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Abstract Research Highlight:Dri, G. F., Bogdziewicz, M., Hunter, M., Witham, J., & Mortelliti, A. (2025). Coupled effects of forest growth and climate change on small mammal abundance and body weight: Results of a 39‐year field study.Journal of Animal Ecology.https://doi.org/10.1111/1365‐2656.70114. Biodiversity is declining due to global environmental change, yet it remains challenging to assess how specific drivers, such as climate change, affect the dynamics and trends of individual species. While many studies correlate climate variables with species abundance or occurrence, few explicitly link environmental drivers to demographic processes to uncover the mechanisms behind population trends. Such insight requires long‐term data capable of revealing slow‐moving, nonlinear trends and disentangling natural variability from directional change. In a 39‐year study, Dri et al. (2025) demonstrate the power of sustained observation and mechanistic approaches by linking climate warming and forest maturation to increased acorn production, which enhanced body condition and survival in white‐footed mice, ultimately driving population increases. Their findings underscore the importance of long‐term data for identifying meaningful ecological trends and tracing the causal pathways by which biodiversity changes. Effective conservation under global change depends on two key shifts: greater investment in long‐term biodiversity monitoring and broader adoption of frameworks that explicitly connect environmental drivers to demographic responses. Together, these approaches provide the foundation for adaptive, evidence‐based conservation strategies in a rapidly changing world. 

Abstract Biogeographic history can lead to variation in biodiversity across regions, but it remains unclear how the degree of biogeographic isolation among communities may lead to differences in biodiversity. Biogeographic analyses generally treat regions as discrete units, but species assemblages differ in how much biogeographic history they share, just as species differ in how much evolutionary history they share. Here, we use a continuous measure of biogeographic distance, phylobetadiversity, to analyze the influence of biogeographic isolation on the taxonomic and functional diversity of global mammal and bird assemblages. On average, biodiversity is better predicted by environment than by isolation, especially for birds. However, mammals in deeply isolated regions are strongly influenced by isolation; mammal assemblages in Australia and Madagascar, for example, are much less diverse than predicted by environment alone and contain unique combinations of functional traits compared to other regions. Neotropical bat assemblages are far more functionally diverse than Paleotropical assemblages, reflecting the different trajectories of bat communities that have developed in isolation over tens of millions of years. Our results elucidate how long-lasting biogeographic barriers can lead to divergent diversity patterns, against the backdrop of environmental determinism that predominantly structures diversity across most of the world.