BioTIME: A database of biodiversity time series for the Anthropocene

Macroecological patterns of planktonic unicellular eukaryotes richness in the Southeast Pacific Ocean

In recent years, studies focusing on microbial biogeography have been developed, but macroecological processes in marine microorganisms remain unclear, especially in seemingly continuous environments such as the Southeast Pacific Ocean (SPO), where information on microbial distribution patterns is limited, and they may vary depending on the habitat and lifestyle. We used unicellular planktonic eukaryotes as model organisms to determine their biogeographic patterns in the SPO, identify the underlying ecological and historical-evolutionary processes and compare with other microorganism groups. Our analyses were based on the Niche Theory to model species diversity distribution using large open-access ecological and physical-biogeochemical databases based on Bayesian approaches, an integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA), and Generalized Additive Models (GAM). As a result, two richness hotspots were observed, which are associated with coastal and offshore regions in the central southern areas of SPO. The richness hotspots were associated mainly with nutrients (N/Si ratio) and Mixed Layer Depth (MLD), which could be explained by highly productive upwelling events in the SPO. In contrast, the negative correlation of predicted richness with low pH is strongly related to the effect of calcareous shells (tests), as lower pH levels hinder the formation and stability of calcium carbonate shells in protists like foraminifera and radiolaria, thereby affecting overall unicellular planktonic eukaryote diversity. Our results support the role of ecological processes related to productivity, energy dynamics, and ecological limits in shaping broad-scale diversity patterns of unicellular planktonic eukaryotes in the SPO. The results show colonization and extinction dynamics through species replacement (i.e. High Turnover) along the Chilean and Equatorial coasts associated mainly with the Hotspots of their biodiversity, but also a gradual species loss (i.e. High Nestedness) along the Peruvian Coast associated mainly with the Coldspots of their biodiversity; highlighting how local environmental fluctuations can shape these planktonic microorganisms' behavior, ecology and distribution. The distribution patterns of planktonic unicellular eukaryotes show little evidence of the effects of historical and evolutionary processes. This is because the high dispersal capacity of planktonic microbes probably dilutes the influence of these processes in environments lacking clear barriers to species dispersal. Additionally, the effect of historical events could be highlighted in specific taxonomic groups at the kingdom, phylum level or habitat type and addressing gaps about latitudinal richness in the SPO. This provides insight into the spatial distribution of marine microbes and contributes to conservation efforts, as these organisms are an essential foundation of the upper levels of the food web.

Divergent alpha and beta diversity trends of soil nematode fauna along gradients of environmental change in the Carpathian Ecoregion

There is a significant lack of research on how climate change influences long-term temporal trends in the biodiversity of soil organisms. Nematodes may be specifically adequate to test soil biodiversity changes, because they account for ~80% of all Metazoans and play key roles in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we report on the first synthesis study focused on temporal trends of nematode fauna over a period of 14 years (1986-1999) across the Carpathian Ecoregion. We provide new evidence that wetter conditions associated to global change contributes to driving nematode diversity at genus/family level. We observed opposite trends in soil nematode alpha diversity (increase) and beta diversity (decrease) consistent across ecosystem types and soil horizons, providing strong evidence for the influence of climate change on soil biodiversity at large spatial scales. An increase in the community functional uniformity along with a decline in beta diversity indicated more homogenous soil conditions over time. The Soil Stability Index (metric devised to assess soil homeostasis based on the functional composition of nematode communities) increased over time, indicating a decline of soil disturbances and more complex soil food webs. Our results highlight the importance of nematodes as powerful indicators of soil biodiversity trends affected by multiple facets of environmental change in long-term soil monitoring.

Non-Native Species Abundance Decreases the Co-Occurrence Between Native and Non-Native Species Through Time at Any Phylogenetic Distance

Non-native species may cause cumulative impacts on native communities if their abundance continues to increase through time. This negative effect can reflect on the spatial distribution of native species, especially when native and non-native species are phylogenetically similar. Here, we assessed the spatial co-occurrence between native and non-native fish species using long-term abundance data from six locations in a Brazilian floodplain. We tested whether the co-occurrence of native and non-native species is influenced by non-native species abundance and time since first record, and whether the abundance effect is mediated by the phylogenetic relatedness between native and non-native species. We found that non-native abundance was more influential than the time since first record and co-occurrence between native and non-native species was lower when the non-native abundance was high, regardless of phylogenetic relatedness. The interannual variability in non-native species abundance may overshadow long-term trends in determining the temporal effects of non-native species.

Quantitative and qualitative Data on historical Vertebrate Distributions in Bavaria 1845

Archival collections contain an underutilized wealth of biodiversity data, encapsulated in government files and other historical documents. In 1845, the Bavarian government conducted a comprehensive national survey on the occurrence of 44 selected vertebrate species across the country. The detailed expert responses from 119 forestry offices, totalling 520 handwritten pages, have been preserved in the Bavarian State Archives. In this study, we digitized, annotated, geographically referenced, and published these historical records, making them widely available as data for research and conservation planning. Our dataset, openly accessible through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Zenodo, contains 5,467 species occurrence records from 1845. Besides the binary presence/absence data, we have also published the original textual survey responses, which contain rich qualitative information, such as species abundances, population trends, habitats, forest management practices, and human-nature relationships. This information can be further processed and interpreted to address a range of questions in historical and contemporary ecology.

Warming and cooling catalyse widespread temporal turnover in biodiversity

Turnover in species composition through time is a dominant form of biodiversity change, which has profound effects on the functioning of ecological communities1-4. Turnover rates differ markedly among communities4, but the drivers of this variation across taxa and realms remain unknown. Here we analyse 42,225 time series of species composition from marine, terrestrial and freshwater assemblages, and show that temporal rates of turnover were consistently faster in locations that experienced faster temperature change, including both warming and cooling. In addition, assemblages with limited access to microclimate refugia or that faced stronger human impacts on land were especially responsive to temperature change, with up to 48% of species replaced per decade. These results reveal a widespread signal of vulnerability to continuing climate change and highlight which ecological communities are most sensitive, raising concerns about ecosystem integrity as climate change and other human impacts accelerate.

Evaluating the feasibility of automating dataset retrieval for biodiversity monitoring

Aim

Effective management strategies for conserving biodiversity and mitigating the impacts of global change rely on access to comprehensive and up-to-date biodiversity data. However, manual search, retrieval, evaluation, and integration of this information into databases present a significant challenge to keeping pace with the rapid influx of large amounts of data, hindering its utility in contemporary decision-making processes. Automating these tasks through advanced algorithms holds immense potential to revolutionize biodiversity monitoring.

