The publish-or-perish culture in academia has catalysed the development of an unethical publishing system. This system is characterised by the proliferation of journals and publishers—unaffiliated with learned societies or universities—that maintain extremely large revenues and profit margins diverting funds away from the academic community. Early career researchers (ECRs) are particularly vulnerable to the consequences of this publishing system because of intersecting factors, including pressure to pursue high impact publications, rising publication costs and job insecurity. Moving towards a more ethical system requires that scientists advocate for structural change by making career choices that come with risks, many of which disproportionately impact ECRs. We illuminate major issues facing ECRs in Ecology and Evolution under the current publishing system, and propose a portfolio of actions to promote systemic change that can be implemented by ECRs and established researchers.

An individual’s fitness cost associated with environmental change likely depends on the rate of adaptive phenotypic plasticity, and yet our understanding of plasticity rates in an ecological and evolutionary context remains limited. We provide the first quantitative synthesis of existing plasticity rate data, focusing on acclimation of temperature tolerance in ectothermic animals, where we demonstrate applicability of a recently proposed analytical approach. The analyses reveal considerable variation in plasticity rates of this trait among species, with half-times (how long it takes for the initial deviation from the acclimated phenotype to be reduced by 50% when individuals are shifted to a new environment) ranging from 3.7 to 770.2 h. Furthermore, rates differ among higher taxa, being higher for amphibians and reptiles than for crustaceans and fishes, and with insects being intermediate. We argue that a more comprehensive understanding of phenotypic plasticity will be attained through increased focus on the rate parameter.

An important hypothesis for how plants respond to introduction to new ranges is the evolution of increased competitive ability (EICA). EICA predicts that biogeographical release from natural enemies initiates a tradeoff in which exotic species in non-native ranges become larger and more competitive, but invest less in consumer defenses, relative to populations in native ranges. This tradeoff is exceptionally complex because detecting concomitant biogeographical shifts in competitive ability and consumer defense depend upon which traits are targeted, how competition is measured, the defense chemicals quantified, whether defense chemicals do more than defend, whether “herbivory” is artificial or natural, and where consumers fall on the generalist-specialist spectrum. Previous meta-analyses have successfully identified patterns but have yet to fully disentangle this complexity. We used meta-analysis to reevaluate traditional metrics used to test EICA theory and then expanded on these metrics by partitioning competitive effect and competitive tolerance measures and testing Leaf Specific Mass in detail as a response trait. Unlike previous syntheses, our meta-analyses detected evidence consistent with the classic tradeoff inherent to EICA. Plants from non-native ranges imposed greater competitive effects than plants from native ranges and were less quantitatively defended than plants from native ranges. Our results for defense were not based on complex leaf chemistry, but instead were estimated from tannins, toughness traits, and primarily Leaf Specific Mass. Species specificity occurred but did not influence the general patterns. As for all evidence for EICA-like tradeoffs, we do not know if the biogeographical differences we found were caused by tradeoffs per se, but they are consistent with predictions derived from the overarching hypothesis. Underestimating physical leaf structure may have contributed to two decades of tepid perspectives on the tradeoffs fundamental to EICA.

Ecosystems remain under enormous pressure from multiple anthropogenic stressors. Manipulative experiments evaluating stressor interactions and impacts mostly apply stressors under static conditions without considering how variable stressor intensity (i.e., fluctuations) and synchronicity (i.e., timing of fluctuations) affect biological responses. We ask how variable stressor intensity and synchronicity, and interaction type, can influence how multiple stressors affect seagrass. At the highest intensities, fluctuating stressors applied asynchronously reduced seagrass biomass 36% more than for static stressors, yet no such difference occurred for photosynthetic capacity. Testing three separate hypotheses to predict underlying drivers of differences in biological responses highlighted alternative modes of action dependent on how stressors fluctuated over time. Given that environmental conditions are constantly changing, assessing static stressors may lead to inaccurate predictions of cumulative effects. Translating multiple stressor experiments to the real-world, therefore, requires considering variability in stressor intensity and the synchronicity of fluctuations.

