Jul 2025

• Advisory Board and Contents

TrendsTalk

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  Disability in ecology and evolution

  • Abdel H. Halloway,
  • Niki Rust,
  • Caroline Deimel,
  • Cliodhna Quickley,
  • Anon

  In this TrendsTalk series ‘Disability in ecology and evolution’ in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, we hear from people about their experiences being disabled in ecology and evolution. We are asking ecologists and evolutionary biologists with disabilities what the community could do to make our field more inclusive – these changes can be very practical things (e.g., large fonts), they could be institutional, or involve people’s attitudes and beliefs. If you identify as disabled or have a chronic condition, and would like to share your thoughts, please get in touch – [email protected] , we would love to hear from you.

Forums

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  Polar ectotherms more vulnerable to warming than expected

  • Simon Bahrndorff,
  • Peter Convey,
  • Steven L. Chown,
  • Jesper Givskov Sørensen

  Polar regions are heavily impacted by climate change. Yet, vulnerability assessments suggest little concern about heat-related challenges for polar terrestrial ectotherms. These conclusions are based, however, on assumptions and extrapolation from temperate regions; the limited data available suggest that polar ectotherms are more sensitive to warming than previously recognized.
• 

  Making sense of (sublinear) density dependence

  • Andrew D. Letten

  Sublinear density dependence has been reported in numerous empirical studies and yet it is seemingly incompatible with most resource-explicit competition models. Reconciling this disconnect will either necessitate substantive revision of empirical methods or the assumptions of resource competition theory, but it also presents opportunities for original research with wide-ranging implications.
• 

  Automated biodiversity research critically requires multidisciplinary expertise

  • Pedro Cardoso,
  • Vasco Branco,
  • Luís Correia,
  • Brent C. Emerson,
  • Veronika N. Laine,
  • Manuel Lopes

  Data-driven computational methods in taxonomy, ecology, and conservation biology are revolutionising these disciplines, from data collection to analysis and interpretation. However, effective automation requires both critical thinking about the limitations of the data and methods, and thorough training and validation by experts, supported by strong interdisciplinary collaboration.

Opinions

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  Reimagining species on the move across space and time

  • Alexa L. Fredston,
  • Morgan W. Tingley,
  • Montague H.C. Neate-Clegg,
  • Luke J. Evans,
  • Laura H. Antão,
  • Natalie C. Ban,
  • I-Ching Chen,
  • Yi-Wen Chen,
  • Lise Comte,
  • David P. Edwards,
  • Birgitta Evengard,
  • Belen Fadrique,
  • Sophie H. Falkeis,
  • Robert Guralnick,
  • David H. Klinges,
  • Jonas J. Lembrechts,
  • Jonathan Lenoir,
  • Juliano Palacios-Abrantes,
  • Aníbal Pauchard,
  • Gretta Pecl,
  • Malin L. Pinsky,
  • Rebecca A. Senior,
  • Jennifer E. Smith,
  • Lydia G. Soifer,
  • Jennifer M. Sunday,
  • Ken D. Tape,
  • Peter Washam,
  • Brett R. Scheffers

  Open Access

  Climate change is already leaving a broad footprint of impacts on biodiversity, from an individual caterpillar emerging earlier in spring to dominant plant communities migrating poleward. Despite the various modes of how species are on the move, we primarily document shifting species along only one gradient (e.g., latitude or phenology) and along one dimension (space or time). In this opinion article we present a unifying framework for integrating the study of species on the move over space and time and from micro to macro scales. Future conservation planning and natural resource management will depend on our ability to use this framework to improve understanding, attribution, and prediction of species on the move.
• 

  Harnessing traits to predict economic impacts from biological invasions

  • Ross N. Cuthbert,
  • Thomas W. Bodey,
  • Elizabeta Briski,
  • Isabella Capellini,
  • Jaimie T.A. Dick,
  • Melina Kourantidou,
  • Anthony Ricciardi,
  • Daniel Pincheira-Donoso

  Open Access

  Biological invasions stand among the main anthropogenic threats to ecosystems globally while causing multitrillion-dollar impacts. Surprisingly, while trait-based frameworks have been designed to predict invasion success and invader ecological impacts, no such approaches exist to understand and predict economic impacts. We propose the first such framework by bridging the evolutionary biology of traits and the escalation of invasion costs. Previously acquired traits can benefit performance, and their rapid change could exacerbate impacts through adaptive and non-adaptive processes during invasion, such as natural selection, genetic drift, or phenotypic plasticity. Emerging evidence suggests that some organismal traits can determine economic impact magnitudes. We discuss new transdisciplinary avenues that can inform cost forecasting and management responses for current and future biological invasions.
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  Maintaining robust terrestrial ecological monitoring amid technological advancements

