Paper suggestions for the month of May.



From David:

Lawson, C. R., Vindenes, Y., Bailey, L., van de Pol, M. (2015), Environmental variation and population responses to global change. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12437

A new review by Lawson et al. (2015) in Ecology Letters explores the importance of environmental variation in population responses to environmental change. They show that increasing environmental variance can have both positive and negative effects on long-term population growth rates. Importantly, they also demonstrate that omitting environmental variance from population models reduces their ability to predict species' responses to changes in mean conditions. A species might be able to persist when only the mean or variance changes, but is unable to cope with a simultaneous change in both. The authors conclude that accurate predictions of species' responses to environmental change will require a better mechanistic understanding of population growth and vital rate responses to the environment.

Recently at a lab meeting the suggestion that it would be nice to see what other members of the lab are reading came up. We don't have a formal journal reading club at CEG so a post like this is one way we can share interesting papers or ideas outside of lab meetings and tearoom chat. So here are a few papers people submitted that they thought were worth reading...

From Phil:

Thomas CD (2013) Local diversity stays about the same, regional diversity increases, and global diversity declines. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110(48):19187–19188. 

It’s ostensibly a commentary on a paper [Vellend M, et al. (2013) Global meta-analysis reveals no net change in local-scale plant biodiversity over time. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110:19456–19459] – but it’s much more far-reaching than that.  The Vellend paper showed that long-term monitoring of plant species richness, from 168 studies around the world, revealed no systematic change in that measure of diversity.  Thomas’ commentary is thought-provoking, requiring that we question the processes that cause richness to change, the link between richness and ecosystem services, the value of richness as a metric of biodiversity, and the representativeness of long-term monitoring sites.


From Teegan: 

Haddaway, N.R. 2014. Maximizing Legacy and Impact of Primary Research: A Call for Better Reporting of Results. Ambio, pp. 703–706.

This paper resonated with me because I am currently working on a meta-analysis and have been shocked (and sometimes horrified) by how poorly results are often presented in ecological literature.  Although the paper states nothing new for those familiar with meta-analyses it is a good call for all scientists to consider standards for reporting results. The author points out that “primary research articles should report three key measures to facilitate their inclusion in a meta-analysis: mean effect size, sample size, and measure of variability”. Understanding the basics of meta-analyses can increase standards for data reporting in primary studies so that the results can be properly interpreted and also included in subsequent research syntheses (i.e. meta-analyses, technical reports, policy, etc.). Reporting sufficient results will ‘maximize the legacy of your research’ and increase your citation count. It is a quick, 2.5 page perspective piece. 


From Lizzie:

Trewavas, A. (2009) What is plant behaviour?. Plant, Cell & Environment, 32: 606–616. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3040.2009.01929.x

This paper called ‘What is plant behaviour?’ by Trewavas, 2009, is one of the best I have read recently which defends the phenomenon of plants being capable of behaviour in a similar way to animals. Reading this paper has allowed me to re-evaluate my own research on seed development in bluebells, and because of this I have come to the conclusion that I am studying plant behaviour, not just plant ecology! I particularly like this extract from the paper and feel it sums it up nicely: ‘McDougall (1924) described behaviour in the following way. Animals are behaving if they actively resist the push and pull of the environment, exhibit persistence of activity independently of the impression (signal) that may have initiated it and exhibit variation in the direction of persistent movements. This definition would characterize plant behaviour, too.’ I hope that others will read this paper and be persuaded to agree that although plants behave in different ways and at different speeds than we are used to studying, does not mean they do not exhibit behaviours.


From Pen:

Sauermann, H., & Franzoni, C. (2015). Crowd science user contribution patterns and their implications. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201408907.

Basically most participants in online citizen science websites only show up once or twice, and never come back again! It sounds pretty grim, but at least there is a small percentage of users who are dedicated, and they make more than 80% of the contributions to the research project. In any case, these citizen science websites at least perform an important educational role. This is obviously important to the camera trap website we're developing, and I feel we still have a looong way to go before we can attract and retain enough dedicated users.

A popular science write up on this article can be found here...


From Naiara:

Gallinat et al. (2015). Trends in Ecology and Evolution. Autumn, the neglected season in climate change research.

Autumn is a relatively neglected season in climate change research in temperate ecosystems, despite its importance on ecological events such as migration, fruit ripening and leaf senescence. Shifts in autumnal phenology can alter species interspecific interactions, which can affect ecological dynamics. Much uncertainty remains of the drivers of these shifts, and how these shifts will manifest at the community and ecosystem level. The authors highlight that this field is wide open for discovery, and that it is a vital missing piece of the “effects of climate change on ecology” puzzle.

A link to a more detailed review of this paper by Naiara can be found here...

I read this paper because phenology (the timing of biological events) is a subject that I am fascinated by. The effects of climate change on spring phenology are well documented. Such effects include the advancement of the timing of budburst, as well as earlier breeding and egg-laying dates. Autumnal phenological events, in contrast, are largely understudied despite their ecological and evolutionary significance.  

Autumn represents the end of the growing and breeding season for temperate species. Changes in autumn phenology, in particular the lengthening of the growing season, can 1) increase the reproductive capacity of species, 2) can increase the net productivity of ecosystems, 3) can exacerbate invasions, and importantly 4) can alter the ecological dynamics of interacting species. 

Synchrony is important for many interspecific interactions, and phenological mismatches are well documented for spring events, for instance, climate change has resulted in asynchrony between flowers and pollinators [1]. Autumnal temporal shifts and the cascading effects of these on ecological systems have been understudied, but are ecologically very interesting. For instance, migratory songbirds rely on fruit consumption during autumn migration, and plants rely on these birds to disperse their seeds. However, if climate change is advancing fruit ripening [2] and delaying songbird departures [3] then this mismatch could have important adverse consequences for both migrants and plant species. 

So why are autumnal phonological events understudied? 

Drivers of autumn phenology are more difficult to disentangle than those of spring phenology. This is because autumnal events cannot be assigned to a single date (such as budburst), instead, events such as leaf senescence are temporally extended and asynchronous, and therefore harder to accurately define and standardize. Progress has been made in understanding the drivers of autumn phenology, despite autumn’s relative neglect. But such drivers are more difficult to predict than those of spring phenology (which is largely related to temperature [2]). Autumnal events are weakly related to temperature, and also related to less predictable factors such as drought and frost events.

Conclusion

Autumn is a relatively neglected season in climate change research in temperate ecosystems, despite its importance on ecological events such as migration, fruit ripening and leaf senescence. Shifts in autumnal phenology can alter species interspecific interactions, which can affect ecological dynamics. Much uncertainty remains of the drivers of these shifts, and how these shifts will manifest at the community and ecosystem level. The authors highlight that this field is wide open for discovery, and that it is a vital missing piece of the “effects of climate change on ecology” puzzle.