The mid-domain effect states that in a spatially bounded domain species richness tends to decrease from the center towards the boundary, thus producing a peak or plateau of species richness in the middle of the domain even in the absence of any …
Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is the main energy source for marine heterotrophic microorganisms, but a small fraction of DOC resists microbial degradation and accumulates in the ocean. The reason behind this recalcitrance is unknown. We test whether the long-term stability of DOC requires the existence of structurally refractory molecules, using a mechanistic model comprising a diverse network of microbe-substrate interactions...
The number of released individuals, which is a component of propagule pressure, is considered to be a major driver for the establishment success of non-native species. However, propagule pressure is often assumed to result from single or few release …
Correlations among plant traits often reflect important trade‐offs or allometric relationships in biological functions like carbon gain, support, water uptake, and reproduction that are associated with different plant organs. Whether trait …
Regular, long-distance migrations of thousands of animal species have consequences for the ecosystems that they visit, modifying trophic interactions and transporting many non-pathogenic and pathogenic organisms. The spatial structure and dynamic …
Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a highly diverse mixture of compounds, accounting for one of the world's largest active carbon pools. The surprising recalcitrance of some DOM compounds to bacterial degradation has recently been associated with its …
Species within a habitat are not uniformly distributed. However this aspect of community structure, which is fundamental to many conservation activities, is neglected in the majority of models of food web assembly. To address this issue, we introduce …
The interplay of population dynamics and evolution within ecological communities has been of long-standing interest for ecologists and can give rise to evolutionary cycles, e.g. taxon cycles. Evolutionary cycling was intensely studied in small …
Many empirical food webs contain multiple resources, which can lead to the emergence of sub-communities—partitions—in a food web that are weakly connected with each other. These partitions interact and affect the complete food web. However, the fact …
Predicting the arrival of alien species remains a big challenge, which is assumed to be a consequence of the complexity of the invasion process. Here, we demonstrate that spreading of alien marine species can be predicted by a simple model using only global shipping intensities, environmental variables, and species occurrence data. We provide species lists of the next potentially invading species in a local habitat or species causing harmful algal blooms with their associated probability of invasion. This will help to improve mitigation strategies to reduce the further introduction of alien species. Although this study focuses on marine algae, the model approach can be easily adopted to other taxonomic groups and their respective drivers of invasion