The importance of a holistic approach to the factors determining population abundances

Ogilvie, J. E., & CaraDonna, P. J. (2022). The shifting importance of abiotic and biotic factors across the life cycles of wild pollinators. Journal of Animal Ecology, 91, 2412– 2423. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365- 2656.13825. As global change and its multiple impacts continue to unfold across most of the planet, understanding how populations of wild species respond to changing conditions has become a major focus of ecological studies. Ogilvie and CaraDonna (Ogilvie & CaraDonna, 2022) focus on understanding how biotic and abiotic conditions affect bumblebee abundances. A major advance in their work is that, rather than focusing on a single measure of abun-dance at a particular life stage for each of the seven bumblebee species they survey (e.g. adult abundance), they focus on understanding the drivers of population abun-dance across the different stages of the species' life cycles. The authors specifically assess how three factors in particular, climate conditions, floral resource availability and previous life-stage abundances impact these abundances. A main finding in their study is that each of these three factors directly impacted a different life stage, show-ing that just focusing on a single life-stage would have resulted on a biased and incom-plete picture of how abiotic and biotic factors affect bumblebee population dynamics. Studies like this one emphasize the need to focus on understanding the demographic mechanisms that determine population abundances

Stability in plant-pollinator communities across organizational levels: present, gaps, and future

The study of ecological stability continues to fill the pages of scientific journals almost seven decades after the first ecologists initiated this line of research. The many advances in this field have focused on understanding the stability of populations, communities or functions within single guilds or trophic levels, with less research conducted across multiple trophic levels and considering the different interactions that relate species to each other. Here, we review the recent literature on the multiple dimensions of ecological stability specifically within plant-pollinator communities. We then focus on one of stabilitýs dimensions, temporal invariability, and adapt an existing partitioning framework that bridges invariability and synchrony measures across spatial scales and organizational levels to accommodate interactions between plants and their pollinators. Finally, we use this framework to analyse temporal invariability in plant reproductive success, partitioning it on invariability and synchrony components across plant and pollinator populations and communities, as well as their interactions, using a well-resolved dataset that encompasses data for two years. Our review of the literature points to several significant gaps in our current knowledge, with simulation studies clearly overrepresented in the literature as opposed to experimental or empirical approaches. Our quantitative approach to partitioning invariability shows similar patterns of decreasing temporal invariability across increasing organizational levels driven by asynchronous dynamics amongst populations and communities, which overall stabilize ecosystem functioning (plant reproductive success). This study represents a first step towards a better comprehension of temporal invariability in ecosystem functions defined by interactions between species and provides a blueprint for the type of spatially replicated multi-year data that needs to be collected in the future to further our understanding of ecological stability within multi-trophic communities. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company.A.M. acknowledges funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation Grant (PID2021-127900NB-I00), the Basque Government through PIBA projects (2024RTE00060004), the European Union (ERC, GorBEEa 101086771), an Ikerbasque Research Professorship and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Social Fund through the Ramón y Cajal Program (RYC2021-032351-I). D.M. acknowledges fnancial support provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and by the European Social Fund through the Ramón y Cajal Program (RYC2020-028780-I) and the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant RECODYN 101043548). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily refect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This research is supported by María de Maeztu Excellence Unit 2023-2027 Ref. CEX2021-001201-M, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. We thank Shaopeng Wang for providing the code used to run part of the analyses in this paper and Tadeu Siqueira for sharing his code with his paper Siqueira et al 2023

Environmental and social consequences of the increase in the demand for superfoods world-wide