Positive interactions have been hypothesized to influence plant community dynamics and species invasions. However, their prevalence and importance relative to negative interactions remain unclear, but are fundamentally important for both theoretical and applied ecology. We examined pairwise biotic interactions using over 50 years of successional data to assess the prevalence of positive interactions and their effects on each focal species (either native or exotic). We found that positive interactions were widespread and the relative frequency of positive and negative interactions varied with establishment stage and between native and exotic species. Specifically, positive interactions were more frequent during early establishment and less frequent at later stages. Positive interactions involving native species were more frequent and stronger than those between exotic species, reducing the impact of invasional meltdown on succession. Our study highlights the role of positive native interactions in shielding communities from biological invasion and enhancing the potential for long-term resilience.

1. Thermal performance curves (TPCs) are commonly used to forecast species’ responses to temperature change. Recent work has demonstrated that the breadth and shape of a consumer’s TPC change with resource densities, highlighting the potential for inaccurate forecasts if resource densities are not static. In particular, if resource densities decline, the optimal temperature and breadth of thermal performance also declines leading to an enhanced risk of warming, particularly among species that may incur additional costs of behavioral thermoregulation. 2. Here, we investigate the relationship between resource density and temperature (warming) on the persistence of a consumer population which exerts top-down control on its resource via trophic interaction. Trophic coupling generally reduces the potential for resource declines to exacerbate the negative effects of warming on consumers; when warming has negative effects on the consumer, resource densities tend to increase due to a reduction in top-down control. However, if resources are more sensitive to warming (e.g. due to an asymmetry amongst their thermal performance curves), the negative effects of warming on consumers can be exacerbated by declining resources. 3. Our work elucidates the importance of jointly considering temperature and resource limitation when utilizing assessing the thermal performance of species. We demonstrate how knowledge of the thermal performance of a resource population can be used to generate realized consumer thermal performance curves.

As invasive species spread, the ability of local communities to resist invasion depends on the strength of biotic interactions. Evolutionarily unused to the invader, native predators or herbivores may be initially wary of consuming newcomers, allowing them to proliferate. However, these relationships may be highly dynamic, and novel consumer-resource interactions could form as familiarity grows. Here, we explore the development of effective biotic resistance towards a highly invasive alga using multiple space-for-time approaches. We show that the principal native Mediterranean herbivore learns to consume the invader within less than a decade. At recently invaded sites, the herbivore actively avoided the alga, shifting to distinct preference and high consumptions at older sites. This rapid strengthening of the interaction contributed to the eventual collapse of the alga after an initial dominance. Therefore, our results stress the importance of conserving key native populations to allow communities to develop effective resistance mechanisms against invaders.

The potential for forecasting the dynamics of ecological systems is currently unclear, with contrasting opinions regarding its feasibility due to ecological complexity. To investigate forecast skill within and across system complexity, we monitored a microbial system exposed to either constant or fluctuating temperatures in a five months long laboratory experiment. We tested how forecasting of species abundances depends on number and strength of interactions and on model size (number of predictors). We also tested how greater system complexity (i.e. the fluctuating temperatures) impacted these relations. We found that the more a species interacted, the weaker these interactions were and the better its abundance was predicted. Forecast skill increased with model size. Greater system complexity decreased forecast skill for three out of eight species. These insights into how abundance prediction depends on the embedding of the species within the system and on overall system complexity could improve species forecasting and monitoring.

Primary consumers in aquatic ecosystems are frequently limited by the quality of their food, often expressed as phytoplankton elemental and biochemical composition. Effects of these food quality indicators vary across studies, and the relative importance of elemental (nitrogen and phosphorus) versus biochemical (fatty acid and sterol) limitation in aquatic food webs has been debated. Here we present results of a meta-analysis using >100 experimental studies, which confirms that limitation by N, P, essential fatty acids, and sterols all have significant negative effects on zooplankton performance. However, effects varied by grazer response (growth versus reproduction), specific manipulation, and across taxa. P limitation had greater effects on zooplankton growth than fatty acids, but P and fatty acid limitation had equal effects on reproduction. Furthermore, we show that nutrient co-limitation in zooplankton occurs, that indirect effects induced by P limitation exceed direct effects of mineral P limitation, that effects of nutrient amendments using laboratory phytoplankton isolates exceed those using natural field communities, and that algal physiology mediates zooplankton responses to nutrient limitation. Our meta-analysis reconciles contrasting views about the role of various food quality indicators, and their interactions, for zooplankton performance, and provides a mechanistic understanding of how environmental change affects trophic transfer.

