Abstract:
:Forest and savanna biomes dominate the tropics, yet factors controlling their distribution remain poorly understood. Climate is clearly important, but extensive savannas in some high rainfall areas suggest a decoupling of climate and vegetation. In some situations edaphic factors are important, with forest often associated with high nutrient availability. Fire also plays a key role in limiting forest, with fire exclusion often causing a switch from savanna to forest. These observations can be captured by a broad conceptual model with two components: (1) forest and savanna are alternative stable states, maintained by tree cover-fire feedbacks, (2) the interaction between tree growth rates and fire frequency limits forest development; any factor that increases growth (e.g. elevated availability of water, nutrients, CO(2)), or decreases fire frequency, will favour canopy closure. This model is consistent with the range of environmental variables correlated with forest distribution, and with the current trend of forest expansion, likely driven by increasing CO(2) concentrations. Resolving the drivers of forest and savanna distribution has moved beyond simple correlative studies that are unlikely to establish ultimate causation. Experiments using Dynamic Global Vegetation Models, parameterised with measurements from each continent, provide an important tool for understanding the controls of these systems.
journal_name
Ecol Lettjournal_title
Ecology lettersauthors
Murphy BP,Bowman DMdoi
10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01771.xsubject
Has Abstractpub_date
2012-07-01 00:00:00pages
748-58issue
7eissn
1461-023Xissn
1461-0248journal_volume
15pub_type
杂志文章,评审相关文献
ECOLOGY LETTERS文献大全abstract::Both plant diversity and vertebrate herbivores can impact plant fitness and ecosystem functioning, however their interactions have not been explicitly tested. We manipulated plant genotypic diversity of the native plant Oenothera biennis and monitored its survivorship and lifetime fitness with and without one of its m...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01452.x
更新日期:2010-05-01 00:00:00
abstract::Some birds undergo seasonal colour change by moulting twice each year, typically alternating between a cryptic, non-breeding plumage and a conspicuous, breeding plumage ('seasonal plumage colours'). We test for potential drivers of the evolution of seasonal plumage colours in all passerines (N = 5901 species, c. 60% o...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.13375
更新日期:2019-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::Demographic senescence is increasingly recognised as an important force shaping the dynamics of wild vertebrate populations. However, our understanding of the processes that underpin these declines in survival and fertility in old age remains limited. Evidence for age-related changes in foraging behaviour and habitat ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12965
更新日期:2018-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::Floral mimicry of decaying plant or animal material has evolved in many plant lineages and exploits, for the purpose of pollination, insects seeking oviposition sites. Existing studies suggest that volatile signals play a particularly important role in these mimicry systems. Here, we present the first large-scale phyl...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12152
更新日期:2013-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Legumes capable of fixing atmospheric N2 are abundant and diverse in many tropical forests, but the factors determining ecological patterns in fixation are unresolved. A long-standing idea is that fixation depends on soil nutrients (N, P or Mo), but recent evidence shows that fixation may also differ among N2-fixing s...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12543
更新日期:2016-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::The importance of invertebrate herbivores in regulating plant communities remains unclear, due to the absence of long-term exclusion experiments. An experiment in an English grassland involving long-term exclusions of insect and mollusc herbivores, along with rabbit fencing, showed strong, but opposing, effects of the...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01694.x
更新日期:2011-12-01 00:00:00
abstract::The effects of spatial heterogeneity in negative biological interactions on individual performance and species diversity have been studied extensively. However, little is known about the respective effects involving positive biological interactions, including the symbiosis between plants and ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.12816
更新日期:2017-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Females of many species obtain benefits by mating polyandrously, and often prefer novel males over previous mates. However, how do females recognise previous mates, particularly in the face of cognitive constraints? Female crickets appear to have evolved a simple but effective solution: females imbue males with their ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12046
更新日期:2013-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Determining statistical patterns irrespective of interacting agents (i.e. macroecology) is useful to explore the mechanisms driving population fluctuations and extinctions in natural food webs. Here, we tested four predictions of a neutral model on the distribution of community fluctuations (CF) and the distributions ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12749
更新日期:2017-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Stability in ecosystem function is an important but poorly understood phenomenon. Anthropogenic perturbations alter communities, but how they change stability and the strength of stabilizing mechanisms is not clear. We examined temporal stability (invariability) in aboveground productivity in replicated 18-year time s...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01533.x
更新日期:2010-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::We developed an analytical method that quantifies the relative contributions of mortality and individual growth to ecosystem function and analysed the results from the first biodiversity experiment conducted in a tropical tree plantation. In Sardinilla, central Panama, over 5000 tree seedlings were planted in monocult...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01148.x
更新日期:2008-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Although some organisms have moved to higher elevations and latitudes in response to recent climate change, there is little consensus regarding the capacity of different species to track rapid climate change via range shifts. Understanding species' abilities to shift ranges has important implications for assessing ext...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01620.x
更新日期:2011-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::Nematomorph parasites manipulate crickets to enter streams where the parasites reproduce. These manipulated crickets become a substantial food subsidy for stream fishes. We used a field experiment to investigate how this subsidy affects the stream community and ecosystem function. When crickets were available, predato...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01798.x
