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Volunteers play a critical role in scientific research and conservation efforts through participation in community science programs and at informal learning institutions (ILIs) such as museums, aquaria, and biological field stations. These informal learning environments provide STEM education opportunities that engage volunteers in hands-on data collection, inquiry-based exploration, and knowledge sharing. The purpose of this study is to explore the intersection of volunteer participation and adult learning in the context of ILIs’ outreach programming and community science. We utilize data from two prior studies to respond to the research question: What is the relationship between volunteers’ roles and program types and approaches? We examine how volunteers engage as both participants and leaders of STEM programs. As participants, they engage in structured learning experiences, ideally developing scientific content knowledge. As leaders, they have opportunities to apply and share their knowledge, guiding visitors and learners through activities and experiences. Our work highlights the importance of integrating adult learning principles into volunteer programs to enhance engagement and motivation. We propose considerations for optimizing volunteer learning, including scaffolding experiences to support progression from participant to leader and incorporating learner feedback to improve engagement. These insights inform best practices for ILIs and other community science initiatives, ensuring volunteers contribute scientifically and programmatically and experience meaningful learning that empowers them as leaders and lifelong learners. 

IntroductionMany species are shifting their geographic ranges in response to changing climate, and identifying climate impacts on future species distributions will be critical for conservation success. North American bison (Bison bison) provide an exceptional study system for exploring the use of an interdisciplinary record of paleontological, archaeological, and historical data for conservation due to the plethora of past occurrences across a large geographic and temporal scale, in combination with their “near-threatened” designation by the IUCN Red List because of current small, fragmented populations following a near-extinction event in the 1880s. Moreover, the multiple identities of bison as free-roaming wildlife, as wildlife with limitations, and as captive semi-domesticated livestock introduce unique conservation concerns across the four sectors of the Bison Management System (BMS; Tribal, private, public, nonprofit-NGO). MethodsTo model bison climate suitability using “Bioclim”, we associated 1,774 bison occurrences over the last 21,000 years with three PastClim variables (warmest temperature of the warmest month, temperature seasonality, and precipitation of the coldest quarter) that were identified as the strongest predictors of past bison distributions using a variance inflation factor. The model was projected onto the WorldClim RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 future climate scenarios for the four remaining 20-yearperiods to 2100 CE and onto the WorldClim 2.1 version of current climate, to determine expected changes in climate suitability. ResultsThe distribution of suitability scores changes rapidly, shifting significantly between each 20-year interval until the end of the century. By 2100, the centroid of suitable climate, using the standard 50% threshold, is expected to shift from its current location near the 49th parallel to the northwest and toward the northern border of Canada by 1,182 km under the RCP4.5 climate scenario and 2,254 km under the RCP8.5 climate scenario. Suitability ranges above the optimal minimal threshold identified by the receiving operator characteristic (8.5%) are also predicted to shift to the northwest by 793 km under RCP4.5. and 1267 km under RCP8.5. DiscussionWith an anticipated geographic shift in the most suitable bison climate, it is necessary to prepare future management strategies for BMS sectors to maintain a sustainable relationship with bison. 

Provides a framework for modeling relationships between functional traits and both quantitative and qualitative environmental variables at the community level. It includes tools for trait binning, likelihood-based environmental estimation, model evaluation, fossil projection into modern ecometric space, and result visualization. For more details see Vermillion et al. (2018) , Polly et al. (2011) and Polly and Head (2015) . 

Ecometric analyses use the relationships between functional traits and the environment at the community level to quantitatively estimate past climatic and environmental variables at fossil sites. Hypsodonty (tooth crown height) in North American rodent and lagomorph (Glires) communities is correlated with mean annual temperature and annual precipitation. Here, we examine the community hypsodonty of African Glires to test if this relationship translates to a continent with more extreme climates and to quantify paleoprecipitation at important fossil sites. Categorical hypsodonty values were gathered from the literature and museum collections for 94 modern African taxa (88%). We used maximum likelihood to model the ecometric relationship between hypsodonty and annual precipitation. We then produced trait-based estimates of paleoprecipitation for 26 well sampled fossil localities from eastern Africa over the last 5.7 Ma. We confirmed other regional studies by identifying increasing aridity and decreasing annual precipitation (824 mm to 480 mm) in the Late Miocene of Kenya. From the Ethiopian Shungura Formation, we estimated temporal fluctuations in precipitation that correspond with the presence or absence of paleolakes and rivers. Small mammal community hypsodonty illustrates that east African communities have converged towards mesodont means and high standard deviations in response to climate change. 

Abstract Terrestrial carnivorans, with their diverse diets and unique adaptations such as the carnassial tooth, offer insights into the connections between functional traits and the climatic and environmental conditions they inhabit. They shed light on functional trait‐environment relationships at the highest trophic levels across a broad range of environmental conditions. In this study, we evaluate the relationship between relative blade length (RBL) of the lower carnassial tooth, a key dietary adaptation among terrestrial carnivorans for slicing and grinding food items, and climate. We propose RBL as an ecometric trait and test the hypothesis that community‐level RBL is correlated with climate and mediated by environmental effects on food availability. Our findings show that communities with higher mean and broader variance of RBL are typically located in warmer and wetter climates, suggesting a relationship between carnivoran dietary diversity and climate. Conversely, communities with a lower mean and narrower variance of RBL predominantly occupy cooler, drier places. This indicates that community‐level carnivoran dietary traits have the potential to serve as indicators of environmental conditions. Given the robust fossil record associated with carnivorans, we also show how RBL can be used as a proxy for reconstructing paleoclimates by examining trait change at seven sites in North America to estimate changes in temperature and precipitation over time in relation to changes in carnivoran community assembly. Understanding the nature of trait‐environment relationships can help us anticipate biological impacts of ongoing environmental change and the geographic regions at the greatest risk of ecological disruption. 