1.The search for healthy diets has led to a surge in the demand for functional foods or ‘superfoods’, which have now become popular among the middle- and high- income fractions of the society in developed regions of the world. ‘Superfoods’ are predominantly consumed far from their centres of origin and out of their cul- tural context with different environmental and social effects. 2. Here, we present a series of case studies to provide an overview of the different environmental impacts driven by superfood expansion. 3. We show that if these crops are to follow the path of other global commodities, then strong environmental impacts and large carbon footprints are expected in terms of land clearing, use of agrochemicals and transportation during times of high prices (boom) and social problems as farmers have to abandon their liveli- hoods when prices sink below the cost of production (bust). 4. We also showcase how a combination of management practices, consumer choices and policy changes could help in alleviating the ecological footprint of these crops.Both A.M. and M.J.S. are funded through Ikerbasque, the Basque Foundation for Science. Research was also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through María de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation (MDM‐2017‐0714) and the Basque Government BERC Programme

Niche complementarity among pollinators increases community-level plant reproductive success

Declines in pollinator diversity and abundance have been reported across different regions, with implications for the reproductive success of plant species. However, research has focused primarily on pairwise plant-pollinator interactions, largely overlooking community-level dynamics. Here, we present one of the first efforts linking pollinator visitation to plant reproduction from a community-wide perspective using a well-replicated dataset encompassing 16 well-resolved plant-pollinator networks and data on reproductive success for 19 plant species from Mediterranean shrub ecosystems. We find that models including simple visitation metrics are sufficient to explain the variability in reproductive success observed. However, insights into the mechanisms through which differences in pollinator diversity translate into changes in reproductive success require additional information on network structure. Specifically, we find a positive effect of increasing niche complementarity between pollinators on plant reproductive success. This shows that maintaining communities with a diversity of species but also of functions is paramount to preserving natural ecosystems

Untangling the plant reproductive success of changing community composition and pollinator foraging choices

Pollinator choices when selecting flowers for nectar or pollen collection are crucial in determining the effectiveness of pollination services provided to plants. From the plant's perspective, this effectiveness is a phenomenon shaped by factors at both the species- (e.g. pollinator density and flower morphology) and community-level, including pollinator diversity and plant competition for pollinators. At the species level, individual pollinator effectiveness is influenced by foraging choices, plant identity, and the resulting pollen flow within and between plant species. In natural ecosystems, these species coexist within a complex community, where various interactions can modify foraging choices and alter pollen flows, giving rise to community-level effectiveness, a less explored aspect of pollinator effectiveness. This study investigates the drivers of individual pollinator foraging choices across two study areas and two flowering seasons. It also assesses the community-level effectiveness of pollination services received by different plant species, considering indirect interactions between plants through shared pollinators and evaluating their impact on plant reproductive success. Our results show that the determinants of pollinator foraging choices are consistent across different habitats, with floral constancy and flower abundance playing pivotal roles across all species and sites. Foraging choices can shift throughout the flowering season as plant and pollinator composition changes, significantly impacting pollination effectiveness. The overlap in pollination service use by individuals of the same plant species decreases their fruit set, whereas sharing pollinator services with individuals of other plant species increases fruit set. Our results support significant, positive biodiversity–ecosystem functioning associations driven by both plant and pollinator species richness, suggesting that the overlap in pollination service use by different plant species fosters facilitative interactions rather than competition. This is likely influenced by more stable pollination supplies under high plant species diversity conditions and the existence of mechanisms to mitigate the negative impacts of heterospecific pollen deposition. © 2024 The Author(s). Ecography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos.AAP was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) through the TASTE (PID2021- 127607OB-I00) and ChaSisCOMA (PID2021-122711NB-C21) projects, and acknowledges financial support provided by the Comunidad de Madrid through the call Research Grants for Young Investigators from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (APOYOJOVENES-21- 9K9EVJ-36-3VPZPJ). AM acknowledges funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation Grants (PGC2018- 098498-A-I00 and PID2021-127900NB-I00), an Ikerbasque Research Professorship and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Social Fund through the Ramón y Cajal Program (RYC2021-032351-I365). Research is funded/ Co-funded by the European Union (ERC Consolidator Grant, GorBEEa 101086771). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the 16000587, 0, Downloaded from https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.07240 by Daniel Montoya - Readcube (Labtiva Inc.) , Wiley Online Library on [30/07/2024]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License Page 13 of 15 European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. DM is supported by a Ramon y Cajal fellowship from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC2020-028780-I), an Ikerbasque Research Professorship, and the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant, RECODYN 101043548). This research is part of the project PID2021-127900NB-I00 funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation and supported by María de Maeztu Excellence Unit 2023-2027 ref. CEX2021-001201-M, funded by MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033

