Showing papers in "Basic and Applied Ecology in 2017"

TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose that the loss of ecosystem services due to landscape simplification can only be addressed by a concerted effort to fundamentally redesign agricultural landscapes, which will require that scientists work with stakeholders to determine the mix of desired ecosystem services, evaluate current landscape structure in light of those goals and implement targeted modifications to achieve them.

TL;DR: The results from the Jena Experiment provide further evidence that diversity begets stability, for example stability against invasion of plant species, but unexpectedly some results also suggested the opposite, e.g. when plant communities experience severe perturbations or elevated resource availability.

TL;DR: The results suggest that current knowledge on the ES provided by insects is relatively scarce and biased, and gaps in the least-studied functional and taxonomic groups are shown.

TL;DR: In this paper, a quantitative exploration of the link between deforested habitats and vector-borne diseases was conducted, which revealed that about half of the species (529%) were associated with deforestized habitats and a much larger percentage (565%) were confirmed vectors of human pathogens.

TL;DR: The concept of Integrated Crop Pollination is introduced as a unifying theme under which various strategies supporting crop pollination can be developed, coordinated, and delivered to growers and their advisors.

TL;DR: Overall, higher plant species richness supported more diverse and complex arthropod communities and this pattern was consistent across multiple years, and inconsistencies between predictions based on classic hypotheses of associational effects and observed relationships between plantspecies richness andArthropod diversity likely reflect the influence of multi-trophic community dynamics and species functional trait distributions.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how ungulate feeding affects the movement behavior of a non-target species, the brown bear ( Ursus arctos ), and found that the bears seemed to rely on spatial memory and patrol known sites, independent of whether food was available at the feeding sites.

TL;DR: It is suggested that quasi-experimental methods offer great potential for investigating many phenomena and processes in ecological and coupled human-natural systems and policy recommendations by ecologists may be more valuable when based on these methods.

TL;DR: This paper performed a systematic review of twelve peer-reviewed journals in which ecologists and conservation biologists commonly publish and found a clear underrepresentation of railway studies despite the potential negative ecological effects associated with this important anthropogenic feature.

TL;DR: It is concluded that species observations in citizen science projects can provide accurate predictions of species realized distributions, however, efforts should be made to identify the conditions under which these data are more likely to provide reliable representations of the species niches.

TL;DR: In this article, the influence of behavioural state (movement vs other behaviours), sex, and algorithms, namely least cost path and circuit theory, on the identification of structural corridors was investigated.

TL;DR: The result supports the theory that the presence of semi-natural habitats, in the agricultural landscape benefits both public interest in biodiversity conservation and farmers' interest in crop pollination.

TL;DR: Standardising the number of pollinators rather than the time to observe (standardised pollinator timing approach: time to n -pollinator visits) may provide more consistent accurate assessments of visitation rate, especially for studies that use gradients in visitation rates to examine the contribution of pollinator to crop pollination.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the influence of small isolated ponds which lie within arable fields close to vegetation structures on the flight and foraging activity of bats and compared species-specific activity measures between forest edges and linear structures such as hedgerows, highlighting the speciesspecific and dynamic use of forest and hedgerow or tree line edges by bats and their importance for different bat species in the agricultural landscape.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used hunters' wildlife survey data from 455 municipalities and two years (2014-2015) and data from the official wolf monitoring (557 confirmed wolf presences and 500 background points) collected between 2012-2015, modelled using generalized additive models with respect to human population density, road density, forest cover and roe deer density.

TL;DR: Foraging behaviour may not generally be a good proxy for the quality of floral resources for offspring production, but resources collected from one plant species may influence the usefulness of resources from another plant species, and Bees may overcome potentially deleterious effects of the suboptimal resources by mixing low- and high-quality resources.

TL;DR: It is proposed that a systematic, low-dimensional representation of environmental space with building blocks adopted from gradient, niche, metapopulation and assembly theory may unite old and new aspects of biodiversity theory and improve the understanding of variation in terrestrial biodiversity.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted camera trap surveys in the North Selangor Peat Swamp Forest (NSPSF), the last remaining area of peat swamp forest on the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia, and measured vegetation structure and landscape metrics to investigate the relationship between these factors and mammal richness.

TL;DR: Evidence is provided for the link between increased diversity and function in real crop systems, highlighting the risks of replacing all pollinators with managed alternatives and suggesting that diversity can reduce the risk of pollination service shortfalls.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the impact of abandonment of traditional management of mesic mountain grasslands on species composition and a decrease in the biodiversity of mountain mesic meadows, and confirmed the hypothesis that various ways of extensive management have an influence on species richness.

TL;DR: The ability to rapidly assess stigmatic pollen deposition of a broad range of insects using the active approach can greatly assist assessments of pollinator contribution within plant pollinator assemblages.

TL;DR: Findings support the novel theory that positive non-trophic interactions are a critical form of plant–animal interactions in addition to consumption and are important for conserving animal species in arid ecosystems.

TL;DR: It is observed that the seasonal survey process during recession periods follow the seasonal pattern of gregarious invasions, and it is argued that this is the result of climatic conditions related to the oscillation of the intertropical convergence zone.

TL;DR: It is concluded that supporting invertebrate biodiversity with alternative mowing regimes has no detrimental effects on the vascular plants and mosses, while the reduced forage quality calls for additional financial compensation of the farmers adopting these agri-environment schemes.

TL;DR: High abundance of invasive bumble bees can reduce resources for managed honey bees by robbing flower buds, revealing a novel, negative impact of bumble bee invasions that could potentially affect honey production.

TL;DR: The capacity of deep-tunnelling dung beetles to transform the soil profile is examined along with their effects on pasture production and the flow of nutrients from dung on pasture, and the rationale for introducing additional species to Australia is considered.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors summarize the deficits and challenges in the relationship between science and practice in conservation and outline approaches to achieving more effective knowledge exchange and collaboration at the interface between both.

TL;DR: It is projected that reducing beef production by half could significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions and the maize sowing hectares destined for feed, while simultaneously releasing maize for human consumption, and consuming insect-based protein could reduce pollution problems by decreasing insecticide use.

TL;DR: It is suggested that only a diverse mix of agricultural land uses will provide high levels of predators from different functional groups, throughout the growing season.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors synthesize results of studies carried out over the past decade in rice fields of southern Brazil to identify management practices that enhance biodiversity levels in agricultural matrices and provide direction to environmentallyoriented legislators for implementing general strategies for rice farmers to supplement aquatic diversity of natural wetlands.