Innovation

In this study, we investigate the potential for automating the retrieval and evaluation of biodiversity data from Dryad and Zenodo repositories. We have designed an evaluation system based on various criteria, including the type of data provided and its spatio-temporal range, and applied it to manually assess the relevance for biodiversity monitoring of datasets retrieved through an application programming interface (API). We evaluated a supervised classification to identify potentially relevant datasets and investigate the feasibility of automatically ranking the relevance. Additionally, we applied the same appraoch on a scientific literature source, using data from Semantic Scholar for reference. Our evaluation centers on the database utilized by a national biodiversity monitoring system in Quebec, Canada.

Main conclusions

We retrieved 89 (55%) relevant datasets for our database, showing the value of automated dataset search in repositories. Additionally, we find that scientific publication sources offer broader temporal coverage and can serve as conduits guiding researchers toward other valuable data sources. Our automated classification system showed moderate performance in detecting relevant datasets (with an F-score up to 0.68) and signs of overfitting, emphasizing the need for further refinement. A key challenge identified in our manual evaluation is the scarcity and uneven distribution of metadata in the texts, especially pertaining to spatial and temporal extents. Our evaluative framework, based on predefined criteria, can be adopted by automated algorithms for streamlined prioritization, and we make our manually evaluated data publicly available, serving as a benchmark for improving classification techniques.

The Metapopulation Bridge to Macroevolutionary Speciation Rates: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Test

Whether large-scale variation in lineage diversification rates can be predicted by species properties at the population level is a key unresolved question at the interface between micro- and macroevolution. All else being equal, species with biological attributes that confer metapopulation stability should persist more often at timescales relevant to speciation and so give rise to new (incipient) forms that share these biological traits. Here, we develop a framework for testing the relationship between metapopulation properties related to persistence and phylogenetic speciation rates. We illustrate this conceptual approach by applying it to a long-term dataset on demersal fish communities from the North American continental shelf region. We find that one index of metapopulation persistence has phylogenetic signal, suggesting that traits are connected with range-wide demographic patterns. However, there is no relationship between demographic properties and speciation rate. These findings suggest a decoupling between ecological dynamics at decadal timescales and million-year clade dynamics, raising questions about the extent to which population-level processes observable over ecological timescales can be extrapolated to infer biodiversity dynamics more generally.

Drivers of Seasonal Change of Avian Communities in Urban Parks and Cemeteries of Latin America

Urban parks and cemeteries constitute hot spots of bird diversity in urban areas. However, the seasonal dynamics of their bird communities have been scarcely explored at large scales. This study aims to analyze the drivers of urban bird assemblage seasonality in urban parks and cemeteries comparing assemblages during breeding and non-breeding seasons in the Neotropical Region. Since cemeteries have less human disturbance than urban parks, we expected differences in bird community seasonality between habitats. The seasonal change of species composition was partitioned into species turnover and nestedness. At large scales, the seasonal change of species composition was positively related to temperature seasonality and was higher in the Northern Hemisphere. At the landscape scale, the seasonal change of composition decreased in sites located in the most urbanized areas. At the local scale, sites with the highest habitat diversity and pedestrian traffic had the lowest seasonal change of composition. The species turnover was higher in the Northern Hemisphere, augmented with increasing annual temperature range, and decreased in urban parks. The species nestedness was positively related to habitat diversity. Our results showed that a multi-scale framework is essential to understand the seasonal changes of bird communities. Moreover, the two components of seasonal composition dissimilarity showed contrasting responses to environmental variables. Although the surrounding urbanization lowered the seasonal dynamics of urban green areas, cemeteries seem to conserve more seasonal changes than urban parks. Thus, urban cemeteries help to conserve the temporal dynamics of bird communities in cities.

Assessing the response of marine fish communities to climate change and fishing

Globally, marine fish communities are being altered by climate change and human disturbances. We examined data on global marine fish communities to assess changes in community-weighted mean temperature affinity (i.e., mean temperatures within geographic ranges), maximum length, and trophic levels, which, respectively, represent the physiological, morphological, and trophic characteristics of marine fish communities. Then, we explored the influence of climate change and fishing on these characteristics because of their long-term role in shaping fish communities, especially their interactive effects. We employed spatial linear mixed models to investigate their impacts on community-weighted mean trait values and on abundance of different fish lengths and trophic groups. Globally, we observed an initial increasing trend in the temperature affinity of marine fish communities, whereas the weighted mean length and trophic levels of fish communities showed a declining trend. However, these shift trends were not significant, likely due to the large variation in midlatitude communities. Fishing pressure increased fish communities' temperature affinity in regions experiencing climate warming. Furthermore, climate warming was associated with an increase in weighted mean length and trophic levels of fish communities. Low climate baseline temperature appeared to mitigate the effect of climate warming on temperature affinity and trophic levels. The effect of climate warming on the relative abundance of different trophic classes and size classes both exhibited a nonlinear pattern. The small and relatively large fish species may benefit from climate warming, whereas the medium and largest size groups may be disadvantaged. Our results highlight the urgency of establishing stepping-stone marine protected areas to facilitate the migration of fishes to habitats in a warming ocean. Moreover, reducing human disturbance is crucial to mitigate rapid tropicalization, particularly in vulnerable temperate regions.

Ecosystem synchrony: an emerging property to elucidate ecosystem responses to global change

Understanding ecosystem responses to global change have long challenged scientists due to notoriously complex properties arising from the interplay between biological and environmental factors. We propose the concept of ecosystem synchrony - that is, similarity in the temporal fluctuations of an ecosystem function between multiple ecosystems - to overcome this challenge. Ecosystem synchrony can manifest due to spatially correlated environmental fluctuations (Moran effect), exchange of energy, nutrients, and organic matter and similarity in biotic characteristics across ecosystems. By taking advantage of long-term surveys, remote sensing and the increased use of high-frequency sensors to assess ecosystem functions, ecosystem synchrony can foster our understanding of the coordinated ecosystem responses at unexplored spatiotemporal scales, identify emerging portfolio effects among ecosystems, and deliver signals of ecosystem perturbations.

