INTRODUCTION Body size is one of the most fundamental properties of an organism, affecting metabolic rate, lifespan, home range size, reproductive rate, and many other ecological attributes (e.g., Peters 1983, Calder 1984, Schmidt-Nielsen 1984). Ecologists have long been interested in using these regular patterns to gain insight into ecological systems (Peters 1983), and it is increasingly reco...

CONTEXT HIV/AIDS is occurring with increasing frequency in rural areas of the United States, and people living with HIV/AIDS in rural communities report higher levels of perceived stigma than their more urban counterparts. The extent to which stigmatized individuals perceive stigma could be influenced, in part, by prevailing community attitudes. Differences between rural and more metropolitan c...

The characteristics of species within a community can influence the number of species that can coexist within that community. In particular, body size can constrain how many individuals can 'fit' into a community, and overlap in resource use between species depends on differences in their body sizes. Here, using data from 18 communities of strongyloid nematodes living in the stomachs of macropo...

Gaps play a crucial role in maintaining species diversity, yet how community structure and composition influence gap formation is still poorly understood. We apply a spatially structured community model to predict how species diversity and intraspecific aggregation shape gap patterns emerging after climatic events, based on species-specific mortality responses. In multispecies communities, aver...

Global nitrogen cycling is mainly mediated by the activity of microorganisms. Nitrogen cycle processes are mediated by functional groups of microorganisms that are affected by constantly changing environmental conditions and substrate availability. In this study, we investigated the temporal and spatial patterns of nitrifier and denitrifier communities in an intertidal wetland. Soil samples wer...

Climate change over the last two centuries has been associated with significant shifts in diatom community structure in lakes from the high arctic to temperate latitudes. To test the hypotheses that recent climate warming selects for species of smaller size within communities and a decrease in the average size of species within populations, we quantified the size of individual diatom valves fro...