The storage effect is a general explanation for coexistence in a variable environment. The generality of the storage effect is both a strength — it can be quantified in many systems — and a challenge — there is not a clear relationship between the abstract conditions for storage effect and species’ life-history traits (e.g., dormancy, stage-structure, non-overlapping generations), thus precluding a simple ecological interpretation of the storage effect. Our goal here is to provide a clearer understanding of the conditions for the storage effect as a step towards a better general explanation for coexistence in a variable environment. Our approach focuses on dividing one of the key conditions for the storage effect, covariance between environment and competition, into two pieces, namely that there must be a causal relationship between environment and competition, and that the effects of the environment do not change too quickly. This finer-grained definition can explain a number of previous results, including 1) that the storage effect promotes annual plant coexistence when the germination rate fluctuates, but not when the seed yield fluctuates, 2) that the storage effect is more likely to be induced by resource competition than apparent competition, and 3) that the spatial storage effect is more probable than the temporal storage effect. Additionally, our expanded definition suggests two novel mechanisms by which the temporal storage effect can arise: transgenerational plasticity, and causal chains of environmental variables. These mechanisms produce coexistence via the storage effect without any need for stage structure or a temporally autocorrelated environment.

The dynamics of cyclic populations distributed in space result from the relative strength of synchronising influences and the limited dispersal of destabilising factors (activators and inhibitors), known to cause multi-annual population cycles. However, while each of these have been well studied in isolation, there is limited empirical evidence about how the processes of synchronisation and activation-inhibition act together, largely owing to the scarcity of datasets with sufficient spatial and temporal scale. We assessed a variety of models that could be underlying the spatio-temporal pattern, designed to capture both theoretical and empirical understandings of travelling waves using large-scale (> 35,000 km2), multi-year (2011-2017) field monitoring data on abundances of common vole (Microtus arvalis), a cyclic agricultural rodent pest. We found most support for a pattern formed from the summation of two radial travelling waves with contrasting speeds that together describe population growth rates across the region.

Marine microbial ecosystems underpin global biogeochemical cycles and play a central role in the regulation of Earth's climate. These communities are extremely diverse, and their taxonomic composition varies considerably across ocean basins. It has however been difficult to establish links between taxonomic diversity and ecosystem function, and the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underpinning taxonomic variation are not well understood. Here we use an individual-based eco-evolutionary model in which taxonomic diversity emerges as a consequence of evolutionary history. Using this model we are able to show that virtually unlimited genetic divergence can be supported in highly abundant and rapidly evolving assemblages, even in the absence of niche separation. With a steady stream of genetic, epigenetic and plastic heritable changes to phenotype, competitive exclusion may be weakened, allowing sustained coexistence of nearly neutral phenotypes with highly divergent lineages. This response may help to explain observed patterns of taxonomic diversity and functional redundancy - without recourse to hidden dimensions of niche partitioning. In light of these results we suggest that individual-level variability is a key driver of species coexistence and the maintenance of microbial biodiversity.

Predicting the impacts of multiple stressors is important for informing ecosystem management, but is impeded by a lack of a general framework for predicting whether stressors interact synergistically, additively, or antagonistically. Here we use process-based models to study how interactions generalise across three levels of bio-logical organisation (physiological, population, and community) for a simulated two-stressor experiment on a seagrass model system. We found that the same underlying processes could result in synergistic, additive or antagonistic interactions, with interaction type depending on initial conditions, experiment duration, stressor dynamics, and consumer presence. Our results help explain why meta-analyses of multiple stressor experimental results have struggled to identify predictors of consistently non-additive interactions in the natural environment. Experiments run over longer temporal scales, with treatments across gradients of stressor magnitude, are needed to identify the processes that underpin how stressors interact and provide useful predictions to management.

