Hasil untuk "Ecology"

S. Pickett, M. Cadenasso, J. Grove et al.

K. L. White, T. F. Williams, B. Greenberg

G. Schaller

Ju Kang, Yiyuan Niu, Yuanzhi Li et al.

Explaining the emergence of self-organized biodiversity and species abundance distribution patterns remians a fundamental challenge in ecology. While classical frameworks, such as neutral theory and models based on pairwise species interactions, have provided valuable insights, they often neglect higher-order interactions (HOIs), whose role in stabilizing ecological communities is increasingly recognized. Here, we extend the Generalized Lotka-Volterra framework to incorporate HOIs and demonstrate that these interactions can enhance ecosystem stability and prevent collapse. Our model exhibits a diverse range of emergent dynamics, including self-sustained oscillations, quasi-periodic (torus) trajectories, and intermittent chaos. Remarkably, it also reproduces empirical species abundance distributions observed across diverse natural communities. These results underscore the critical role of HOIs in structuring biodiversity and offer a broadly applicable theoretical framework for capturing complexity in ecological systems

Ping Wang, Jiacheng He, Jianyong Chen et al.

Membrane distillation (MD) is a commonly used method for water treatment, but the issue of temperature polarization often leads to low vapor flux, which severely restrict the development and application. In order to improve MD performance, a novel method to create a porous layer on hydrophobic polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane surface by Al2O3 dilute nanofluidic colloidal suspension is proposed in this study. Successful deposition was confirmed using different characterization techniques (SEM, EDS, CA). The effects of nanoparticle size and nanofluid concentration on DCMD performance at different feeding temperatures have been studied experimentally. Results demonstrate that the vapor flux enhancement varied non-linear with the increased nanofluid concentration, and the maximum enhancement of 32.46 % in vapor flux was achieved at feed temperature of 60 ℃. A robust deposition layer created by Al2O3 nanoparticles was confirmed with distillation experiment of 9 h. A fouling layer on the membrane surface was formed by flowing the nanofluid at higher concentration, which resulted in a deterioration of MD performance. Furthermore, the deposited membrane is able to maintain the high permeability when handling a 3.5 wt% NaCl solution. The work provides a simple method to enhance membrane distillation flux and a new perspective for nanofluidic suspensions in MD process.

Aura M. Alonso‐Rodríguez, Pablo E. Gutiérrez‐Fonseca, Scott E. Miller et al.

ABSTRACT Extreme climatic events are expected to increase in frequency and severity under climate change, with lasting consequences for ecological communities worldwide. Global insect declines have raised concerns for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem stability, as shifts in insect communities can trigger cascading effects across trophic levels. Yet insect responses to large‐scale disturbances remain poorly understood, particularly in tropical forests where long‐term datasets are scarce and taxonomic knowledge is limited. We examined the response trajectories and stability of moth communities in two forest types in Puerto Rico following the September 2017 hurricanes Irma and María. Using monthly surveys conducted 5 months before and 6 months after the storms, followed by annual surveys over 5 years, we tracked changes in moth abundance, richness, and composition. We also evaluated ecological stability across multiple dimensions (i.e., resistance, resilience, recovery, and temporal stability) for the entire community and separately for Crambidae, Erebidae, and Geometridae. Despite initial declines, abundance and richness surpassed baseline levels within the first year, especially in old‐growth tabonuco stands, which may have provided more stable microhabitats and resources than palm stands. Resistance varied by family, with grass‐feeding crambids increasing in abundance and arboreal‐feeding geometrids experiencing the greatest species loss. Abundance and richness stabilized within 2 years, likely influenced by trophic interactions that regulated insect outbreaks. Species composition continued to shift over time, reflecting ongoing reassembly, while compositional and functional stability metrics suggested recovery within 5 years. This highlights both the resilience of the moth community and the dynamic nature of post‐disturbance reassembly. Our findings underscore the value of multi‐year, post‐disturbance datasets for uncovering recovery pathways and enhancing our understanding of ecological stability. As extreme events intensify across biomes, insights into resilience dynamics will be critical for sustaining insect biodiversity and the ecological functions they provide.

