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Quantifying the resilience of ecological communities to increasingly frequent and severe environmental disturbance, such as natural disasters, requires long-term and continuous observations and a research community that is itself resilient. Investigators must have reliable access to data, a variety of resources to facilitate response to perturbation, and mechanisms for rapid and efficient return to function and/or adaptation to post-disaster conditions. There are always challenges to meeting these requirements, which may be compounded by multiple, co-occurring incidents. For example, travel restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic hindered preparations for, and responses to, environmental disasters that are the hallmarks of resilient research communities. During its initial years of data collection, a diversity of disturbances—earthquakes, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes and floods—have impacted sites at which the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) intends to measure organisms and environment for at least 30 years. These events strain both the natural and human communities associated with the Observatory, and additional stressors like public health crises only add to the burden. Here, we provide a case-study of how NEON has demonstrated not only internal resilience in the face of the public health crisis of COVID-19, but has also enhanced the resilience of ecological research communities associated with the network and provided crucial information for quantifying the impacts of and responses to disturbance events on natural systems—their ecological resilience. The key components discussed are: 1) NEON’s infrastructure and resources to support its core internal community, to adapt to rapidly changing situations, and to quickly resume operations following disruption, thus enabling the recovery of information flow crucial for data continuity; 2) how NEON data, tools, and materials are foundational in supporting the continuation of research programs in the face of challenges like those of COVID-19, thus enhancing the resilience of the greater ecological research community; and 3) the importance of diverse and consistent data for defining baseline and post-disaster conditions that are required to quantify the effects of natural disasters on ecosystem patterns and processes. 

As wild orangutan populations become increasingly endangered, knowledge of their physiological and disease status provides critical information on how human disturbances, such as habitat loss, affect their health and long-term viability. An important tool in the assessment and monitoring of orangutan health is the detection of parasites in feces, as parasites can impact a wide range of biological functions. Intestinal parasites place stress on the host system, affecting nutrition, energy expenditure, travel, feeding patterns, immune function, and reproductive success. Thus, the analysis of non-invasively collected fecal samples provides a useful proxy for population health. Forty nine samples from 14 unique individuals were analyzed using both direct smear and single centrifuge flotation techniques. Samples were examined under a microscope and parasites were identified using movement type and morphological characteristics. A 100 percent overall parasite prevalence was found. Species of Balantidium, Entamoeba, Enterobius, Trichuris, Ascaris and Strongyle-type parasites were found. Larvae were also observed in all samples. An independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test found that the distribution of Balantidium sp. and Trichuris sp. were not even, and the prevalence among females was significantly higher. These results were unexpected, as they differ from the findings of prior parasitology studies, which found no difference in parasite prevalence between the sexes. This further emphasizes the need for continuing research as part of a longitudinal study. 

As wild orangutan populations become increasingly endangered, knowledge of their physiological and disease status provides critical information on how human disturbances, such as habitat loss, affect their health and long-term viability. An important tool in the assessment and monitoring of orangutan health is the detection of parasites in feces, as parasites can impact a wide range of biological functions. Intestinal parasites place stress on the host system, affecting nutrition, energy expenditure, travel, feeding patterns, immune function, and reproductive success. Thus, the analysis of non-invasively collected fecal samples provides a useful proxy for population health. Forty nine samples from 14 unique individuals were analyzed using both direct smear and single centrifuge flotation techniques. Samples were examined under a microscope and parasites were identified using movement type and morphological characteristics. A 100 percent overall parasite prevalence was found. Species of Balantidium, Entamoeba, Enterobius, Trichuris, Ascaris and Strongyle-type parasites were found. Larvae were also observed in all samples. An independent-samples Mann-Whitney U test found that the distribution of Balantidium sp. and Trichuris sp. were not even, and the prevalence among females was significantly higher. These results were unexpected, as they differ from the findings of prior parasitology studies, which found no difference in parasite prevalence between the sexes. This further emphasizes the need for continuing research as part of a longitudinal study. 

The socioecological model predicts that food availability and risk of parasite transmission influence sociality in primates. As a semi-solitary ape inhabiting the masting forests of Southeast Asia, orangutans provide a unique opportunity to compare social and non-social periods and highly variable foraging conditions within one population. This study compared two data collection periods when fruit availability differed markedly to determine whether sociality and parasite prevalence decrease as expected during periods of fruit scarcity. Fecal samples were analyzed using direct smear and fecal concentration techniques on-site at Cabang Panti Research Station from 2013-2014 and 2018-2019. From the high fruit period to the low fruit period, sociality decreased from 54% of focal follows containing a social event to 29%, while overall parasite prevalence remained the same at 100%. Interesting differences arose for certain parasite species, however. Enterobius sp. prevalence decreased during the low fruit period for both sexes but even more so for males (50% to 29% for females; 56% to 0 for males). Prevalence of Trichuris sp. increased for females during the low fruit period (5% to 43%) while prevalence among males remained the same. These results lend support to the prediction that social contact influences transmission risk for some parasite species, while other parasites may be more responsive to factors such as changes in reproductive state. These findings suggest that differences in the behavioral strategies of the sexes and the differential energetic demands of life history stages have an influence on parasitic infection patterns. 

Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia experience significant seasonal and annual fluctuations in the availability of their preferred food, ripe fruit. When ripe fruit is limited, orangutans increase their consumption of bark, pith, and leaves, which are continuously available and may act as fallback foods. While these foods are presumed to be less nutritious, it is not clear whether this is the case. Free simple sugars (FSS) provide orangutans with readily-metabolizable energy, and are thus an important nutritional compound for food choice. Here, we examine FSS concentrations in a variety of orangutan foods (n=54) to better understand orangutan foraging and nutritional ecology. We predicted that preferred foods would have higher concentrations of FSS than fallback foods. We analyzed FSS concentrations using a modified phenol-sulfuric acid method, and tested sample absorbency using a spectrophotometer at 490 nm. We analyzed 54 samples from 48 species, examining six plant parts: bark, flowers, leaves, pulp, seeds, and skin/pulp. Although preliminary results indicated no statistically significant differences in sugar content across the six food categories (F(5,47)=1.78, p=0.14), we did find that preferred foods (fruit pulp and seeds) had an average sugar concentration that was significantly higher (4.7%) than fallback foods (leaves and bark) (t=2.355, p=0.04). Therefore, as predicted, we find that orangutans prefer food types with higher concentrations of FSS. Obtaining adequate caloric and nutritional intake is crucial for orangutan reproduction and development, and thus this study provides new insight into what drives orangutan dietary choices. National Science Foundation (BCS-1638823, BCS-0936199, 9414388), National Geographic Society, US Fish and Wildlife (F15AP00812, F12AP00369, 98210-8-G661), Leakey Foundation, Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Nacey- Maggioncalda Foundation. 

The Gunung Palung Orangutan Project has conducted research on critically endangered wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) since 1994 in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. A major goal of our broad-ranging research on orangutan behavior and ecology is to understand how the unique rainforest environment of Southeast Asia, characterized by dramatic changes in fruit productivity due to unpredictable mast fruiting, impacts orangutan behavior, physiology, and health. Much of our research has been devoted to the development of non-invasive techniques and an integrated biology approach – using hormonal assays, fecal processing, nutritional analysis, genetics, and behavioral ecology – and has led to an increased understanding of the ecological and evolutionary pressures shaping orangutan adaptations. Our results show that the extended life history and very slow reproductive rate of orangutans are adaptations to their environment. Orangutans in the Gunung Palung landscape, as elsewhere across Borneo and Sumatra, also face a series of conservation challenges, including extensive habitat loss and the illegal pet trade. We highlight how our investigations of orangutan health status, ecosystem requirements, and the assessment of orangutan density using ground and drone nest surveys have been applied to conservation efforts. We describe our project’s direct conservation interventions of public education and awareness campaigns, sustainable livelihood development, establishment of village-run customary forests, investigation of the illegal pet trade, and active engagement with Indonesian government organizations. These efforts, in concert with the development of local scientific and conservation capacity, provide a strong foundation for further conservation as orangutans face a challenging future. 

Abstract Understanding patterns and drivers of species distribution and abundance, and thus biodiversity, is a core goal of ecology. Despite advances in recent decades, research into these patterns and processes is currently limited by a lack of standardized, high‐quality, empirical data that span large spatial scales and long time periods. The NEON fills this gap by providing freely available observational data that are generated during robust and consistent organismal sampling of several sentinel taxonomic groups within 81 sites distributed across the United States and will be collected for at least 30 years. The breadth and scope of these data provide a unique resource for advancing biodiversity research. To maximize the potential of this opportunity, however, it is critical that NEON data be maximally accessible and easily integrated into investigators' workflows and analyses. To facilitate its use for biodiversity research and synthesis, we created a workflow to process and format NEON organismal data into the ecocomDP (ecological community data design pattern) format that were available through the ecocomDP R package; we then provided the standardized data as an R data package (neonDivData). We briefly summarize sampling designs and data wrangling decisions for the major taxonomic groups included in this effort. Our workflows are open‐source so the biodiversity community may: add additional taxonomic groups; modify the workflow to produce datasets appropriate for their own analytical needs; and regularly update the data packages as more observations become available. Finally, we provide two simple examples of how the standardized data may be used for biodiversity research. By providing a standardized data package, we hope to enhance the utility of NEON organismal data in advancing biodiversity research and encourage the use of the harmonized ecocomDP data design pattern for community ecology data from other ecological observatory networks.