Publications related to Latitudinal gradients in species diversity

Use of an unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicle for acoustic sensing in freshwater ecosystems

Freshwater ecosystems are endangered, underfunded and understudied, making new methods such as passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) essential for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of data collection. However, many challenges are still to be addressed ...

Wiley2023

Fish Diversity in Relation to Littoral Habitats in Three Basins of Lake Kivu (East Africa)

Alfred Johny Wüest

In total, 28 of the 29 fish species reported from the Lake Kivu basin occur in the littoral zone of the lake, but information about their structure, occurrence, and the habitats affecting their distribution is largely lacking. The lake's inshore area is po ...

MDPI2023

Homogeneous Environmental Selection Structures the Bacterial Communities of Benthic Biofilms in Proglacial Floodplain Streams

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Leïla Ezzat, Massimo Bourquin, Jade Brandani, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis

Streams draining proglacial floodplains harbor benthic biofilms comprised of diverse microbial communities. These high-mountain ecosystems are rapidly changing with climate warming, and it is therefore critical to better understand the mechanisms underlyin ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Interactions between beech and oak seedlings can modify the effects of hotter droughts and the onset of hydraulic failure

Charlotte Grossiord, Eugénie Isabelle Mas, Hervé Cochard, Janisse Deluigi, Margaux Clara Lou Didion-Gency, Fernando Valladares

center dot Mixing species with contrasting resource use strategies could reduce forest vulnerability to extreme events. Yet, how species diversity affects seedling hydraulic responses to heat and drought, including mortality risk, is largely unknown. Using ...

Wiley2023

Aerobiology over the Southern Ocean – implications for bacterial colonization of Antarctica

Julia Schmale

Parts of the Antarctic are experiencing dramatic ecosystem change due to rapid and record warming, which may weaken biogeographic boundaries and dispersal barriers, increasing the risks of biological invasions. In this study, we collected air samples from ...

2022

Both diversity and functional composition affect productivity and water use efficiency in experimental temperate grasslands

Charlotte Grossiord, Margaux Clara Lou Didion-Gency

Many experiments have shown that biodiversity promotes ecosystem functioning and stability and that this relationship varies with resource availability. However, we still have a poor understanding of the underlying physiological and ecological mechanisms d ...

WILEY2021

Mycobacterium leprae diversity and population dynamics in medieval Europe from novel ancient genomes

Stewart Cole, Charlotte Avanzi, Philippe Busso

Background Hansen's disease (leprosy), widespread in medieval Europe, is today mainly prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions with around 200,000 new cases reported annually. Despite its long history and appearance in historical records, its origins ...

BMC2021

Edge influence on understorey plant communities depends on forest management

Matteo Tolosano

Questions Does the influence of forest edges on plant species richness and composition depend on forest management? Do forest specialists and generalists show contrasting patterns? ...

WILEY2020

Global radiation in a rare biosphere soil diatom

Tyler Joe Kohler

Soil micro-organisms drive the global carbon and nutrient cycles that underlie essential ecosystem functions. Yet, we are only beginning to grasp the drivers of terrestrial microbial diversity and biogeography, which presents a substantial barrier to under ...

Nature Research2020

Evolving biodiversity patterns in changing river networks

Andrea Rinaldo, Enrico Bertuzzo

Biodiversity patterns are governed by landscape structure and dispersal strategies of residing organisms. Landscape, however, changes, and dispersal strategies evolve with it. It is unclear how these biological and geomorphological changes interplay to aff ...

2019

Contrasting processes drive alpha and beta taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of orthopteran communities in grasslands

François Gillet, Bertrand Fournier

Taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversities can respond differently to biotic and abiotic filters. However, biodiversity management tends to focus on a single index, generally taxonomic diversity, assuming a strong positive correlation among biodive ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Disturbance-grazer-vegetation interactions maintain habitat diversity in mountain pasture-woodlands

Alexandre Buttler, François Gillet, Alexander Ludwig Johannes Peringer

Low-intensity livestock grazing is a widespread management tool in order to maintain habitat diversity in mountain pasture-woodlands for nature conservation purposes. Historical photographs indicate that forest disturbance significantly contributed to fore ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Covariations in ecological scaling laws fostered by community dynamics

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Silvia Zaoli, Amos Maritan

Scaling laws in ecology, intended both as functional relationships among ecologically relevant quantities and the probability distributions that characterize their occurrence, have long attracted the interest of empiricists and theoreticians. Empirical evi ...

2017

SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF THE HYDROMORPHOLOGICAL INDEX OF DIVERSITY USING NUMERICAL GENERATED DATA

Anton Schleiss, Severin Stähly, Pierre Bourqui, Christopher Robinson

River restoration has become a priority goal in many countries. The interest in rivers as valuable habitats for floral and faunal diversity and as an ecosystem with important functions has increased. For evaluating the structural changes from a river resto ...

2017

Experimental evidence for strong stabilizing forces at high functional diversity of aquatic microbial communities

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Francesco Carrara, Florian Altermatt

Unveiling the mechanisms that promote coexistence in biological communities is a fundamental problem in ecology. Stable coexistence of many species is commonly observed in natural communities. Most of these natural communities, however, are composed of spe ...

Ecological Soc Amer2015

Coexistence of specialist and generalist species is shaped by dispersal and environmental factors

Séverine Vuilleumier Varisco

Disentangling the mechanisms mediating the coexistence of habitat specialists and generalists has been a long-standing subject of investigation. However, the roles of species traits and environmental and spatial factors have not been assessed in a unifying ...

2014

Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Dendritic Metacommunities

Francesco Carrara

The present thesis deals with the understanding of the origins and the mechanisms of maintenance of biodiversity in natural landscapes, in particular by identifying key processes that define large-scale patterns of abundance and diversity. Biological commu ...

EPFL2013

Vegetation-environment relationships in alpine mires of the West Carpathians and the Alps

Lucia Sekulova

QuestionsHow do two distant mountain ranges differ in their vegetation-environment relationships, overall species composition and its variability and species richness of vascular plants and bryophytes in alpine fens and bogs? Is the floristic difference co ...

Wiley-Blackwell2013

How do subordinate and dominant species in semi-natural mountain grasslands relate to productivity and land-use change?

Alexandre Buttler, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Thomas Spiegelberger

Changes in agricultural practices of semi-natural mountain grasslands are expected to modify plant community structure and shift dominance patterns. Using vegetation surveys of 11 sites in semi-natural grasslands of the Swiss Jura and Swiss and French Alps ...

Elsevier Gmbh, Urban & Fischer Verlag2013

Subalpine Pasture-Woodlands in a Changing Climate : the Role of Land Use Type in Ecosystem Resistance to Simulated Climate Change

Konstantin Svetlozarov Gavazov

Climate change in temperate mountain systems and associated increase in temperature and decrease in precipitation are expected to have strong implications for vegetation productivity, species diversity and carbon turnover in subalpine grasslands. Little is ...

EPFL2013