J. M. Wolstenholme, F. Cooper, R. E. Thomas et al.

Abstract Hedgerows are a key component of the UK landscape that form boundaries, borders and limits of land whilst providing vital landscape‐scale ecological connectivity for a range of organisms. They are diverse habitats in the agricultural landscape providing a range of ecosystem services. Poorly managed hedgerows often present with gaps, reducing their ecological connectivity, resulting in fragmented habitats. However, hedgerow gap frequency and spatial distributions are often unquantified at the landscape‐scale. Here we present a novel methodology based on deep learning (DL) that is coupled with high‐resolution aerial imagery. We demonstrate how this provides a route towards a rapid, adaptable, accurate assessment of hedgerow and gap abundance at such scales, with minimal training data. We present the training and development of a DL model using the U‐Net architecture to automatically identify hedgerows across the East Riding of Yorkshire (ERY) in the UK and demonstrate the ability of the model to estimate hedgerow gap types, lengths and their locations. Our method was both time efficient and accurate, processing an area of 2479 km2 in 32 h with an overall accuracy of 92.4%. The substantive results allow us to estimate that in the ERY alone, there were 3982 ± 302 km of hedgerows and 2865 ± 217 km of hedgerow gaps (with 339 km classified as for access). Our approach and study show that hedgerows and gaps can be extracted from true colour aerial imagery without the requirement of elevation data and can produce meaningful results that lead to the identification of prioritisation areas for hedgerow gap infilling, replanting and restoration. Such replanting could significantly contribute towards national tree planting goals and meeting net zero targets in a changing climate.

Chuanbao Jing, Weiqi Zhou, Yan Lin et al.

Accurate and high-resolution urban activity information is essential for quantitatively estimating Sustainable Development Goal 11, but is unavailable. We examined the capacity and limitation of the Sustainable Development Science Satellite−1 nighttime light (SDGSAT−1 GLI NTL) data in capturing the spatial extent and intensity of human activity in two Chinese megacities using mobile phone data. Key findings: (1) Lit areas highly overlap with human activity areas but are smaller. Over 92.62% of lit areas are occupied by humans. Only a minor population (<2.15%) lived in unlit areas, despite these areas accounting for over 20.01% of human activity areas, as revealed by the panchromatic band. Additionally, the NTL better identifies activity areas related to young and middle-aged adults and working and residential populations than those related to older adults and tourists. (2) The intensity relationships between NTL data and population are highly spatially heterogeneous, with weak global but strong local correlations. When accounting for land use, correlation remarkably improved, with an R2 value of even 0.85. (3) Notably, the correlation increased from fine to coarse resolution. In summary, NTL data effectively capture the spatial extent and intensity of urban human activity, especially when considering land use, but its limitations should be noted.

Tsetska Simeonova, Irena Atanassova, Maya Benkova et al.

This paper aims to estimate the maximum nutrient nitrogen input, called critical load that will balance the system in the stability limits regarding soil acidification while also not limiting plant growth as a result of mass balance calculation. The assessment was made on the basis of data obtained during a 4-years (2020-2023) field experiment and changes in the major input-output pools of nitrogen and base cations as a result of changing N loads. The study was carried out on Fluvisol, near Plovdiv in Southern Bulgaria under a cereal crop rotation. The experiment design included four N rates (T0-control, T1 N100, T2 N140, T3 N180) for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and (T1 N120, T2 N160, T3 N200) kg/ha for maize (Zea mays L.) respectively. Results show that average amount of N added by atmospheric deposition and irrigation water for the period 2020-2023 ranged from 10 to 24 kg.ha-1. Depositions of Ca2+ and Mg2+ via rainfall was reaching to 42 kg.ha-1 Ca2+ and 15.9 kg.ha-1 Mg. The average amount of N leached out of the control treatment (reaching 4.5 kg.ha-1 N) was four to five times lower in comparison with fertilized treatments T2 and T3. It was established that when using criteria - pH of the soil the critical load for acidifying N for this soil type was considerably high (170-227 kg.ha-1 per year) in case of maize. A significant reduction in the critical load for acidifying N was registered after wheat when irrigation was not applied (31-82 kg.ha-1 per year).  

Irina F. Lobasheva, Ekaterina A. Fakhrazieva

The article analyzes the art space of Kazan as one of Russia’s cultural centers through the lens of contemporary exhibition art projects initiated by museums, exhibition halls, and galleries. It addresses both the organization of significant large-scale exhibitions in the 2020s and their scientific and creative aspects, as well as their profound semantic resonance and broad social impact. The publication is accompanied by a historiographical review that focuses on key monographs, scientific articles, online reviews, and interviews related to the historical study of the city’s cultural landmarks and their role in shaping the artistic environment of Kazan. Through selected exhibition projects, the publication reveals a palette of some current collective exhibition projects, as well as exhibitions of individual artists whose art is of particular interest. As a result, these exhibitions identify the priority contemporary themes, the moods of the artists and the audience, the latest approaches to exhibition design, and the main trends and directions in the city’s art scene. It is noted that along with the permanent museum exhibitions of classical examples of visual art, the city successfully creates and develops projects by contemporary artists in various fields. It is this area, its changes and progress, that has particularly interested and attracted the attention of the authors, and as a result of the mutual collaboration between a teacher and a student, this publication has been created. A more detailed and in-depth analysis has been conducted on the following exhibitions: “Noah’s Ark” (2023), which provides a comprehensive analysis of individual works by various artists, and two exhibitions of the “Kazan Time” project. Artists of the 1990s at the Contemporary Art Gallery of the Republic of Tatarstan (2025), featuring the creative individuality of such masters as Evgeny Golubtsov and Oleg Ivanov, and “Our Avant-Garde” at the Benois Wing of the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (2025), focusing on the phenomenon of the popularity of the ‘fathers’ of Russian avant-garde. The article raises questions about the future development of visual arts and the role of young artists in the 21st century. The modern development of the Kazan Art School and its role in the formation of Tatarstan’s visual arts are also discussed.