Socioeconomic prerequisites determine national long-term biomonitoring efforts

In the current anthropogenic era characterised by human-induced environmental changes, long-term biomonitoring has become a crucial component for understanding ecological patterns and detecting shifts in biodiversity. However, spatiotemporal inconsistencies in biomonitoring efforts hinder transboundary progress in understanding and mitigating global environmental change effectively. The International Long-Term Ecosystem Research (ILTER) network is one of the largest standardised biomonitoring initiatives worldwide, encompassing 44 countries globally, including 26 European countries that are part of the European Long-Term Ecosystem Research network (eLTER). To better understand the establishment and development of such long-term biomonitoring efforts, we analysed spatial and temporal trends within the eLTER network. Additionally, we evaluated the environmental, social, and economic factors influencing engagement in biomonitoring activities within this European network. Our findings reveal a spatial imbalance, with biomonitoring efforts concentrated in Central and Western European countries, where monitoring initiatives have typically been established for a longer duration. Furthermore, our analyses underscore the complex interplay of economic, geographic, and cultural factors in the development of long-term ecological research infrastructures. Countries with greater geographic connectivity, slower economic growth, and higher research activity are more likely to be involved in the eLTER network. The intensity of biomonitoring significantly increased with greater research investments, economic growth, and elevated levels of tourism. In contrast, it decreased in countries that are more inward-facing and exhibit a belief in their ability to control environmental outcomes independently. Addressing spatial gaps in monitoring necessitates enhanced support and funding to ensure comprehensive ecological monitoring over extended time periods. This is essential for achieving transboundary sustainability and effective biodiversity conservation in the face of global change drivers.

The Micropaleoecology Framework: Evaluating Biotic Responses to Global Change Through Paleoproxy, Microfossil, and Ecological Data Integration

The microfossil record contains abundant, diverse, and well-preserved fossils spanning multiple trophic levels from primary producers to apex predators. In addition, microfossils often constitute and are preserved in high abundances alongside continuous high-resolution geochemical proxy records. These characteristics mean that microfossils can provide valuable context for understanding the modern climate and biodiversity crises by allowing for the interrogation of spatiotemporal scales well beyond what is available in neo-ecological research. Here, we formalize a research framework of "micropaleoecology," which builds on a holistic understanding of global change from the environment to ecosystem level. Location: Global. Time period: Neoproterozoic-Phanerozoic. Taxa studied: Fossilizing organisms/molecules. Our framework seeks to integrate geochemical proxy records with microfossil records and metrics, and draws on mechanistic models and systems-level statistical analyses to integrate disparate records. Using multiple proxies and mechanistic mathematical frameworks extends analysis beyond traditional correlation-based studies of paleoecological associations and builds a greater understanding of past ecosystem dynamics. The goal of micropaleoecology is to investigate how environmental changes impact the component and emergent properties of ecosystems through the integration of multi-trophic level body fossil records (primarily using microfossils, and incorporating additional macrofossil data where possible) with contemporaneous environmental (biogeochemical, geochemical, and sedimentological) records. Micropaleoecology, with its focus on integrating ecological metrics within the context of paleontological records, facilitates a deeper understanding of the response of ecosystems across time and space to better prepare for a future Earth under threat from anthropogenic climate change.

Plant diversity darkspots for global collection priorities

More than 15% of all vascular plant species may remain scientifically undescribed, and many of the > 350 000 described species have no or few geographic records documenting their distribution. Identifying and understanding taxonomic and geographic knowledge shortfalls is key to prioritising future collection and conservation efforts. Using extensive data for 343 523 vascular plant species and time-to-event analyses, we conducted multiple tests related to plant taxonomic and geographic data shortfalls, and identified 33 global diversity darkspots (those 'botanical countries' predicted to contain most undescribed and not yet recorded species). We defined priority regions for future collection according to several socio-economic and environmental scenarios. Most plant diversity darkspots are found within global biodiversity hotspots, with the exception of New Guinea. We identify Colombia, Myanmar, New Guinea, Peru, Philippines and Turkey as global collection priorities under all environmental and socio-economic conditions considered. Our study provides a flexible framework to help accelerate the documentation of global plant diversity for the implementation of conservation actions. As digitisation of the world's herbaria progresses, collection and conservation priorities may soon be identifiable at finer scales.

Temperature and biodiversity influence community stability differently in birds and fishes

Determining the factors that affect community stability is crucial to understanding the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the face of global warming. We investigated how four temperature components (that is, median, variability, trend and extremes) affected diversity-synchrony-stability relationships for 1,246 bird and 580 fish communities from temperate regions. We hypothesized a stabilizing effect on the community if the variation in species' response to changing median temperature decreases overall community synchrony (hypothesis H1) and if temperature extremes reduce interspecific synchrony at extreme abundances due to variation in species' thermal tolerance limits (hypothesis H2). We found support for H1 in fish and for H2 in bird communities. Here we showed that the abiotic components (that is, the median, variability, trend and extremes of temperature) had more indirect effects on community stability, predominantly by affecting the biotic components (that is, diversity, synchrony). Considering various temperature components' direct as well as indirect impacts on stability for terrestrial versus aquatic communities will improve our mechanistic understanding of biodiversity change in response to global climatic stressors.

Multidecadal changes in coastal benthic species composition and ecosystem functioning occur independently of temperature-driven community shifts

Rising global temperatures are often identified as the key driver impacting ecosystems and the services they provide by affecting biodiversity structure and function. A disproportionate amount of our understanding of biodiversity and function is from short-term experimental studies and static values of biodiversity indices, lacking the ability to monitor long-term trends and capture community dynamics. Here, we analyse a biennial dataset spanning 32 years of macroinvertebrate benthic communities and their functional response to increasing temperatures. We monitored changes in species' thermal affinities to examine warming-related shifts by selecting their mid-point global temperature distribution range and linking them to species' traits. We employed a novel weighted metric using Biological Trait Analysis (BTA) to gain better insights into the ecological potential of each species by incorporating species abundance and body size and selecting a subset of traits that represent five ecosystem functions: bioturbation activity, sediment stability, nutrient recycling and higher and lower trophic production. Using biodiversity indices (richness, Simpson's diversity and vulnerability) and functional indices (richness, Rao's Q and redundancy), the community structure showed no significant change over time with a narrow range of variation. However, we show shifts in species composition with warming and increases in the abundance of individuals, which altered ecosystem functioning positively and/or non-linearly. Yet, when higher taxonomic groupings than species were excluded from the analysis, there was only a weak increase in the measured change in community-weighted average thermal affinities, suggesting changes in ecosystem functions over time occur independently of temperature increase-related shifts in community composition. Other environmental factors driving species composition and abundance may be more important in these subtidal macrobenthic communities. This challenges the prevailing emphasis on temperature as the primary driver of ecological response to climate change and emphasises the necessity for a comprehensive understanding of the temporal dynamics of complex systems.

