21 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Ned J H Wontner, Matthew Spencer
The super-organismal view of ecosystems has largely been superseded by the individualistic view. One consequence of the dominance of the individualistic view is that many modern ecologists treat ecosystems as nothing more than vectors of relative abundances, ignoring the potentially important idea that an understanding…
Florian D. Schneider, Ulrich Brose, Björn C. Rall, Christian Guill
Species diversity is changing globally and locally, but the complexity of ecological communities hampers a general understanding of the consequences of animal species loss on ecosystem functioning. High animal diversity increases complementarity of herbivores but also increases feeding rates within the consumer guild.…
Maximilien Cosme, Colin Thomas, Cédric Gaucherel, Tomas Veloz
Ecosystem modeling is a complex and multidisciplinary modeling problem which emerged in the 1950s. It takes advantage of the computational turn in sciences to better understand anthropogenic impacts and improve ecosystem management. For that purpose, ecosystem simulation models based on difference or differential…
Matthew Spencer
In abstract terms, ecosystem ecology is about determining when two ecosystems, superficially different, are alike in some deeper way. An external observer can choose any ecosystem property as being important. In contrast, two ecosystems are equivalent from the point of view of the organisms they contain if and only if…
Yong‐Guan Zhu, Dong Zhu, Matthias C. Rillig, Yunfeng Yang + 5 more
'Haiyan Chu' 'Qing‐Lin Chen' 'Josep Penuelas' 'Hui‐Ling Cui' 'Michael Gillings'] Title: Abstract The microbiome contributes to multiple ecosystem functions and services through its interactions with a complex environment and other organisms. To date, however, most microbiome studies have been carried out on individual…
Li Xu, Feng Zhang, Kun Zhang, Erkang Wang + 2 more
'Antoni Margalida'] The species in ecosystems are mutually interacting and self sustainable stable for a certain period. Stability and dynamics are crucial for understanding the structure and the function of ecosystems. We developed a potential and flux landscape theory of ecosystems to address these issues. We show…
H Charles J Godfray, Robert M May
Einstein famously said that the ‘most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible’ . Perhaps the key question in ecology today is the degree to which the dynamics of ecological communities are comprehensible. All ecological communities are made up of large numbers of species that interact in…
Kun Wang, Xiajie Zhai
Background Humans have dramatically changed natural ecosystems around the world as their capacity to manage their environment for multiple uses has evolved in step with agricultural, industrial and green revolutions. Numerous natural ecosystems have been replaced by various artificial or semi-artificial ecosystems, the…
Cesar O. Flores, Susanne Kortsch, Derek Tittensor, Mike Harfoot + 1 more
Food webs have been intensively studied throughout modern ecology, using empirical evidence, statistics and modelling tools to search for consistent patterns, underlying commonalities, and variations between food webs and ecosystems. However, with few exceptions, the modelling approaches have not been based on the…
Jan J. Kuiper, Bob W. Kooi, Garry D. Peterson, Wolf M. Mooij
Ecologists are challenged by the need to bridge and synthesize different approaches and theories to obtain a coherent understanding of ecosystems in a changing world. Both food web theory and regime shift theory shine light on mechanisms that confer stability to ecosystems, but from a different angle. Empirical food…
Huseyin Coskun
The system decomposition theory has recently been developed for the dynamic analysis of nonlinear compartmental systems. The application of this theory to the ecosystem analysis has also been introduced in a separate article. Based on this methodology, multiple new dynamic ecological system measures and indices of…
Emanuel A. Fronhofer, Dov Corenblit, Jhelam N. Deshpande, Lynn Govaert + 4 more
'Lynn Govaert' 'Philippe Huneman' 'Frédérique Viard' 'Philippe Jarne' 'Sara Puijalon'] - 1. ISEM, Universit´e de Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, EPHE, Montpellier, France - 2. Universit´e Clermont Auvergne, CNRS, GEOLAB F-63000 Clermont-Ferrand, France - 3. CNRS, Laboratoire ´ecologie fonctionnelle et environnement…
Tânia Tomé, Mário J. de Oliveira
We investigate the thermodynamics as well as the population dynamics of ecosystems based on a stochastic approach in which the number of individuals of the several species of the ecosystem are treated as stochastic variables. The several species are connected by feeding relationships that are understood as…
Michael H. Cortez, Swati Patel, Sebastian J. Schreiber
We develop a novel method to identify how ecological, evolutionary, and eco-evolutionary feedbacks influence system stability. Our method determines how system stability is influenced by the stabilities of a focal subsystem (i.e., the dynamics of a subset of variables of a system), its complementary subsystem, and…
Lynn Govaert, Emanuel A. Fronhofer, Sébastien Lion, Christophe Eizaguirre + 10 more
'Christophe Eizaguirre' 'Dries Bonte' 'Martijn Egas' 'Andrew P. Hendry' 'Ayana de Brito Martins' 'Carlos J. Melián' 'Joost A. M. Raeymaekers' 'Irja I. Ratikainen' 'Bernt‐Erik Sæther' 'Jennifer A. Schweitzer' 'Blake Matthews'] - 1 Laboratory of Aquatic Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, KU Leuven, Deberiotstraat 32…
Pierre Quévreux, Sébastien Barot, Élisa Thébault
Nutrient cycling is fundamental to ecosystem functioning. Despite recent major advances in the understanding of complex food web dynamics, food web models have so far generally ignored nutrient cycling. However, nutrient cycling is expected to strongly impact food web stability and functioning. To make up for this gap…
Søren Nors Nielsen, Felix Müller, Joao Carlos Marques, Simone Bastianoni + 1 more
'Simone Bastianoni' 'Sven Erik Jørgensen'] How to predict the evolution of ecosystems is one of the numerous questions asked of ecologists by managers and politicians. To answer this we will need to give a scientific definition to concepts like sustainability, integrity, resilience and ecosystem health. This is not an…
Authors not listed
Conservation chemistry is an emerging discipline focused on preventing the loss of biodiversity through molecular-level insight and intervention. As the planet enters a mass extinction event – driven by pollution, habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, overharvesting, and disease – chemical sciences offer…
Authors not listed
Nitrogen fixation plays a critical role in enhancing carbon sequestration, particularly in terrestrial ecosystems where plant productivity and microbial processes are tightly linked to nitrogen availability. Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), carried out by free-living and symbiotic microorganisms such as Rhizobium…
Authors not listed
Heterotrophic protists can be considered the dark matter of microbial communities in engineered water systems. They are ubiquitous and ecologically significant, yet remain largely overlooked. Although a growing body of research demonstrates their pivotal roles (e.g., predation, symbiosis, and nutrient cycling) in…
Authors not listed
Time series data of atmospheric CO2 levels is highly autocorrelated with multiple timescale variations. In recent years, the data shows a persistent increase in these levels. To understand this persistence, we use enzyme activity and biological growth as analogous phenomena and draw comparisons with the atmospheric CO2…