Lucas Invernizzi, Jean-françois Lemaître, Mathieu Douhard

In its initial form, the expensive son hypothesis postulates that sons from male-biased sexually dimorphic species require more food during growth than daughters, which ultimately incur fitness costs for mothers predominantly producing and rearing sons. We first dissect the evolutionary framework in which the expensive son hypothesis is rooted, and we provide a critical reappraisal of its differences from other evolutionary theories proposed in the field of sex allocation. Then, we synthesize the current (and absence of) support for the costs of producing and rearing sons on maternal fitness components (future reproduction and survival). Regarding the consequences in terms of future reproduction, we highlight that species with pronounced sexual size dimorphism display a higher cost of sons than of daughters on subsequent reproductive performance, at least in mammals. However, in most studies, the relative fitness costs of producing and rearing sons and daughters can be due to sex-biased maternal allocation strategies rather than differences in energetic demands of offspring, which constitutes an alternative mechanism to the expensive son hypothesis stricto sensu. We observe that empirical studies investigating the differential costs of sons and daughters on maternal survival in non-human animals remain rare, especially for long-term survival. Indeed, most studies have investigated the influence of offspring sex (or litter sex ratio) at year $T$ on survival at year $T+1$, and they rarely provide a support to the expensive son hypothesis. On the contrary, in humans, most studies have focused on the relationship between proportion of sons and maternal lifespan, but these results are inconsistent. Our study highlights new avenues for future research that should provide a comprehensive view of the expensive son hypothesis, by notably disentangling the effects of offspring behaviour from the effect of sex-specific maternal allocation. Moreover, we emphasize that future studies should also embrace the mechanistic side of the expensive son hypothesis, largely neglected so far, by deciphering the physiological pathways linking son's production to maternal health and fitness.

Sepideh Vafaie, Deepak Bal, Michael A. S. Thorne et al.

For years, a main focus of ecological research has been to better understand the complex dynamical interactions between species which comprise food webs. Using the connectance properties of a widely explored synthetic food web called the cascade model, we explore the behavior of dynamics on Lotka-Volterra ecological systems. We show how trophic efficiency, a staple assumption in mathematical ecology, produces systems which are not persistent. With clustering analysis we show how straightforward inequalities of the summed values of the birth, death, self-regulation and interaction strengths provide insight into which food webs are more enduring or stable. Through these simplified summed values, we develop a random forest model and a neural network model, both of which are able to predict the number of extinctions that would occur without the need to simulate the dynamics. To conclude, we highlight the variable that plays the dominant role in determining the order in which species go extinct.

Lia Thomson, Daniel Priego Espinosa, Yaniv Brandvain et al.

Abstract Much research on the evolution of altruism via kin selection, group selection, and reciprocity focuses on the role of a single locus or quantitative trait. Very few studies have explored how linked selection, or selection at loci neighboring an altruism locus, impacts the evolution of altruism. While linked selection can decrease the efficacy of selection at neighboring loci, it might have other effects including promoting selection for altruism by increasing relatedness in regions of low recombination. Here, we used population genetic simulations to study how negative selection at linked loci, or background selection, affects the evolution of altruism. When altruism occurs between full siblings, we found that background selection interfered with selection on the altruistic allele, increasing its fixation probability when the altruistic allele was disfavored and reducing its fixation when the allele was favored. In other words, background selection has the same effect on altruistic genes in family‐structured populations as it does on other, nonsocial, genes. This contrasts with prior research showing that linked selective sweeps can favor the evolution of cooperation, and we discuss possibilities for resolving these contrasting results.

R. Lincoln, G. Boxshall, P. Clark

M. McPherson

D. Jablonski, R. Lutz

T. Fenchel

T. Kunz

K. Sebens

J. S. Cobb, B. Phillips