Biodiversity patterns of epipelagic copepods in the South Pacific Ocean: Strengths and limitations of current data bases

Basin-scale patterns of biodiversity for zooplankton in the ocean may provide valuable insights for understanding the impact of climate change and global warming on the marine ecosystem. However, studies on this topic remain scarce or unavailable in vast regions of the world ocean, particularly in large regions where the amount and quality of available data are limited. In this study, we used a 27-year (1993-2019) database on species occurrence of planktonic copepods in the South Pacific, along with associated oceanographic variables, to examine their spatial patterns of biodiversity in the upper 200 m of the ocean. The aim of this study was to identify ecological regions and the environmental predictors explaining such patterns. It was found that hot and cold spots of diversity, and distinctive species assemblages were linked to major ocean currents and large regions over the basin, with increasing species richness over the subtropical areas on the East and West sides of the South Pacific. While applying the spatial models, we showed that the best environmental predictors for diversity and species composition were temperature, salinity, chlorophyll-a concentration, oxygen concentration, and the residual autocorrelation. Nonetheless, the observed spatial patterns and derived environmental effects were found to be strongly influenced by sampling coverage over space and time, revealing a highly under-sampled basin. Our findings provide an assessment of copepods diversity patterns and their potential drivers for the South Pacific Ocean, but they also stress the need for strengthening the data bases of planktonic organisms, as they can act as suitable indicators of ecosystem response to climate change at basin scale.

Time series of freshwater macroinvertebrate abundances and site characteristics of European streams and rivers

Freshwater macroinvertebrates are a diverse group and play key ecological roles, including accelerating nutrient cycling, filtering water, controlling primary producers, and providing food for predators. Their differences in tolerances and short generation times manifest in rapid community responses to change. Macroinvertebrate community composition is an indicator of water quality. In Europe, efforts to improve water quality following environmental legislation, primarily starting in the 1980s, may have driven a recovery of macroinvertebrate communities. Towards understanding temporal and spatial variation of these organisms, we compiled the TREAM dataset (Time seRies of European freshwAter Macroinvertebrates), consisting of macroinvertebrate community time series from 1,816 river and stream sites (mean length of 19.2 years and 14.9 sampling years) of 22 European countries sampled between 1968 and 2020. In total, the data include >93 million sampled individuals of 2,648 taxa from 959 genera and 212 families. These data can be used to test questions ranging from identifying drivers of the population dynamics of specific taxa to assessing the success of legislative and management restoration efforts.

Marine fishes experiencing high-velocity range shifts may not be climate change winners

Climate change is driving the global redistribution of species. A common assumption is that rapid range shifts occur in tandem with overall stable or positive abundance trends throughout the range and thus these species may be considered as climate change 'winners'. However, although establishing the link between range shift velocities and population trends is crucial for predicting climate change impacts it has not been empirically tested. Using 2,572 estimates of changes in marine fish abundance spread across the world's oceans, we show that poleward range shifts are not necessarily associated with positive population trends. Species experiencing high-velocity range shifts seem to experience local population declines irrespective of the position throughout the species range. High range shift velocities of 17 km yr-1 are associated with a 50% decrease in population sizes over a period of 10 yr, which is dramatic compared to the overall stable population trends in non-shifting species. This pattern, however, mostly occurs in populations located in the poleward, colder, portion of the species range. The lack of a positive association between poleward range shift velocities and population trends at the coldest portion of the range contrasts with the view that rapid range shifts safeguard against local population declines. Instead, our work suggests that marine fishes experiencing rapid range shifts could be more vulnerable to climatic change and therefore should be carefully assessed for conservation status.

New horizons for comparative studies and meta-analyses

Comparative analyses and meta-analyses are key tools to elucidate broad biological principles, yet the two approaches often appear different in purpose. We propose an integrated approach that can generate deeper insights into ecoevolutionary processes. Marrying comparative and meta-analytic approaches will allow for (i) a more accurate investigation of drivers of biological variation, (ii) a greater ability to account for sources of non-independence in experimental data, (iii) more effective control of publication bias, and (iv) improved transparency and reproducibility. Stronger integration of meta-analytic and comparative studies can also broaden the scope from species-centric investigations to community-level responses and function-valued traits (e.g., reaction norms). We illuminate commonalities, differences, and the transformative potential of combining these methodologies for advancing ecology and evolutionary biology.

Disproportionate declines of formerly abundant species underlie insect loss

Studies have reported widespread declines in terrestrial insect abundances in recent years1-4, but trends in other biodiversity metrics are less clear-cut5-7. Here we examined long-term trends in 923 terrestrial insect assemblages monitored in 106 studies, and found concomitant declines in abundance and species richness. For studies that were resolved to species level (551 sites in 57 studies), we observed a decline in the number of initially abundant species through time, but not in the number of very rare species. At the population level, we found that species that were most abundant at the start of the time series showed the strongest average declines (corrected for regression-to-the-mean effects). Rarer species were, on average, also declining, but these were offset by increases of other species. Our results suggest that the observed decreases in total insect abundance2 can mostly be explained by widespread declines of formerly abundant species. This counters the common narrative that biodiversity loss is mostly characterized by declines of rare species8,9. Although our results suggest that fundamental changes are occurring in insect assemblages, it is important to recognize that they represent only trends from those locations for which sufficient long-term data are available. Nevertheless, given the importance of abundant species in ecosystems10, their general declines are likely to have broad repercussions for food webs and ecosystem functioning.

