Tag: Biodiversity

The projected timing of abrupt ecological disruption from climate change

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Author: Trisos, Christopher H.; Merow, Cory; Pigot, Alex L. Description: As anthropogenic climate change continues the risks to biodiversity will increase over time, with future projections indicating that a potentially catastrophic loss of global biodiversity is on the horizon. However, our understanding of when and how abruptly this climate-driven disruption of biodiversity will occur is limited because biodiversity forecasts typically focus on individual snapshots of the future. Here we use annual projections (from 1850 to 2100) of temperature and precipitation across the ranges of more than 30,000 marine and terrestrial…

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Disturbance, Diversity, and Invasion: Implications for Conservation

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Author: Hobbs, Richard J.; Huenneke, Laura F. Description: Disturbance is an important component of many ecosystems, and variations in disturbance regime can affect ecosystem and community structure and functioning. The “intermediate disturbance hypothesis” suggests that species diversity should be highest at moderate levels of disturbance. However, disturbance is also known to increase the invasibility of communities. Disturbance therefore poses an important problem for conservation management. Here, we review the effects of disturbances such as fire, grazing, soil disturbance and nutrient addition on plant species diversity and invasion with particular emphasis…

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Managing Species Diversity in Tallgrass Prairie: Assumptions and Implications

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Author: Howe, Henry F. Description: Conservation and restoration ecology efforts may conserve or restore a particular image of a community, a variety of plausible images, or maximum biological diversity. The choice is a policy decision that should reflect relevant history and sound science. Here I argue that common methods of conserving and restoring tallgrass prairie have a weak scientific rationale, are not consistent with plausible history, and threaten prairie biodiversity. Dormant-season burns and grazer exclusion are human interventions that may promote artificially consistent dominance of large grasses utilizing the C4…

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Emerging fungal threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health

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Author: Fisher, M.C.; Henk, D.A.; Briggs, C.J.; Brownstein, J.S.; Madoff, L.C.; McCraw, S.L.; Gurr, S.J. Description: The past two decades have seen an increasing number of virulent infectious diseases in natural populations and managed landscapes. In both animals and plants, an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases have recently caused some of the most severe die-offs and extinctions ever witnessed in wild species, and are jeopardizing food security. Human activity is intensifying fungal disease dispersal by modifying natural environments and thus creating new opportunities for evolution. We argue that…

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