Increasing crop richness and reducing field sizes provide higher yields to pollinator-dependent crops

Agricultural landscapes cover >60% of terrestrial landscapes. While biodiversity conservation and crop productivity have been seen as mutually exclusive options for a long time, recent research suggests that agricultural landscapes represent significant opportunities for biodiversity conservation outside of traditional protected areas. Here, we use a unique dataset that includes annual monitoring of 12,300 permanent 25-ha plots over two decades across Spain to assess how agricultural landscapes are changing over time. We focus particularly on landscape composition and configuration variables such as the diversity of crops grown within a landscape, average plot size or the cover of natural habitats and assess how changes to these variables affect the ability of agricultural landscapes to ensure high yields. We find potential synergistic strategies that are good for biodiversity conservation and can also lead to increasing crop yields. Specifically, we find that management practices that favour increasing biodiversity values such as maintaining small field sizes and high crop richness values at the landscape scale actually led to the greatest average yield values across 54 crops, 41% of which depend on pollinator activity for reproduction. Policy implications: While our analysis does not factor in economic costs and benefits, we show that synergy scenarios that are good for biodiversity conservation and crop productivity are possible, yet not as widespread as they could be. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of Applied Ecology © 2022 British Ecological Society.We thank Sergio Mancheño Losa from the Spanish Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Ali‐mentación for his support in providing the data used in this paper and to all the staff members that made ESYRCE database possible. A.M. received funding from an Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science Research Fellowship. Research was also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through Maria de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation (MDM‐2017‐0714) and the Basque Government BERC Programme. We appreciate funding from BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals (under the BiodivScen ERA‐Net COFUND programme and with the funding organizations AEI, NWO, ECCyT and NSF)

Community-level reorganizations following migratory pollinator dynamics along a latitudinal gradient

Predicting how communities re-arrange in response to changes in species composition remains a key challenge in ecology. Migratory species, which enter and leave communities across latitudinal gradients, offer us a unique opportunity to evaluate community- and species-level responses to a shift in community composition. We focused on a migratory hummingbird and the communities that host it along a latitudinal and species diversity gradient. Our results show higher niche overlap in more diverse communities, allowing resident species to compensate for the loss of the migrant in providing pollination services. Contrastingly, in less diverse communities, the migrant behaves as a specialist, monopolizing abundant resources. In its absence, its role is not fully covered by resident species, resulting in a decrease in the fruit set of the migrant's preferred plant species. These results help us understand the potential impacts of biodiversity loss and have important implications for community persistence given expected changes in the migratory behaviours of some species. © 2020 The Author(s).Work produced with the support of a 2018 Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators, BBVA Foundation. The Foundation takes no responsibility for the opinions, statements and contents of this project, which are entirely the responsibility of its authors. AM received funding from an Ikerbasque Research Fellowship

Selective-logging and oil palm: Multitaxon impacts, biodiversity indicators, and trade-offs for conservation planning

