Natural habitat partially mitigates negative pesticide effects on tropical pollinator communities

Human-Induced Disturbance Alters Pollinator Communities in Tropical Mountain Forests

Mountain forest ecosystems in the Andes are threatened by deforestation. Increasing fire frequencies lead to fire-degraded habitats that are often characterized by a persistent fern-dominated vegetation. Little is known about the consequences of these drastic changes in habitat conditions for pollinator communities. In a rapid diversity assessment, we collected individuals of two major groups o...

The effects of habitat fragmentation on bird communities in Hyrcanian forests (Case study: Gorgan Township)

Habitat filtering across tree life stages in tropical forest communities.

Tropical tree communities are shaped by local-scale habitat heterogeneity in the form of topographic and edaphic variation, but the life-history stage at which habitat associations develop remains poorly understood. This is due, in part, to the fact that previous studies have not accounted for the widely disparate sample sizes (number of stems) that result when trees are divided into size class...

Effects of habitat disturbance on tropical forest biodiversity.

It is widely expected that habitat destruction in the tropics will cause a mass extinction in coming years, but the potential magnitude of the loss is unclear. Existing literature has focused on estimating global extinction rates indirectly or on quantifying effects only at local and regional scales. This paper directly predicts global losses in 11 groups of organisms that would ensue from dist...

Effects of pharmaceuticals on natural microbial communities

Due to our extensive use of pharmaceuticals, low concentrations (picomol-nanomol/L) end up in the aquatic environment. Antibiotics comprise a group of pharmaceuticals specifically designed to disrupt microbial biochemical processes, and might therefore in particular have detrimental effects on microbial communities in the environment. However, current environmental risk assessment strategies of...