  • Jessie C. Buettel,
  • David B. Lindenmayer,
  • Ben C. Scheele,
  • Maldwyn J. Evans

  Long-term terrestrial biodiversity monitoring is crucial for understanding species and ecosystem responses to global change, yet it requires significant investment. Technological advancements offer opportunities for more efficient, scalable, and cost-effective monitoring, but transitioning to new methods presents significant risks to data integrity. Guidance for researchers and practitioners to manage these transitions, therefore, is critical. We present a novel seven-step framework and decision-making tool to guide the integration of new methods into established monitoring programs. The framework includes compatibility assessment, concurrent method cross-validation, and ongoing review, balancing the benefits of new technologies with the need to maintain dataset integrity. Our framework can help to ensure that new methods enhance the value and robustness of long-term biodiversity datasets while maintaining monitoring continuity.
• Featured Article
  

  Can plants keep up with fire regime changes through evolution?

  • Luke T. Kelly,
  • Ary A. Hoffmann,
  • Craig R. Nitschke,
  • Juli G. Pausas

  Patterns of fire are rapidly changing across the globe and causing mismatches between plants and their environment. These mismatches have ecological and evolutionary consequences, but the latter are often overlooked. A critical question is whether plant populations can evolve quickly enough to keep up with changing fire regimes. Fire-related traits, such as canopy seed storage with fire-stimulated seed release, vary within species and can enhance fitness and be heritable – the preconditions for adaptive evolution. Here, we develop a framework that recognizes mismatches between traits and fire based on variation within and among conspecific populations and that opens new ways of forecasting environmental changes and conserving plants. Advances in genomics enable evolutionary potential to be estimated even in wild, long-lived plants.

Reviews

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  Plant–soil microbial interactions as modulators of species coexistence and productivity

  • Nianxun Xi,
  • Jonathan R. De Long,
  • John Davison,
  • Paul Kardol,
  • Leslie E. Forero,
  • Martin Zobel,
  • Marina Semchenko

  Plant coexistence and diversity–productivity relationships are often studied separately, yet both are shaped by the same biotic interactions. Here we focus on how host-specificity among soil pathogens and mutualists alters niche and fitness differences among plant species, subsequently modifying biodiversity effects on productivity. Specialist pathogens can generate niche differences through density-dependent processes, thereby stabilizing plant coexistence and enhancing complementarity effects. Specialist mutualists can instead destabilize coexistence and lead to variable effects on productivity. The effects of generalist microbes are less predictable, depending on relationships between plant traits determining microbial interactions (e.g., defense traits) and those determining competitive ability and biomass production. This review underscores the significance of plant–microbial interactions in bridging the mechanisms underlying species coexistence and biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships.
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  The progressive evolution of cold-adapted species

  • John R. Stewart,
  • Inger G. Alsos,
  • Antony G. Brown,
  • Love Dalén,
  • Peter D. Heintzman

  Open Access

  The evolution of cold-adapted terrestrial species underwent two main phases. First, the genera of cold-adapted taxa appeared during the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene. The modern day and Late Pleistocene cold-adapted species then arose during and after the Middle Pleistocene Transition. These species evolved through one or more of the following processes: out of the temperate zone, evolving in situ, or through montane preadaptation. Palaeogenetic studies are greatly contributing to our understanding of the timings and modes of evolution of cold-adapted species as well as when their specialised traits evolved. The evolution of polar plant and beetle species is claimed to show greater stasis than that of vertebrates, but could instead reflect morphological conservatism that can be tested with palaeogenetics.
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  No species left behind: borrowing strength to map data-deficient species

  • Shubhi Sharma,
  • Kevin Winner,
  • Laura J. Pollock,
  • James T. Thorson,
  • Jussi Mäkinen,
  • Cory Merow,
  • Eric J. Pedersen,
  • Kalkidan F. Chefira,
  • Julia M. Portmann,
  • Fabiola Iannarilli,
  • Sara Beery,
  • Riccardo de Lutio,
  • Walter Jetz

  Open Access

  We lack the data needed to detect and understand biodiversity change for most species, despite some species having millions of observations. This unequal data coverage impedes conservation planning and our understanding of biodiversity patterns. The ‘borrowing strength’ approach leverages data-rich species to improve predictions for data-deficient species. We review multi- and joint-species distribution models that incorporate traits and phylogenies (termed ‘ancillary information’) and highlight how they could improve data-deficient spatial predictions. When ancillary information is informative of niche similarity, it has immense potential to improve estimates for data-deficient species distributions and address the Wallacean shortfall. While no statistical method can replace data-collection efforts, approaches discussed in this review offer an important contribution toward closing existing data gaps.

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