Publications related to Ecological niche

At what spatial scale does natural selection operate? Using multiscale frameworks to calibrate the effects of environmental factors across landscape continuums

Patterns in nature arise from processes interacting across a continuum of spatial scales, where new relationships emerge at each level of investigation. These patterns are nested features encompassing fine-scale local patterns, such as topography and geolo ...

EPFL2024

Tree diversity reduces variability in sapling survival under drought

Charlotte Grossiord, Jingjing Liang, Xiaojuan Liu

Enhancing tree diversity may be important to fostering resilience to drought-related climate extremes. So far, little attention has been given to whether tree diversity can increase the survival of trees and reduce its variability in young forest plantatio ...

Wiley2024

Parity in bacterial communities and resistomes: Microplastic and natural organic particles in the Tyrrhenian Sea

Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider, Sylvain Coudret

Petroleum-based microplastic particles (MPs) are carriers of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in aquatic environments, influencing the selection and spread of antimicrobial resistance. This research characterized MP and natural organic particle (NOP) ...

2024

From roots to canopy: Unraveling the influence of species diversity on tree water relations under warmer and drier climates

Eugénie Isabelle Mas

The worsening of drought events with rising air temperature alters tree water relations causing severe hydraulic impairments and widespread forest mortality. Mixing tree species with contrasting hydraulic traits could reduce forest vulnerability to extreme ...

EPFL2024

Industrial Biotechnology Conservation Processes: Similarities with Natural Long-Term Preservation of Biological Organisms

Philippe Abdel Sayed, Corinne Scaletta, Lee Ann Laurent-Applegate, Nathalie Hirt-Burri, Laurent Alexis Clément Vannay, Alexis Laurent

Cryopreservation and lyophilization processes are widely used for conservation purposes in the pharmaceutical, biotechnological, and food industries or in medical transplantation. Such processes deal with extremely low temperatures (e.g., -196 degrees C) a ...

MDPI2023

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

Interspecies interactions determine growth dynamics of biopolymer- degrading populations in microbial communities

Martin Ackermann

Microbial communities perform essential ecosystem functions such as the remineralization of organic carbon that exists as biopolymers. The first step in mineralization is performed by biopolymer degraders, which harbor enzymes that can break down polymers ...

National Academy of Sciences2023

Metabolic influence of core ciliates within the rumen microbiome

Ianina Altshuler, Yu Jiang

Protozoa comprise a major fraction of the microbial biomass in the rumen microbiome, of which the entodiniomorphs (order: Entodiniomorphida) and holotrichs (order: Vestibuliferida) are consistently observed to be dominant across a diverse genetic and geogr ...

2023

Disruption of stem cell niche-confined R-spondin 3 expression leads to impaired hematopoiesis

Freddy Radtke, Ute Koch, Jialin Zhang, Soufiane Boumahdi

Self-renewal and differentiation of stem and progenitor cells are tightly regulated to ensure tissue homeostasis. This regulation is enabled both remotely by systemic circulating cues, such as cytokines and hormones, and locally by various niche-confined f ...

ELSEVIER2023

Social media and deep learning reveal specific cultural preferences for biodiversity

Devis Tuia

Social media has created new opportunities to map cultural ecosystem services (CES) related to biodiversity at large scales. However, using these novel data to understand people's preferences in relation to these CES remains a challenge. To address this, w ...

2023

Benthic Biofilms in Glacier-Fed Streams from Scandinavia to the Himalayas Host Distinct Bacterial Communities Compared with the Streamwater

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Leïla Ezzat, Massimo Bourquin, Matteo Tolosano, Emmy Marie Oppliger, Jade Brandani, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Virginia Tadei, Vincent Henri De Staercke, Tyler Joe Kohler, Michail Styllas, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Martina Andrea Schön

Microbial life in glacier-fed streams (GFSs) is dominated by benthic biofilms which fulfill critical ecosystem processes. However, it remains unclear how the bacterial communities of these biofilms assemble in stream ecosystems characterized by rapid turno ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2022

Regulation of sedimentation rate shapes the evolution of multicellularity in a close unicellular relative of animals

Omaya Pierre Dudin

Significant increases in sedimentation rate accompany the evolution of multicellularity. These increases should lead to rapid changes in ecological distribution, thereby affecting the costs and benefits of multicellularity and its likelihood to evolve. How ...

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE2022

Positive interactions between corals and damselfish increase coral resistance to temperature stress

Leïla Ezzat

By the century's end, many tropical seas will reach temperatures exceeding most coral species' thermal tolerance on an annual basis. The persistence of corals in these regions will, therefore, depend on their abilities to tolerate recurrent thermal stress. ...

WILEY2022

Identification of Allobaculum mucolyticum as a novel human intestinal mucin degrader

Guido Van Mierlo

The human gut microbiota plays a central role in intestinal health and disease. Yet, many of its bacterial constituents are functionally still largely unexplored. A crucial prerequisite for bacterial survival and proliferation is the creation and/or exploi ...

2021

Engineering of ecological niches to create stable artificial consortia for complex biotransformations

Jeremy Luterbacher

The design of controllable artificial microbial consortia has attracted considerable interest in recent years to capitalize on the inherent advantages in comparison to monocultures such as the distribution of the metabolic burden by division of labor, the ...

2020

Earth and field observations underpin metapopulation dynamics in complex landscapes: Near-term study on carabids

Andrea Rinaldo, Damiano Pasetto, Francisco Javier Perez Saez, Jonathan Giezendanner

Understanding risks to biodiversity requires predictions of the spatial distribution of species adapting to changing ecosystems and, to that end, Earth observations integrating field surveys prove essential as they provide key numbers for assessing landsca ...

2020

Key rules of life and the fading cryosphere: impacts in alpine lakes and streams

Tom Ian Battin, Chenxi Wu, Jun Wen, Xiong Xiong

Alpine regions are changing rapidly due to loss of snow and ice in response to ongoing climate change. While studies have documented ecological responses in alpine lakes and streams to these changes, our ability to predict such outcomes is limited. We prop ...

2020

Early-Career Coordinated Distributed Experiments: Empowerment Through Collaboration

Luis Gómez Gener

Coordinated distributed experiments (CDEs) enable the study of large-scale ecological patterns in geographically dispersed areas, while simultaneously providing broad academic and personal benefits for the participants. However, the effective involvement o ...

2020

Species conservation in the face of global environmental changes: surface-based modelling of geo-environmental data to identify vulnerable populations

Estelle Rochat

Human activities are resulting in many land-use changes, particularly due to urbanisation and intensification of agricultural practices. Because of these changes, in addition to climate change, many species are facing habitat degradation. In order to avoid ...

EPFL2020

Species identity, rather than species mixtures, drives cover crop effects on nutrient partitioning in unfertilized agricultural soil

Alexandre Buttler, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Mathieu Raymond Santonja, Lucas Georges Jean-Paul Freund

Aims Previous cover crop studies mainly focused on the links between plant uptake and soil fertility, and there is a clear knowledge gap regarding the role of microbes in these processes. Our aim was then to better understand the effects of plant mixtures ...

2021