Revealing uncertainty in the status of biodiversity change

Biodiversity faces unprecedented threats from rapid global change1. Signals of biodiversity change come from time-series abundance datasets for thousands of species over large geographic and temporal scales. Analyses of these biodiversity datasets have pointed to varied trends in abundance, including increases and decreases. However, these analyses have not fully accounted for spatial, temporal and phylogenetic structures in the data. Here, using a new statistical framework, we show across ten high-profile biodiversity datasets2-11 that increases and decreases under existing approaches vanish once spatial, temporal and phylogenetic structures are accounted for. This is a consequence of existing approaches severely underestimating trend uncertainty and sometimes misestimating the trend direction. Under our revised average abundance trends that appropriately recognize uncertainty, we failed to observe a single increasing or decreasing trend at 95% credible intervals in our ten datasets. This emphasizes how little is known about biodiversity change across vast spatial and taxonomic scales. Despite this uncertainty at vast scales, we reveal improved local-scale prediction accuracy by accounting for spatial, temporal and phylogenetic structures. Improved prediction offers hope of estimating biodiversity change at policy-relevant scales, guiding adaptive conservation responses.

Towards harmonized standards for freshwater biodiversity monitoring and biological assessment using benthic macroinvertebrates

Monitoring programs at sub-national and national scales lack coordination, harmonization, and systematic review and analysis at continental and global scales, and thus fail to adequately assess and evaluate drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem degradation and loss at large spatial scales. Here we review the state of the art, gaps and challenges in the freshwater assessment programs for both the biological condition (bioassessment) and biodiversity monitoring of freshwater ecosystems using the benthic macroinvertebrate community. To assess the existence of nationally- and regionally- (sub-nationally-) accepted freshwater benthic macroinvertebrate protocols that are put in practice/used in each country, we conducted a survey from November 2022 to May 2023. Responses from 110 respondents based in 67 countries were received. Although the responses varied in their consistency, the responses clearly demonstrated a lack of biodiversity monitoring being done at both national and sub-national levels for lakes, rivers and artificial waterbodies. Programs for bioassessment were more widespread, and in some cases even harmonized among several countries. We identified 20 gaps and challenges, which we classed into five major categories, these being (a) field sampling, (b) sample processing and identification, (c) metrics and indices, (d) assessment, and (e) other gaps and challenges. Above all, we identify the lack of harmonization as one of the most important gaps, hindering efficient collaboration and communication. We identify the IUCN SSC Global Freshwater Macroinvertebrate Sampling Protocols Task Force (GLOSAM) as a means to address the lack of globally-harmonized biodiversity monitoring and biological assessment protocols.

Warming underpins community turnover in temperate freshwater and terrestrial communities

Rising temperatures are leading to increased prevalence of warm-affinity species in ecosystems, known as thermophilisation. However, factors influencing variation in thermophilisation rates among taxa and ecosystems, particularly freshwater communities with high diversity and high population decline, remain unclear. We analysed compositional change over time in 7123 freshwater and 6201 terrestrial, mostly temperate communities from multiple taxonomic groups. Overall, temperature change was positively linked to thermophilisation in both realms. Extirpated species had lower thermal affinities in terrestrial communities but higher affinities in freshwater communities compared to those persisting over time. Temperature change's impact on thermophilisation varied with community body size, thermal niche breadth, species richness and baseline temperature; these interactive effects were idiosyncratic in the direction and magnitude of their impacts on thermophilisation, both across realms and taxonomic groups. While our findings emphasise the challenges in predicting the consequences of temperature change across communities, conservation strategies should consider these variable responses when attempting to mitigate climate-induced biodiversity loss.

Marine protected areas promote stability of reef fish communities under climate warming

Protection from direct human impacts can safeguard marine life, yet ocean warming crosses marine protected area boundaries. Here, we test whether protection offers resilience to marine heatwaves from local to network scales. We examine 71,269 timeseries of population abundances for 2269 reef fish species surveyed in 357 protected versus 747 open sites worldwide. We quantify the stability of reef fish abundance from populations to metacommunities, considering responses of species and functional diversity including thermal affinity of different trophic groups. Overall, protection mitigates adverse effects of marine heatwaves on fish abundance, community stability, asynchronous fluctuations and functional richness. We find that local stability is positively related to distance from centers of high human density only in protected areas. We provide evidence that networks of protected areas have persistent reef fish communities in warming oceans by maintaining large populations and promoting stability at different levels of biological organization.

Synthesis reveals approximately balanced biotic differentiation and homogenization

It is commonly thought that the biodiversity crisis includes widespread declines in the spatial variation of species composition, called biotic homogenization. Using a typology relating homogenization and differentiation to local and regional diversity changes, we synthesize patterns across 461 metacommunities surveyed for 10 to 91 years, and 64 species checklists (13 to 500+ years). Across all datasets, we found that no change was the most common outcome, but with many instances of homogenization and differentiation. A weak homogenizing trend of a 0.3% increase in species shared among communities/year on average was driven by increased numbers of widespread (high occupancy) species and strongly associated with checklist data that have longer durations and large spatial scales. At smaller spatial and temporal scales, we show that homogenization and differentiation can be driven by changes in the number and spatial distributions of both rare and common species. The multiscale perspective introduced here can help identify scale-dependent drivers underpinning biotic differentiation and homogenization.

The global distribution of plants used by humans

Plants sustain human life. Understanding geographic patterns of the diversity of species used by people is thus essential for the sustainable management of plant resources. Here, we investigate the global distribution of 35,687 utilized plant species spanning 10 use categories (e.g., food, medicine, material). Our findings indicate general concordance between utilized and total plant diversity, supporting the potential for simultaneously conserving species diversity and its contributions to people. Although Indigenous lands across Mesoamerica, the Horn of Africa, and Southern Asia harbor a disproportionate diversity of utilized plants, the incidence of protected areas is negatively correlated with utilized species richness. Finding mechanisms to preserve areas containing concentrations of utilized plants and traditional knowledge must become a priority for the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

FISHGLOB_data: an integrated dataset of fish biodiversity sampled with scientific bottom-trawl surveys

Scientific bottom-trawl surveys are ecological observation programs conducted along continental shelves and slopes of seas and oceans that sample marine communities associated with the seafloor. These surveys report taxa occurrence, abundance and/or weight in space and time, and contribute to fisheries management as well as population and biodiversity research. Bottom-trawl surveys are conducted all over the world and represent a unique opportunity to understand ocean biogeography, macroecology, and global change. However, combining these data together for cross-ecosystem analyses remains challenging. Here, we present an integrated dataset of 29 publicly available bottom-trawl surveys conducted in national waters of 18 countries that are standardized and pre-processed, covering a total of 2,170 sampled fish taxa and 216,548 hauls collected from 1963 to 2021. We describe the processing steps to create the dataset, flags, and standardization methods that we developed to assist users in conducting spatio-temporal analyses with stable regional survey footprints. The aim of this dataset is to support research, marine conservation, and management in the context of global change.