Abstract Mammalian megafauna have been critical to the functioning of Earth’s biosphere for millions of years. However, since the Plio-Pleistocene, their biodiversity has declined concurrently with dramatic environmental change and hominin evolution. While these biodiversity declines are well-documented, their implications for the ecological function of megafaunal communities remain uncertain. Here, we adapt ecometric methods to evaluate whether the functional link between communities of herbivorous, eastern African megafauna and their environments (i.e., functional trait-environment relationships) was disrupted as biodiversity losses occurred over the past 7.4 Ma. Herbivore taxonomic and functional diversity began to decline during the Pliocene as open grassland habitats emerged, persisted, and expanded. In the mid-Pleistocene, grassland expansion intensified, and climates became more variable and arid. It was then that phylogenetic diversity declined, and the trait-environment relationships of herbivore communities shifted significantly. Our results divulge the varying implications of different losses in megafaunal biodiversity. Only the losses that occurred since the mid-Pleistocene were coincident with a disturbance to community ecological function. Prior diversity losses, conversely, occurred as the megafaunal species and trait pool narrowed towards those adapted to grassland environments. 

The R packagecommecometricsprovides an accessible, open-access framework for modelling trait–environment relationships using community-level trait data from modern and ancient species. Ecometrics links the trait distributions of communities to their local environmental variables, enabling the reconstruction of past conditions and the prediction of community responses under future climate change. Existing tools for functional trait analysis often lack palaeontological integration or are limited to specific taxa.commecometricsaddresses these gaps by offering a suite of functions to summarise trait distributions, construct ecometric models, visualise trait–environment relationships, assess model robustness and reconstruct environmental conditions. The package is designed for broad applicability across ecological and palaeoecological studies and includes tools for trait-based biodiversity analysis beyond ecometrics. Through a worked example using carnassial tooth relative blade length (RBL) in carnivoran mammals, we demonstrate the package’s capabilities for analysing trait–environment dynamics across space and time. 

We are in a modern biodiversity crisis that will restructure community compositions and ecological functions globally. Large mammals, important contributors to ecosystem function, have been affected directly by purposeful extermination and indirectly by climate and land-use changes, yet functional turnover is rarely assessed on a global scale using metrics based on functional traits. Using ecometrics, the study of functional trait distributions and functional turnover, we examine the relationship between vegetation cover and locomotor traits for artiodactyl and carnivoran communities. We show that the ability to detect a functional relationship is strengthened when locomotor traits of both primary consumers (artiodactyls, n = 157 species) and secondary consumers (carnivorans, n = 138 species) are combined into one trophically integrated ecometric model. Overall, locomotor traits of 81% of communities accurately estimate vegetation cover, establishing the advantage of trophically integrated ecometric models over single-group models (58 to 65% correct). We develop an innovative approach within the ecometrics framework, using ecometric anomalies to evaluate mismatches in model estimates and observed values and provide more nuance for understanding relationships between functional traits and vegetation cover. We apply our integrated model to five paleontological sites to illustrate mismatches in the past and today and to demonstrate the utility of the model for paleovegetation interpretations. Observed changes in community traits and their associated vegetations across space and over time demonstrate the strong, rapid effect of environmental filtering on community traits. Ultimately, our trophically integrated ecometric model captures the cascading interactions between taxa, traits, and changing environments. 

Ecosystem function relies in part on aligned relationships between functional traits of animals and the environments in which they live. Studies of trait-environment relationships have largely focused on communities of native species, but domestic and non-native species also play a role in the functioning of modern ecosystems. We use ecometrics, or study of functional trait-environment relationships, to evaluate the impact of domestic and non-native species on community-level trait composition and its relationship with precipitation by comparing four community compositions: modern native, modern native plus domestic, modern native plus non-native, and late Pleistocene (0.126–0.0117 Ma). We integrate large and small herbivorous mammals into a single ecometric model of hypsodonty (i.e., tooth crown height) and annual precipitation (n=8439, r=-0.7, R2=0.4, p<0.001). We hypothesize: 1) ecometric models of modern native communities will differ from those for late Pleistocene communities, 2) inclusion of domestic species will align ecometric relationships with those from the late Pleistocene, 3) inclusion of non-native species will maintain ecometric relationships of modern native communities. We found modern communities of native species have lower hypsodonty values and higher precipitation estimates than late Pleistocene communities. Domestic species shift modern communities toward higher hypsodonty values and lower precipitation estimates like those in the late Pleistocene. Today’s domestics are mostly high-crowned grazing species representative of the fauna lost prior to the Holocene. Non-native species do not shift modern native trait composition or the associated precipitation estimates, illustrating the success of non-native species due to trait alignment with their new environments. Thus, conservation and restoration efforts should consider trait composition of whole communities because it provides unique information to measures of taxonomic composition.