Gordon, T. A. C., Harding, H. R., Clever, F. K., Davidson, I. K., Davison, W., Montgomery, D. W., et al. (2018). Fishes in a changing world: learning from the past to promote sustainability of fish populations. J Fish Biol, 92(3), 804–827.
Abstract: Populations of fishes provide valuable services for billions of people, but face diverse and interacting threats that jeopardize their sustainability. Human population growth and intensifying resource use for food, water, energy and goods are compromising fish populations through a variety of mechanisms, including overfishing, habitat degradation and declines in water quality. The important challenges raised by these issues have been recognized and have led to considerable advances over past decades in managing and mitigating threats to fishes worldwide. In this review, we identify the major threats faced by fish populations alongside recent advances that are helping to address these issues. There are very significant efforts worldwide directed towards ensuring a sustainable future for the world's fishes and fisheries and those who rely on them. Although considerable challenges remain, by drawing attention to successful mitigation of threats to fish and fisheries we hope to provide the encouragement and direction that will allow these challenges to be overcome in the future.
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Gornish, S. E., Hamilton, J. A., Barberan, A., Benito, B. M., Binzer, A., DeMeester, J. E., et al. (2013). Interdisciplinary climate change collaborations are essential for early-career scientists. EOS, 94(16), 151.
Abstract: Climate change research is an interdisciplinary field and understanding its social, political and environmental implications requires integration across fields of research where different tools may be used to address common concerns [Baerwald, 2010]. However, current academic training promotes specialization, which may hinder our ability to parse interactions between different scales of organization, limiting our ability to extrapolate to the multiple levels of organization critical for climate change research. A useful but underutilized solution to tackle this obstacle is to facilitate collaboration between scientists with different specializations [Root and Schneider, 2006]. This is particularly important for early career scientists where integration across subfields may influence the focus of research programs as they are established and will encourage a tradition of broad-scale interactions. One of the many advantages of interdisciplinary approaches is that it opens communication between complementary fields, filling knowledge gaps, and facilitating progression both within individual fields, and the broader field of climate change research [Ludwig et al., 2011]. Despite the clear benefit of interdisciplinary approaches [e.g. Williams et al. 2008], collaborations among scientists from the natural and social sciences are still relatively uncommon [Ceballos et al., 2010].
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Herrera-R, G. A., Oberdorff, T., Anderson, E. P., Brosse, S., Carvajal-Vallejos, F. M., Frederico, R. G., et al. (2020). The combined effects of climate change and river fragmentation on the distribution of Andean Amazon fishes. Glob Chang Biol, .
Abstract: Upstream range shifts of freshwater fishes have been documented in recent years due to ongoing climate change. River fragmentation by dams, presenting physical barriers, can limit the climatically induced spatial redistribution of fishes. Andean freshwater ecosystems in the Neotropical region are expected to be highly affected by these future disturbances. However, proper evaluations are still missing. Combining species distribution models and functional traits of Andean Amazon fishes, coupled with dam locations and climatic projections (2070s), we (a) evaluated the potential impacts of future climate on species ranges, (b) investigated the combined impact of river fragmentation and climate change and (c) tested the relationships between these impacts and species functional traits. Results show that climate change will induce range contraction for most of the Andean Amazon fish species, particularly those inhabiting highlands. Dams are not predicted to greatly limit future range shifts for most species (i.e., the Barrier effect). However, some of these barriers should prevent upstream shifts for a considerable number of species, reducing future potential diversity in some basins. River fragmentation is predicted to act jointly with climate change in promoting a considerable decrease in the probability of species to persist in the long-term because of splitting species ranges in smaller fragments (i.e., the Isolation effect). Benthic and fast-flowing water adapted species with hydrodynamic bodies are significantly associated with severe range contractions from climate change.
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James, S. A., Soltis, P. S., Belbin, L., Chapman, A. D., Nelson, G., Paul, D. L., et al. (2018). Herbarium data: Global biodiversity and societal botanical needs for novel research. Appl Plant Sci, 6(2), e1024.
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Kominoski, J. S., Gaiser, E. E., & Baer, S. G. (2018). Advancing Theories of Ecosystem Development through Long-Term Ecological Research. BioScience, 68(8), 554–562.
Abstract: Decades of place-based, long-term ecological research have generated important insights into patterns and processes among ecosystems. Here, we extend a theoretical framework based on Odum's "strategy of ecosystem development"-which predicted distinct attributes of developing and mature ecosystems-in the context of more recent theoretical advancements that predict how long-term changes in the presses (long-term, gradual changes) and pulses (abrupt changes) of drivers that regulate ecosystem functions (press-pulse regimes) can influence their trajectories of development. Our modifications to ecosystem development theories (a) illustrate how press-pulse regimes can cause ecosystems to continue to develop or oscillate around a stable state (pulsed stability) or cause them to decline if the press-pulse regime changes faster than species and communities can adapt, (b) use examples from long-term ecological research of how attributes interact to affect development, and (c) suggest how revised and new theoretical frameworks can integrate long-term ecological research and observatory networks.