Studies of populations oscillating through time have a long history in ecology as these dynamics can help provide insights into the causes of population regulation. A particularly difficult challenge is determining the relative role of deterministic versus stochastic forces in producing this oscillatory behavior. Another classic ecological study area is the study of spatial synchrony which also has helped unravel underlying population dynamic principles. One possible approach to understanding the causes of population cycles is based on the idea that a focus on spatiotemporal behavior, oscillations in coupled populations, can provide much further insight into the relative role of deterministic versus stochastic forces. Using ideas based on concepts from statistical physics, we develop results showing that in a system with coupling between adjacent populations, a study of spatial synchrony provides much information about the underlying causes of oscillations. Novel, to ecology, measures of spatial synchrony are a key step.

Foraging by consumers acts as a biotic filtering mechanism for biodiversity at the trophic level of resources. Variation in foraging behaviour have cascading effects on abundance, diversity, and functional trait composition of the community of resource species. Here we propose diversity at giving-up density (DivGUD), when foragers quit exploring a patch, as a novel concept and simple measure to quantify these effects at multiple spatial scales. In experimental landscapes, patch residency of wild rodents decreased local α-DivGUD (via elevated mortality of species with large seeds) and regional γ-DivGUD, while dissimilarity among patches in a landscape (ß-DivGUD) increased. Thus, DivGUD provides a framework linking theories of adaptive foraging behaviour with community ecology allowing to investigate cascading indirect predation effects across multiple trophic levels e.g. the ecology-of-fear framework; feedbacks between functional trait composition of resource species and consumer communities; and effects of inter-individual differences among foragers on the biodiversity of resource communities.

Ecological theory suggests that predators should keep prey populations healthy by reducing parasite burdens. However, empirical studies show that predators often have minimal effects on, or even increase, parasitism in prey. To quantify the overall magnitude and direction of the effect of predation on parasitism in prey, we conducted a meta-analysis of 50 empirical studies. We also examined how key attributes of these studies, including parasite type, study design, and predator interaction type (consumptive vs. non-consumptive) contributed to variation in the predator-prey-parasite interaction. We found that the overall effect of predation on parasitism differed between parasites and parasitoids and that predator interaction type, and whether a predator was a non-host spreader of parasites were the most important traits predicting the parasite response. Our results suggest that the mechanistic basis of predator-prey interactions strongly influences the effects of predators on parasites and that these effects, while context dependent, are predictable.

Carotenoids are important pigments producing integument coloration; however, their dietary availability may be limited in some environments. Many species produce red to yellow hues using a combination of carotenoids and self-synthesised pteridine pigments. A compelling but untested hypothesis is that pteridines replace carotenoids in environments where carotenoid availability is limited. Based on a phylogenetic comparative analysis of pigment concentrations in agamid lizards, we show that environmental gradients predict the ratio of carotenoids to pteridines; carotenoid concentrations are lower and pteridine concentrations higher in arid environments with low vegetation productivity. Both carotenoid and pteridine pigments were present in all species, but only pteridine concentrations explained colour variation among species and there were no correlations between carotenoid and pteridine pigments with similar hue. These results suggest that pteridine pigments replace carotenoids in carotenoid-limited environments, irrespective of skin hue, presumably because it is metabolically cheaper to synthesise pteridines than to acquire and sequester carotenoids when carotenoids are rare.

Community composition is a primary determinant of how biodiversity change influences ecosystem functioning and, therefore, the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF). We examine the consequences of community composition across six structurally realistic plant community models. We find that a positive correlation between species’ functioning in monoculture vs. their dominance in mixture with regards to a specific function (the “function-dominance correlation”) generates a positive relationship between realized diversity and ecosystem functioning across species richness treatments. However, because realised diversity declines when few species dominate, a positive function-dominance correlation generates a negative relationship between realized diversity and ecosystem functioning within species richness treatments. Removing seed inflow strengthens the link between the function-dominance correlation and BEF relationships across species richness treatments but weakens it within them. These results suggest that changes in species’ identities in a local species pool may more strongly affect ecosystem functioning than changes in species richness.