Inverse priority effects: A role for historical contingency during species losses

Communities worldwide are losing multiple species at an unprecedented rate, but how communities reassemble after these losses is often an open question. It is well established that the order and timing of species arrival during community assembly shapes forthcoming community composition and function. Yet, whether the order and timing of species losses can lead to divergent community trajectories remains largely unexplored. Here, we propose a novel framework that sets testable hypotheses on the effects of the order and timing of species losses-inverse priority effects-and suggests its integration into the study of community assembly. We propose that the order and timing of species losses within a community can generate alternative reassembly trajectories, and suggest mechanisms that may underlie these inverse priority effects. To formalize these concepts quantitatively, we used a three-species Lotka-Volterra competition model, enabling to investigate conditions in which the order of species losses can lead to divergent reassembly trajectories. The inverse priority effects framework proposed here promotes the systematic study of the dynamics of species losses from ecological communities, ultimately aimed to better understand community reassembly and guide management decisions in light of rapid global change.

Space-for-time substitutions in climate change ecology and evolution

In an epoch of rapid environmental change, understanding and predicting how biodiversity will respond to a changing climate is an urgent challenge. Since we seldom have sufficient long-term biological data to use the past to anticipate the future, spatial climate-biotic relationships are often used as a proxy for predicting biotic responses to climate change over time. These 'space-for-time substitutions' (SFTS) have become near ubiquitous in global change biology, but with different subfields largely developing methods in isolation. We review how climate-focussed SFTS are used in four subfields of ecology and evolution, each focussed on a different type of biotic variable - population phenotypes, population genotypes, species' distributions, and ecological communities. We then examine the similarities and differences between subfields in terms of methods, limitations and opportunities. While SFTS are used for a wide range of applications, two main approaches are applied across the four subfields: spatial in situ gradient methods and transplant experiments. We find that SFTS methods share common limitations relating to (i) the causality of identified spatial climate-biotic relationships and (ii) the transferability of these relationships, i.e. whether climate-biotic relationships observed over space are equivalent to those occurring over time. Moreover, despite widespread application of SFTS in climate change research, key assumptions remain largely untested. We highlight opportunities to enhance the robustness of SFTS by addressing key assumptions and limitations, with a particular emphasis on where approaches could be shared between the four subfields.

100 years of anthropogenic impact causes changes in freshwater functional biodiversity

Despite efforts from scientists and regulators, biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate. Unless we find transformative solutions to preserve biodiversity, future generations may not be able to enjoy nature's services. We have developed a conceptual framework that establishes the links between biodiversity dynamics and abiotic change through time and space using artificial intelligence. Here, we apply this framework to a freshwater ecosystem with a known history of human impact and study 100 years of community-level biodiversity, climate change and chemical pollution trends. We apply explainable network models with multimodal learning to community-level functional biodiversity measured with multilocus metabarcoding, to establish correlations with biocides and climate change records. We observed that the freshwater community assemblage and functionality changed over time without returning to its original state, even if the lake partially recovered in recent times. Insecticides and fungicides, combined with extreme temperature events and precipitation, explained up to 90% of the functional biodiversity changes. The community-level biodiversity approach used here reliably explained freshwater ecosystem shifts. These shifts were not observed when using traditional quality indices (e.g. Trophic Diatom Index). Our study advocates the use of high-throughput systemic approaches on long-term trends over species-focused ecological surveys to identify the environmental factors that cause loss of biodiversity and disrupt ecosystem functions.

A general framework to quantify and compare ecological impacts under temporal dynamics

Biodiversity is diminishing at alarming rates due to multiple anthropogenic drivers. To mitigate these drivers, their impacts must be quantified accurately and comparably across drivers. To enable that, we present a generally applicable framework introducing fundamental principles of ecological impact quantification, including the quantification of interactions between multiple drivers. The framework contrasts biodiversity variables in impacted against those in unimpacted or other reference situations while accounting for their temporal dynamics through modelling. Properly accounting for temporal dynamics reduces biases in impact quantification and comparison. The framework addresses key questions around ecological impacts in global change science, namely, how to compare impacts under temporal dynamics across stressors, how to account for stressor interactions in such comparisons, and how to compare the success of management actions over time.

Can we meaningfully estimate the impacts of climate on zooplankton biodiversity? A review on uses and limitations of marine time series

Climate events compromise ecosystems functioning and services. Marine zooplankton play a key role linking primary producers and higher consumers, in the carbon export to deeper regions, and respond quickly to environmental change. We conducted a systematic review to assess the effects of climate on marine zooplankton diversity. We describe the major findings, uses and limitations raised in the literature from worldwide time series ≥5 years. Thirty-five studies were included and only 6 presented extractable data (i.e., those that could be extracted from images) for the most studied group (i.e., copepods). Responses to climate were conflicting, and studies were mostly restricted to the global north, applied richness, alpha- and beta-diversity equally, and had a large number of unresolved taxonomic identification. Standardized open long-term data would meaningfully help unveiling assemblage reorganization and allow meta-analyses to improve our understanding of the effects of climate change and variability on zooplankton biodiversity.

A user-friendly guide to using distance measures to compare time series in ecology

Time series are a critical component of ecological analysis, used to track changes in biotic and abiotic variables. Information can be extracted from the properties of time series for tasks such as classification (e.g., assigning species to individual bird calls); clustering (e.g., clustering similar responses in population dynamics to abrupt changes in the environment or management interventions); prediction (e.g., accuracy of model predictions to original time series data); and anomaly detection (e.g., detecting possible catastrophic events from population time series). These common tasks in ecological research all rely on the notion of (dis-) similarity, which can be determined using distance measures. A plethora of distance measures have been described, predominantly in the computer and information sciences, but many have not been introduced to ecologists. Furthermore, little is known about how to select appropriate distance measures for time-series-related tasks. Therefore, many potential applications remain unexplored. Here, we describe 16 properties of distance measures that are likely to be of importance to a variety of ecological questions involving time series. We then test 42 distance measures for each property and use the results to develop an objective method to select appropriate distance measures for any task and ecological dataset. We demonstrate our selection method by applying it to a set of real-world data on breeding bird populations in the UK and discuss other potential applications for distance measures, along with associated technical issues common in ecology. Our real-world population trends exhibit a common challenge for time series comparisons: a high level of stochasticity. We demonstrate two different ways of overcoming this challenge, first by selecting distance measures with properties that make them well suited to comparing noisy time series and second by applying a smoothing algorithm before selecting appropriate distance measures. In both cases, the distance measures chosen through our selection method are not only fit-for-purpose but are consistent in their rankings of the population trends. The results of our study should lead to an improved understanding of, and greater scope for, the use of distance measures for comparing ecological time series and help us answer new ecological questions.