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Kominoski, J. S., Ruhí, A., Hagler, M. M., Petersen, K., Sabo, J. L., Sinha, T., et al. (2018). Patterns and drivers of fish extirpations in rivers of the American Southwest and Southeast. Glob Change Biol, 24(3), 1175–1185.
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Krumhansl, K. A., Okamoto, D. K., Rassweiler, A., Novak, M., Bolton, J. J., Cavanaugh, K. C., et al. (2016). Global patterns of kelp forest change over the past half-century. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 113(48), 13785–13790.
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Lapointe, B. E., Brewton, R. A., Herren, L. W., Porter, J. W., & Hu, C. (2019). Nitrogen enrichment, altered stoichiometry, and coral reef decline at Looe Key, Florida Keys, USA: a 3-decade study. Mar Biol, 166(8).
Abstract: Increased loadings of nitrogen (N) from fertilizers, top soil, sewage, and atmospheric deposition are important drivers of eutrophication in coastal waters globally. Monitoring seawater and macroalgae can reveal long-term changes in N and phosphorus (P) availability and N:P stoichiometry that are critical to understanding the global crisis of coral reef decline. Analysis of a unique 3-decade data set for Looe Key reef, located offshore the lower Florida Keys, showed increased dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), chlorophyll a, DIN:soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) ratios, as well as higher tissue C:P and N:P ratios in macroalgae during the early 1990s. These data, combined with remote sensing and nutrient monitoring between the Everglades and Looe Key, indicated that the significant DIN enrichment between 1991 and 1995 at Looe Key coincided with increased Everglades runoff, which drains agricultural and urban areas extending north to Orlando, Florida. This resulted in increased P limitation of reef primary producers that can cause metabolic stress in stony corals. Outbreaks of stony coral disease, bleaching, and mortality between 1995 and 2000 followed DIN enrichment, algal blooms, and increased DIN:SRP ratios, suggesting that eutrophication interacted with other factors causing coral reef decline at Looe Key. Although water temperatures at Looe Key exceeded the 30.5 degrees C bleaching threshold repeatedly over the 3-decade study, the three mass bleaching events occurred only when DIN:SRP ratios increased following heavy rainfall and increased Everglades runoff. These results suggest that Everglades discharges, in conjunction with local nutrient sources, contributed to DIN enrichment, eutrophication, and increased N:P ratios at Looe Key, exacerbating P limitation, coral stress and decline. Improved management of water quality at the local and regional levels could moderate N inputs and maintain more balanced N:P stoichiometry, thereby reducing the risk of coral bleaching, disease, and mortality under the current level of temperature stress.
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Lyons, M. P., von Holle, B., Caffrey, M. A., & eishampel, J. F. (2020). Quantifying the impacts of future sea level rise on nesting sea turtles in the southeastern United States. Ecol Appl, 30(5), e02100.
Abstract: Sandy beaches, a necessary habitat for nesting sea turtles, are increasingly under threat as they become squeezed between human infrastructure and shorelines that are changing as a result of rising sea levels. Forecasting where shifting sandy beaches will be obstructed and how that directly impacts coastal nesting species is necessary for successful conservation and management. Predicting changes to coastal nesting areas is difficult because of a lack of consensus on the physical attributes used by females in nesting site choice. In this study, we leveraged long-term data sets of nesting localities for two sea turtle species, loggerhead sea turtle, Caretta caretta, and green sea turtle, Chelonia mydas, within four barrier island National Seashores in the southeastern United States to predict future nesting beach area based on where these species currently nest in relation to mean high water. We predicted the future location of nesting areas based on a sea level rise scenario for 2100 and quantified how impervious surfaces will inhibit future beach movement, which will impact both the total available nesting area and the percentage of nesting area predicted to flood following a hurricane-related storm surge. Contrary to our expectations, those barrier islands with the greatest levels of human infrastructure were not projected to experience the greatest percentage of sea turtle nesting area loss due to sea level rise or storm surge events. Notably, loss of nesting beach areas will not have equal impacts across the four Seashores; the Seashore projected to have the least amount of total nesting area lost and percentage nesting area lost currently has the highest nesting densities of our two study species, suggesting that even low levels of beach loss could have substantial impacts on future nesting densities and disproportionate impacts on the population growth of these species. Our novel method of estimating current and future nesting beach area can be broadly applied to studies requiring a bounded area that encompasses the part of a beach used by nesting coastal species and will be useful in comparing future global nesting densities and population trajectories under projected future sea level rise and storm surge activity.
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Mathez-Stiefel, S. - L., Peralvo, M., Báez, S., Rist, S., Buytaert, W., Cuesta, F., et al. (2017). Research Priorities for the Conservation and Sustainable Governance of Andean Forest Landscapes. Mountain Research and Development, 37(3), 323–339.
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McCoy, S. J., Allesina, S., & Pfister, C. A. (2016). Ocean acidification affects competition for space: projections of community structure using cellular automata. Proc. R. Soc. B, 283(1826), 20152561.