Strong global demand for tropical timber and agricultural products has driven large-scale logging and subsequent conversion of tropical forests. Given that the majority of tropical landscapes have been or will likely be logged, the protection of biodiversity within tropical forests thus depends on whether species can persist in these economically exploited lands, and if species cannot persist, whether we can protect enough primary forest from logging and conversion. However, our knowledge of the impact of logging and conversion on biodiversity is limited to a few taxa, often sampled in different locations with complex land-use histories, hampering attempts to plan cost-effective conservation strategies and to draw conclusions across taxa. Spanning a land-use gradient of primary forest, once- and twice-logged forests, and oil palm plantations, we used traditional sampling and DNA metabarcoding to compile an extensive data set in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo for nine vertebrate and invertebrate taxa to quantify the biological impacts of logging and oil palm, develop cost-effective methods of protecting biodiversity, and examine whether there is congruence in response among taxa. Logged forests retained high species richness, including, on average, 70% of species found in primary forest. In contrast, conversion to oil palm dramatically reduces species richness, with significantly fewer primary-forest species than found on logged forest transects for seven taxa.Using a systematic conservation planning analysis, we show that efficient protection of primary-forest species is achieved with land portfolios that include a large proportion of logged-forest plots. Protecting logged forests is thus a cost-effective method of protecting an ecologically and taxonomically diverse range of species, particularly when conservation budgets are limited. Six indicator groups (birds, leaf-litter ants, beetles, aerial hymenopterans, flies, and true bugs) proved to be consistently good predictors of the response of the other taxa to logging and oil palm. Our results confidently establish the high conservation value of logged forests and the low value of oil palm. Cross-taxon congruence in responses to disturbance also suggests that the practice of focusing on key indicator taxa yields important information of general biodiversity in studies of logging and oil palm

Selective-logging and oil palm: multitaxon impacts, biodiversity indicators, and trade-offs for conservation planning

Strong global demand for tropical timber and agricultural products has driven large-scale logging and subsequent conversion of tropical forests. Given that the majority of tropical landscapes have been or will likely be logged, the protection of biodiversity within tropical forests thus depends on whether species can persist in these economically exploited lands, and if species cannot persist, whether we can protect enough primary forest from logging and conversion. However, our knowledge of the impact of logging and conversion on biodiversity is limited to a few taxa, often sampled in different locations with complex land-use histories, hampering attempts to plan cost-effective conservation strategies and to draw conclusions across taxa. Spanning a land-use gradient of primary forest, once- and twice-logged forests, and oil palm plantations, we used traditional sampling and DNA metabarcoding to compile an extensive data set in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo for nine vertebrate and invertebrate taxa to quantify the biological impacts of logging and oil palm, develop cost-effective methods of protecting biodiversity, and examine whether there is congruence in response among taxa. Logged forests retained high species richness, including, on average, 70% of species found in primary forest. In contrast, conversion to oil palm dramatically reduces species richness, with significantly fewer primary-forest species than found on logged forest transects for seven taxa. Using a systematic conservation planning analysis, we show that efficient protection of primary-forest species is achieved with land portfolios that include a large proportion of logged-forest plots. Protecting logged forests is thus a cost-effective method of protecting an ecologically and taxonomically diverse range of species, particularly when conservation budgets are limited. Six indicator groups (birds, leaf-litter ants, beetles, aerial hymenopterans, flies, and true bugs) proved to be consistently good predictors of the response of the other taxa to logging and oil palm. Our results confidently establish the high conservation value of logged forests and the low value of oil palm. Cross-taxon congruence in responses to disturbance also suggests that the practice of focusing on key indicator taxa yields important information of general biodiversity in studies of logging and oil palm

Data Descriptor: Global terrestrial Human Footprint maps for 1993 and 2009

Remotely-sensed and bottom-up survey information were compiled on eight variables measuring the direct and indirect human pressures on the environment globally in 1993 and 2009. This represents not only the most current information of its type, but also the first temporally-consistent set of Human Footprint maps. Data on human pressures were acquired or developed for: 1) built environments, 2) population density, 3) electric infrastructure, 4) crop lands, 5) pasture lands, 6) roads, 7) railways, and 8) navigable waterways. Pressures were then overlaid to create the standardized Human Footprint maps for all non-Antarctic land areas. A validation analysis using scored pressures from 3114 × 1 km2 random sample plots revealed strong agreement with the Human Footprint maps.We anticipate that the Human Footprint maps will find a range of uses as proxies for human disturbance of natural systems. The updated maps should provide an increased understanding of the human pressures that drive macro-ecological patterns, as well as for tracking environmental change and informing conservation science and application