Widespread shifts in body size within populations and assemblages

Biotic responses to global change include directional shifts in organismal traits. Body size, an integrative trait that determines demographic rates and ecosystem functions, is thought to be shrinking in the Anthropocene. Here, we assessed the prevalence of body size change in six taxon groups across 5025 assemblage time series spanning 1960 to 2020. Using the Price equation to partition this change into within-species body size versus compositional changes, we detected prevailing decreases in body size through time driven primarily by fish, with more variable patterns in other taxa. We found that change in assemblage composition contributes more to body size changes than within-species trends, but both components show substantial variation in magnitude and direction. The biomass of assemblages remains quite stable as decreases in body size trade off with increases in abundance.

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%-18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost.

The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt

Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss1. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity2. Here, using 1,816 time series of freshwater invertebrate communities collected across 22 European countries between 1968 and 2020, we quantified temporal trends in taxonomic and functional diversity and their responses to environmental pressures and gradients. We observed overall increases in taxon richness (0.73% per year), functional richness (2.4% per year) and abundance (1.17% per year). However, these increases primarily occurred before the 2010s, and have since plateaued. Freshwater communities downstream of dams, urban areas and cropland were less likely to experience recovery. Communities at sites with faster rates of warming had fewer gains in taxon richness, functional richness and abundance. Although biodiversity gains in the 1990s and 2000s probably reflect the effectiveness of water-quality improvements and restoration projects, the decelerating trajectory in the 2010s suggests that the current measures offer diminishing returns. Given new and persistent pressures on freshwater ecosystems, including emerging pollutants, climate change and the spread of invasive species, we call for additional mitigation to revive the recovery of freshwater biodiversity.

Recent advances in availability and synthesis of the economic costs of biological invasions

Biological invasions are a global challenge that has received insufficient attention. Recently available cost syntheses have provided policy- and decision makers with reliable and up-to-date information on the economic impacts of biological invasions, aiming to motivate effective management. The resultant InvaCost database is now publicly and freely accessible and enables rapid extraction of monetary cost information. This has facilitated knowledge sharing, developed a more integrated and multidisciplinary network of researchers, and forged multidisciplinary collaborations among diverse organizations and stakeholders. Over 50 scientific publications so far have used the database and have provided detailed assessments of invasion costs across geographic, taxonomic, and spatiotemporal scales. These studies have provided important information that can guide future policy and legislative decisions on the management of biological invasions while simultaneously attracting public and media attention. We provide an overview of the improved availability, reliability, standardization, and defragmentation of monetary costs; discuss how this has enhanced invasion science as a discipline; and outline directions for future development.

Perspective: sustainability challenges, opportunities and solutions for long-term ecosystem observations

As interest in natural capital grows and society increasingly recognizes the value of biodiversity, we must discuss how ecosystem observations to detect changes in biodiversity can be sustained through collaboration across regions and sectors. However, there are many barriers to establishing and sustaining large-scale, fine-resolution ecosystem observations. First, comprehensive monitoring data on both biodiversity and possible anthropogenic factors are lacking. Second, some in situ ecosystem observations cannot be systematically established and maintained across locations. Third, equitable solutions across sectors and countries are needed to build a global network. Here, by examining individual cases and emerging frameworks, mainly from (but not limited to) Japan, we illustrate how ecological science relies on long-term data and how neglecting basic monitoring of our home planet further reduces our chances of overcoming the environmental crisis. We also discuss emerging techniques and opportunities, such as environmental DNA and citizen science as well as using the existing and forgotten sites of monitoring, that can help overcome some of the difficulties in establishing and sustaining ecosystem observations at a large scale with fine resolution. Overall, this paper presents a call to action for joint monitoring of biodiversity and anthropogenic factors, the systematic establishment and maintenance of in situ observations, and equitable solutions across sectors and countries to build a global network, beyond cultures, languages, and economic status. We hope that our proposed framework and the examples from Japan can serve as a starting point for further discussions and collaborations among stakeholders across multiple sectors of society. It is time to take the next step in detecting changes in socio-ecological systems, and if monitoring and observation can be made more equitable and feasible, they will play an even more important role in ensuring global sustainability for future generations. This article is part of the theme issue 'Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions'.

Looking back on biodiversity change: lessons for the road ahead

Estimating biodiversity change across the planet in the context of widespread human modification is a critical challenge. Here, we review how biodiversity has changed in recent decades across scales and taxonomic groups, focusing on four diversity metrics: species richness, temporal turnover, spatial beta-diversity and abundance. At local scales, change across all metrics includes many examples of both increases and declines and tends to be centred around zero, but with higher prevalence of declining trends in beta-diversity (increasing similarity in composition across space or biotic homogenization) and abundance. The exception to this pattern is temporal turnover, with changes in species composition through time observed in most local assemblages. Less is known about change at regional scales, although several studies suggest that increases in richness are more prevalent than declines. Change at the global scale is the hardest to estimate accurately, but most studies suggest extinction rates are probably outpacing speciation rates, although both are elevated. Recognizing this variability is essential to accurately portray how biodiversity change is unfolding, and highlights how much remains unknown about the magnitude and direction of multiple biodiversity metrics at different scales. Reducing these blind spots is essential to allow appropriate management actions to be deployed. This article is part of the theme issue 'Detecting and attributing the causes of biodiversity change: needs, gaps and solutions'.

Past, present, and future of the Living Planet Index

As we enter the next phase of international policy commitments to halt biodiversity loss (e.g., Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework), biodiversity indicators will play an important role in forming the robust basis upon which targeted, and time sensitive conservation actions are developed. Population trend indicators are one of the most powerful tools in biodiversity monitoring due to their responsiveness to changes over short timescales and their ability to aggregate species trends from global down to sub-national or even local scale. We consider how the project behind one of the foremost population level indicators - the Living Planet Index - has evolved over the last 25 years, its value to the field of biodiversity monitoring, and how its components have portrayed a compelling account of the changing status of global biodiversity through its application at policy, research and practice levels. We explore ways the project can develop to enhance our understanding of the state of biodiversity and share lessons learned to inform indicator development and mobilise action.

