Journal ArticleDOI
Introduced Predators Transform Subarctic Islands from Grassland to Tundra
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TLDR
It is shown that the introduction of arctic foxes to the Aleutian archipelago induced strong shifts in plant productivity and community structure via a previously unknown pathway.Abstract:
Top predators often have powerful direct effects on prey populations, but whether these direct effects propagate to the base of terrestrial food webs is debated. There are few examples of trophic cascades strong enough to alter the abundance and composition of entire plant communities. We show that the introduction of arctic foxes (Alopex lagopus) to the Aleutian archipelago induced strong shifts in plant productivity and community structure via a previously unknown pathway. By preying on seabirds, foxes reduced nutrient transport from ocean to land, affecting soil fertility and transforming grasslands to dwarf shrub/forb-dominated ecosystems.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth
James A. Estes,John Terborgh,Justin S. Brashares,Mary E. Power,Joel Berger,William J. Bond,Stephen R. Carpenter,Timothy E. Essington,Robert D. Holt,Jeremy B. C. Jackson,Robert J. Marquis,Lauri Oksanen,Tarja Oksanen,Robert T. Paine,Ellen K. Pikitch,William J. Ripple,Stuart A. Sandin,Marten Scheffer,Thomas W. Schoener,Jonathan B. Shurin,Anthony R. E. Sinclair,Michael E. Soulé,Risto Virtanen,David A. Wardle +23 more
TL;DR: This empirical work supports long-standing theory about the role of top-down forcing in ecosystems but also highlights the unanticipated impacts of trophic cascades on processes as diverse as the dynamics of disease, wildfire, carbon sequestration, invasive species, and biogeochemical cycles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Impacts of biological invasions: what's what and the way forward
Daniel Simberloff,Jean-Louis Martin,Piero Genovesi,Virginie Maris,David A. Wardle,James Aronson,James Aronson,Franck Courchamp,Bella S. Galil,Emili García-Berthou,Michel Pascal,Petr Pyšek,Petr Pyšek,Ronaldo Sousa,Ronaldo Sousa,Eric Tabacchi,Montserrat Vilà +16 more
TL;DR: Recent progress in understanding invasion impacts and management is highlighted, and the challenges that the discipline faces in its science and interactions with society are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecological impacts of invasive alien plants: a meta-analysis of their effects on species, communities and ecosystems
Montserrat Vilà,José L. Espinar,Martin Hejda,Philip E. Hulme,Vojtěch Jarošík,Vojtěch Jarošík,John L. Maron,Jan Pergl,Jan Pergl,Urs Schaffner,Yan Sun,Petr Pyšek,Petr Pyšek +12 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a global meta-analysis of 199 articles reporting 1041 field studies that in total describe the impacts of 135 alien plant taxa on resident species, communities and ecosystems.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecosystem Consequences of Biological Invasions
TL;DR: In this article, a variety of interacting, mutually reinforcing mechanistic pathways, including species' resource acquisition traits; population densities; ability to engineer changes to physical environmental conditions; effects on disturbance, especially fire; regimes; the ability to structure habitat for other species; and their impact on food webs, are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Increasing awareness of avian ecological function.
TL;DR: The ecological functions of birds are reviewed, they are linked to ecosystem services and research priorities for understanding avian contributions to ecosystem functioning are outlined.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Community Structure, Population Control, and Competition
TL;DR: Populations of producers, carnivores, and decomposers are limited by their respective resources in the classical density-dependent fashion and interspecific competition must necessarily exist among the members of each of these three trophic levels.
Journal ArticleDOI
Stable Isotopes in Plant Ecology
TL;DR: How isotope measurements associated with the critical plant resources carbon, water, and nitrogen have helped deepen the understanding of plant-resource acquisition, plant interactions with other organisms, and the role of plants in ecosystem studies is reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Responses of Arctic Tundra to Experimental and Observed Changes in Climate
TL;DR: In this article, the authors manipulated light, temperature, and nutrients in moist tussock tundra near Toolik Lake, Alaska to determine how global changes in these parameters might affect community and ecosystem processes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecological Meltdown in Predator-Free Forest Fragments
John Terborgh,Lawrence Lopez,Percy Nuñez,Madhu Rao,Madhu Rao,Ghazala Shahabuddin,Gabriela Orihuela,Mailen Riveros,Rafael Ascanio,Greg H. Adler,Thomas D. Lambert,Luis Balbas +11 more
TL;DR: The densities of seedlings and saplings of canopy trees are severely reduced on herbivore-affected islands, providing evidence of a trophic cascade unleashed in the absence of top-down regulation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Trophic cascades revealed in diverse ecosystems.
TL;DR: Analyses of the extirpation of large animals reveal loss of cascades, and the potential of conservation to restore not only predator populations but also the ecosystem-level effects that ramify from their presence is revealed.
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