth, reproduction, and dispersal. Here, we describe a community physiological ecology framework that integrates classical ecological theory and emerging empirical approaches to test how animal homeostatic responses to environmental change mediate ecological interactions and shape communities. Interdisciplinary approaches could provide essential data to characterize and forecast community responses to rapid global environmental change.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1734728
PAR ID:
10089654
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Trends in ecology & evolution
ISSN:
1872-8383
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, mSphere)
    McMahon, Katherine (Ed.)
    ABSTRACT Temperature significantly impacts microbial communities’ composition and function, which plays a vital role in the global carbon cycle that determines climate change. Nutrient influxes often accompany rising temperatures due to human activity. While ecological interactions between different microorganisms could shape their response to environmental change, we do not understand how predation may influence these responses in a warmer and increasingly nutrient-rich world. Here, we assess whether predation by a ciliate community of bacterial consumers influences changes in the diversity, biomass, and function of a freshwater prokaryotic community under different temperature and nutrient conditions. We found that predator presence mediates the effects of temperature and nutrients on the total prokaryotic community biomass and composition through various mechanisms, including direct and indirect effects. However, the total community function was resilient. Our study supports previous findings that temperature and nutrients are essential drivers of microbial community composition and function but also demonstrates how predation can mediate these effects, indicating that the biotic context is as important as the abiotic context to understanding microbial responses to novel climates.IMPORTANCEWhile the importance of the abiotic environment in microbial communities has long been acknowledged, how prevalent ecological interactions like predation may influence these microbial community responses to shifting abiotic conditions is largely unknown. Our study addresses the complex interplay between temperature, nutrients, predation, and their joint effects on microbial community diversity and function. Our findings suggest that while temperature and nutrients are fundamental drivers of microbial community dynamics, the presence of predators significantly alters these responses. Our study underscores the impact of abiotic factors on microbial communities and the importance of accounting for the biotic context in which these occur to understand, let alone predict, these responses properly. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, New Phytologist)
    Summary Allelopathy is a common and important stressor that shapes plant communities and can alter soil microbiomes, yet little is known about the direct effects of allelochemical addition on bacterial and fungal communities or the potential for allelochemical‐selected microbiomes to mediate plant performance responses, especially in habitats naturally structured by allelopathy.Here, we present the first community‐wide investigation of microbial mediation of allelochemical effects on plant performance by testing how allelopathy affects soil microbiome structure and how these microbial changes impact germination and productivity across 13 plant species.The soil microbiome exhibited significant changes to ‘core’ bacterial and fungal taxa, bacterial composition, abundance of functionally important bacterial and fungal taxa, and predicted bacterial functional genes after the addition of the dominant allelochemical native to this habitat. Furthermore, plant performance was mediated by the allelochemical‐selected microbiome, with allelopathic inhibition of plant productivity moderately mitigated by the microbiome.Through our findings, we present a potential framework to understand the strength of plant–microbial interactions in the presence of environmental stressors, in which frequency of the ecological stress may be a key predictor of microbiome‐mediation strength. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; et al (, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
    A primary goal of ecological restoration is to increase biodiversity in degraded ecosystems. However, the success of restoration ecology is often assessed by measuring the response of a single functional group or trophic level to restoration, without considering how restoration affects multitrophic interactions that shape biodiversity. An ecosystem-wide approach to restoration is therefore necessary to understand whether animal responses to restoration, such as changes in biodiversity, are facilitated by changes in plant communities (plant-driven effects) or disturbance and succession resulting from restoration activities (management-driven effects). Furthermore, most restoration ecology studies focus on how restoration alters taxonomic diversity, while less attention is paid to the response of functional and phylogenetic diversity in restored ecosystems. Here, we compared the strength of plant-driven and management-driven effects of restoration on four animal communities (ground beetles, dung beetles, snakes, and small mammals) in a chronosequence of restored tallgrass prairie, where sites varied in management history (prescribed fire and bison reintroduction). Our analyses indicate that management-driven effects on animal communities were six-times stronger than effects mediated through changes in plant biodiversity. Additionally, we demonstrate that restoration can simultaneously have positive and negative effects on biodiversity through different pathways, which may help reconcile variation in restoration outcomes. Furthermore, animal taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity responded differently to restoration, suggesting that restoration plans might benefit from considering multiple dimensions of animal biodiversity. We conclude that metrics of plant diversity alone may not be adequate to assess the success of restoration in reassembling functional ecosystems. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Journal of Ecology)
    Abstract Fine‐scale microclimate variation due to complex topography can shape both current vegetation distributional patterns and how vegetation responds to changing climate. Topographic heterogeneity in mountains is hypothesized to mediate responses to regional climate change at the scale of metres. For alpine vegetation especially, the interplay between changing temperatures and topographically mediated variation in snow accumulation will determine the overall impact of climate change on vegetation dynamics.We combined 30 years of co‐located measurements of temperature, snow and alpine plant community composition in Colorado, USA, to investigate vegetation community trajectories across a snow depth gradient.Our analysis of long‐term trends in plant community composition revealed notable directional change in the alpine vegetation with warming temperatures. Furthermore, community trajectories are divergent across the snow depth gradient, with exposed parts of the landscape that experience little snow accumulation shifting towards stress‐tolerant, cold‐ and drought‐adapted communities, while snowier areas shifted towards more warm‐adapted communities.Synthesis: Our findings demonstrate that fine‐scale topography can mediate both the magnitude and direction of vegetation responses to climate change. We documented notable shifts in plant community composition over a 30‐year period even though alpine vegetation is known for slow dynamics that often lag behind environmental change. These results suggest that the processes driving alpine plant population and community dynamics at this site are strong and highly heterogeneous across the complex topography that is characteristic of high‐elevation mountain systems. 
    more » « less
  5. ; (, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
    Abstract Evolution in nature occurs in the proverbial tangled bank. The species interactions characterizing this tangled bank can be strongly affected by global change and can also influence the fitness and selective effects of a global change on a focal population. As a result, species interactions can influence which traits will promote adaptation and the magnitude or direction of evolutionary responses to the global change. First, we provide a framework describing how species interactions may influence evolutionary responses to global change. Then, we highlight case studies that have explicitly manipulated both a global change and the presence or abundance of interacting species and used either experimental evolution or quantitative genetics approaches to test for the effects of species interactions on evolutionary responses to global change. Although still not frequently considered, we argue that species interactions commonly modulate the effects of global change on the evolution of plant and animal populations. As a result, predicting the evolutionary effects of the multitude of global changes facing natural populations requires both community ecology and evolutionary perspectives. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email