MOSAIC - A Unified Trait Database to Complement Structured Population Models

Despite exponential growth in ecological data availability, broader interoperability amongst datasets is needed to unlock the potential of open access. Our understanding of the interface of demography and functional traits is well-positioned to benefit from such interoperability. Here, we introduce MOSAIC, an open-access trait database that unlocks the demographic potential stored in the COMADRE, COMPADRE, and PADRINO open-access databases. MOSAIC data were digitised and curated through a combination of existing datasets and new trait records sourced from primary literature. In its first release, MOSAIC (v. 1.0.0) includes 14 trait fields for 300 animal and plant species: biomass, height, growth determination, regeneration, sexual dimorphism, mating system, hermaphrodism, sequential hermaphrodism, dispersal capacity, type of dispersal, mode of dispersal, dispersal classes, volancy, and aquatic habitat dependency. MOSAIC includes species-level phylogenies for 1,359 species and population-specific climate data. We identify how database integration can improve our understanding of traits well-quantified in existing repositories and those that are poorly quantified (e.g., growth determination, modularity). MOSAIC highlights emerging challenges associated with standardising databases and demographic measures.

Comparing temporal dynamics of compositional reorganization in long-term studies of birds and fish

The composition of ecological assemblages has changed rapidly over the past century. Compositional reorganization rates are high relative to rates of alpha diversity change, creating an urgent need to understand how this compositional reorganization is progressing. We developed a quantitative framework for comparing temporal trajectories of compositional reorganization and applied it to two long-term bird and marine fish datasets. We then evaluated how the number and magnitude of short-term changes relate to overall rates of change. We found varied trajectories of turnover across birds and fish, with linear directional change predominating in birds and non-directional change more common in fish. The number of changes away from the baseline was a more consistent correlate of the overall rate of change than the magnitude of such changes, but large unreversed changes were found in both fish and birds, as were time series with accelerating compositional change. Compositional reorganization is progressing through a complex mix of temporal trajectories, including both threshold-like behaviour and the accumulation of repeated, linear change.

Elevated compositional change in plant assemblages linked to invasion

Alien species are widely linked to biodiversity change, but the extent to which they are associated with the reshaping of ecological communities is not well understood. One possible mechanism is that assemblages where alien species are found exhibit elevated temporal turnover. To test this, we identified assemblages of vascular plants in the BioTIME database for those assemblages in which alien species are either present or absent and used the Jaccard measure to compute compositional dissimilarity between consecutive censuses. We found that, although alien species are typically rare in invaded assemblages, their presence is associated with an increase in the average rate of compositional change. These differences in compositional change between invaded and uninvaded assemblages are not linked to differences in species richness but rather to species replacement (turnover). Rapid compositional restructuring of assemblages is a major contributor to biodiversity change, and as such, our results suggest a role for alien species in bringing this about.

Quantitative evidence synthesis: a practical guide on meta-analysis, meta-regression, and publication bias tests for environmental sciences

Meta-analysis is a quantitative way of synthesizing results from multiple studies to obtain reliable evidence of an intervention or phenomenon. Indeed, an increasing number of meta-analyses are conducted in environmental sciences, and resulting meta-analytic evidence is often used in environmental policies and decision-making. We conducted a survey of recent meta-analyses in environmental sciences and found poor standards of current meta-analytic practice and reporting. For example, only ~ 40% of the 73 reviewed meta-analyses reported heterogeneity (variation among effect sizes beyond sampling error), and publication bias was assessed in fewer than half. Furthermore, although almost all the meta-analyses had multiple effect sizes originating from the same studies, non-independence among effect sizes was considered in only half of the meta-analyses. To improve the implementation of meta-analysis in environmental sciences, we here outline practical guidance for conducting a meta-analysis in environmental sciences. We describe the key concepts of effect size and meta-analysis and detail procedures for fitting multilevel meta-analysis and meta-regression models and performing associated publication bias tests. We demonstrate a clear need for environmental scientists to embrace multilevel meta-analytic models, which explicitly model dependence among effect sizes, rather than the commonly used random-effects models. Further, we discuss how reporting and visual presentations of meta-analytic results can be much improved by following reporting guidelines such as PRISMA-EcoEvo (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology). This paper, along with the accompanying online tutorial, serves as a practical guide on conducting a complete set of meta-analytic procedures (i.e., meta-analysis, heterogeneity quantification, meta-regression, publication bias tests and sensitivity analysis) and also as a gateway to more advanced, yet appropriate, methods.

Disruption of ecological networks in lakes by climate change and nutrient fluctuations

Climate change interacts with local processes to threaten biodiversity by disrupting the complex network of ecological interactions. While changes in network interactions drastically affect ecosystems, how ecological networks respond to climate change, in particular warming and nutrient supply fluctuations, is largely unknown. Here, using an equation-free modelling approach on monthly plankton community data in ten Swiss lakes, we show that the number and strength of plankton community interactions fluctuate and respond nonlinearly to water temperature and phosphorus. While lakes show system-specific responses, warming generally reduces network interactions, particularly under high phosphate levels. This network reorganization shifts trophic control of food webs, leading to consumers being controlled by resources. Small grazers and cyanobacteria emerge as sensitive indicators of changes in plankton networks. By exposing the outcomes of a complex interplay between environmental drivers, our results provide tools for studying and advancing our understanding of how climate change impacts entire ecological communities.

Regional occupancy increases for widespread species but decreases for narrowly distributed species in metacommunity time series

While human activities are known to elicit rapid turnover in species composition through time, the properties of the species that increase or decrease their spatial occupancy underlying this turnover are less clear. Here, we used an extensive dataset of 238 metacommunity time series of multiple taxa spread across the globe to evaluate whether species that are more widespread (large-ranged species) differed in how they changed their site occupancy over the 10-90 years the metacommunities were monitored relative to species that are more narrowly distributed (small-ranged species). We found that on average, large-ranged species tended to increase in occupancy through time, whereas small-ranged species tended to decrease. These relationships were stronger in marine than in terrestrial and freshwater realms. However, in terrestrial regions, the directional changes in occupancy were less extreme in protected areas. Our findings provide evidence for systematic decreases in occupancy of small-ranged species, and that habitat protection could mitigate these losses in the face of environmental change.