更新日期:2012-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::Predicting long-term trends in forest growth requires accurate characterisation of how the relationship between forest productivity and climatic stress varies across climatic regimes. Using a network of over two million tree-ring observations spanning North America and a space-for-time substitution methodology, we for...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12650
更新日期:2016-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Latitudinal gradients in biotic interactions have been suggested as causes of global patterns of biodiversity and phenotypic variation. Plant biologists have long speculated that outcrossing mating systems are more common at low than high latitudes owing to a greater predictability of plant-pollinator interactions in ...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12738
更新日期:2017-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Trait-based approaches to community structure are increasingly used in terrestrial ecology. We show that such an approach, augmented by a mechanistic analysis of trade-offs among functional traits, can be successfully used to explain community composition of marine phytoplankton along environmental gradients. Our anal...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01117.x
更新日期:2007-12-01 00:00:00
abstract::Despite nearly 100 years of edge studies, there has been little effort to document how edge responses 'cascade' to impact multi-trophic food webs. We examined changes within two, four-tiered food webs located on opposite sides of a habitat edge. Based on a 'bottom-up' resource-based model, we predicted plant resources...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01656.x
更新日期:2011-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Nitrogen (N) effects on ecosystem carbon (C) budgets are critical to understand as C sequestration is considered as a mechanism to offset anthropogenic CO(2) emissions. Interactions between aboveground C and N cycling are more clearly characterized than belowground processes. Through synthesizing data from multiple te...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01482.x
更新日期:2010-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::Metabolism fuels all of life's activities, from biochemical reactions to ecological interactions. According to two intensely debated theories, body size affects metabolism via geometrical influences on the transport of resources and wastes. However, these theories differ crucially in whether the size dependence of met...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12334
更新日期:2014-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::In many animals acquiring limited reproductive opportunities involves competition for resources, mates and opposite-sex gametes. There is ambiguity in which competitive steps are included in measures of sexual selection: individuals who fail to obtain resources necessary for reproduction are often excluded. We illustr...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2010.01495.x
更新日期:2010-09-01 00:00:00
abstract::Predators can affect herbivores both through direct consumption (density-mediated interactions) and by changing behavioural, physiological or morphological attributes of the prey (trait-mediated interactions). These effects on the herbivore can in turn affect the plant through density- and trait-mediated indirect inte...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2005.00880.x
更新日期:2006-03-01 00:00:00
abstract::Analyses of temporal patterns of diversity across a wide range of taxa have found that more diverse communities often show smaller compositional changes over time. This generality indicates that high diversity is associated with greater temporal stability in species composition. We examined patterns of diversity and c...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.01009.x
更新日期:2007-02-01 00:00:00
abstract::Understanding the factors that determine rates of range expansion is not only crucial for developing risk assessment schemes and management strategies for invasive species, but also provides important insight into the ability of species to disperse in response to climate change. However, there is little knowledge on w...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12286
更新日期:2014-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::Variation for resistance to infectious disease is ubiquitous and critical to host and parasite evolution and to disease impact, spread and control. However, the processes that generate and maintain this diversity are not understood. We examine how ecological feedbacks generate diversity in host defence focussing on wh...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01832.x
更新日期:2012-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::Dispersal is a major factor regulating the number of coexisting species, but the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem processes has mainly been analysed for communities closed to dispersal. We experimentally investigated how initial local diversity and dispersal frequency affect local diversity and bio...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00916.x
更新日期:2006-06-01 00:00:00
abstract::Globalisation persistently fuels the establishment of non-native species outside their natural ranges. While alien plants have been intensively studied, little is known about alien flower visitors, and especially, how they integrate into natural communities. Here, we focus on mutualistic networks from five Galápagos i...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 信件
doi:10.1111/ele.13287
更新日期:2019-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::There have been numerous investigations of parasite local adaptation, a phenomenon important from the perspectives of both basic and applied evolutionary ecology. Recent work has demonstrated that temperature has striking effects on parasite performance by mediating trade-offs in parasite life history and through geno...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01146.x
更新日期:2008-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Species diversity has two components - number of species and spatial turnover in species composition (beta-diversity). Using a field experiment focusing on a system of Mediterranean grasslands, we show that interspecific competition may influence the two components in the same direction or in opposite directions, depe...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/ele.12343
更新日期:2014-11-01 00:00:00
abstract::Correlations between traits may constrain ecological and evolutionary responses to multispecies interactions. Many plants produce defensive compounds in nectar and leaves that could influence interactions with pollinators and herbivores, but the relationship between nectar and leaf defences is entirely unexplored. Cor...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2006.00944.x
更新日期:2006-08-01 00:00:00
abstract::Despite the importance of consumers in structuring communities, and the widespread assumption that consumption is strongest at low latitudes, empirical tests for global scale patterns in the magnitude of consumer impacts are limited. In marine systems, the long tradition of experimentally excluding herbivores in their...
journal_title:Ecology letters
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01804.x
更新日期:2012-08-01 00:00:00