Diet variation among individuals within populations is widespread. Often diet differences among individuals are attributable to obvious differences among individuals such as age, sex, or morphology. However, growing evidence suggests that individual diet variation is also common among seemingly identical individuals within populations. This phenomenon has been termed individual diet...
There is increasing awareness that human activities are altering the ways that natural systems operate and that local shifts in species composition and abundance can lead to abrupt and irreversible global change. Therefore, understanding the processes that buffer biological communities from critical shifts and how our actions affect natural stabilizing...
Mutualistic associations between cnidarians, such as corals, and photosynthetic
dinoflagellate algae provide the trophic and structural foundation of coral reef
ecosystems. In many cases, this intracellular mutualism is highly specific and must be
established anew for each generation of host corals. The ability to maintain partner
specificity across generations implies...
Although only a minority of introduced species become established and have noticeable consequences in their new communities, some can displace native species, alter food webs, and cause local extinctions. Studying these invasive species can provide new insights into basic ecological questions as well as inform management strategies. Pacific lionfish (Pterois...
The multifaceted role of the environment in regulating the structure and dynamics of biological communities has long fascinated ecologists and motivated much debate and research. Now, in a time of accelerated global changes due to human impacts, the need to understand how the environment shapes communities has gained new urgency....
Ecologists must increasingly balance the need for accurate predictions about how ecosystems will be affected by climate change, against the fact that making such predictions at the ecosystem-level may be infeasible. Although information about responses of individual species to a changing environment is increasing, scaling such information to the community...
Climate change is predicted to affect ecosystems, including systems already stressed by human impacts. One ecosystem that is already highly impacted by human land use is the cold headwater stream system of the Pacific Northwest. One method of assessing the function of an ecosystem is by using an indicator species....
Biological invasions have been identified as one of the prominent drivers of global environmental change. In particular, invasive predators typically have substantial negative effects on populations of native prey, even driving species to extinction in extreme cases. However, beyond direct predatory effects, little is understood regarding the specific mechanisms by...
Emerging infectious diseases impact both human and wildlife populations. Infectious agents, in particular the aquatic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (chytrid), have an influential role in driving global amphibian population declines. The emergence of the chytrid fungus has aspects of both geographic spread as well as climate shifts altering environmental conditions and...
A central challenge for ecology is to understand the dynamic nature of species interactions. A classic approach to community ecology assumes that individuals within a species are functionally identical and that consumer-resource dynamics can be predicted solely by using species abundances. However, one species can consist of multiple functional groups,...