Abstract: Historical ecological datasets from a coastal marine community of crustose coralline algae (CCA) enabled the documentation of ecological changes in this community over 30 years in the Northeast Pacific. Data on competitive interactions obtained from field surveys showed concordance between the 1980s and 2013, yet also revealed a reduction in how strongly species interact. Here, we extend these empirical findings with a cellular automaton model to forecast ecological dynamics. Our model suggests the emergence of a new dominant competitor in a global change scenario, with a reduced role of herbivory pressure, or trophic control, in regulating competition among CCA. Ocean acidification, due to its energetic demands, may now instead play this role in mediating competitive interactions and thereby promote species diversity within this guild.
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Nowakowski, A. J., Watling, J. I., Thompson, M. E., Brusch IV, G. A., Catenazzi, A., Whitfield, S. M., et al. (2018). Thermal biology mediates responses of amphibians and reptiles to habitat modification. Ecol Lett, 21(3), 345–355.
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Osland, M. J., Feher, L. C., López-Portillo, J., Day, R. H., Suman, D. O., Guzmán Menéndez, J. M., et al. (2018). Mangrove forests in a rapidly changing world: Global change impacts and conservation opportunities along the Gulf of Mexico coast. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 214, 120–140.
Abstract: Mangrove forests are highly-productive intertidal wetlands that support many ecosystem goods and services. In addition to providing fish and wildlife habitat, mangrove forests improve water quality, provide seafood, reduce coastal erosion, supply forest products, support coastal food webs, minimize flooding impacts, and support high rates of carbon sequestration. Despite their tremendous societal value, mangrove forests are threatened by many aspects of global change. Here, we examine the effects of global change on mangrove forests along the Gulf of Mexico coast, which is a valuable region for advancing understanding of global change impacts because the region spans multiple ecologically-relevant abiotic gradients that are representative of other mangrove transition zones across the world. We consider the historical and anticipated future responses of mangrove forests to the following aspects of global change: temperature change, precipitation change, accelerated sea-level rise, tropical cyclone intensification, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide, eutrophication, invasive non-native species, and land use change. For each global change factor, we provide an initial global perspective but focus primarily on the three countries that border the Gulf of Mexico: United States, Mexico, and Cuba. The interactive effects of global change can have large ecological consequences, and we provide examples that highlight their importance. While some interactions between global change drivers can lead to mangrove mortality and loss, others can lead to mangrove expansion at the expense of other ecosystems. Finally, we discuss strategies for using restoration and conservation to maximize the adaptive capacity of mangrove forests to global change. To ensure that the ecosystem goods and services provided by mangrove forests continue to be available for future generations, there is a pressing need to better protect, manage, and restore mangrove forests as well as the adjacent ecosystems that provide opportunities for adaptation in response to global change.
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Packer, J. G., Meyerson, L. A., Richardson, D. M., Brundu, G., Allen, W. J., Bhattarai, G. P., et al. (2017). Global networks for invasion science: benefits, challenges and guidelines. Biol Invasions, 19(4), 1081–1096.
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Tito, R., Vasconcelos, H. L., & Feeley, K. J. (2020). Multi-population seedling and soil transplants show possible responses of a common tropical montane tree species (Weinmannia bangii) to climate change.
Abstract: A possible response of many plant species to global warming is migration to higher elevations. However, these migrations may not be required if species can tolerate higher temperatures, or may be prevented if there are other factors such as changes in soil conditions that make upslope areas unsuitable. We used a set of 3-year field transplant experiments in the remote Peruvian Andes to simulate two possible responses of an abundant tropical montane cloudforest tree species (Weinmania bangii) to global warming: (a) 'upward migration', in which case seedlings ofW. bangii'swere grown at their current elevation/temperature but in soils transplanted from higher elevations and (b) 'migration failure', in which case seedlings were transplanted downslope along with their home soils into areas that are 1 degrees C or 2 degrees C warmer. We conducted separate experiments with populations from the upper/leading edge, middle and lower/trailing edges ofW. bangii'selevational/thermal range to assess the influence of local adaptation on responses to changes in temperature or soil. We found that seedling survival and growth were not affected by changes in soil conditions, regardless of the origin population. However, seedling survival decreased with temperature. A simulated warming of 1 degrees C caused a significant reduction in the survival of seedlings transplanted from the mid-range population, and 2 degrees C warming caused a severe decrease in the survival of seedlings transplanted from both the mid-range and bottom-edge populations. Synthesis. Our findings reveal that rising temperatures are a serious threat to plants, especially in populations growing in the hotter portion of their species' range. At least in the case ofW. bangii,novel soil conditions will not limit the establishment or growth of seedlings at higher elevations. As such, decreases in the survivorship at lower elevations may be offset through upward migrations as temperatures continue to increase.
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Vincze, O., Kosztolányi, A., Barta, Z., Küpper, C., Alrashidi, M., Amat, J. A., et al. (2017). Parental cooperation in a changing climate: fluctuating environments predict shifts in care division. Global Ecol. Biogeogr., 26(3), 347–358.
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