Recent years have seen the greatest ecological disturbances of our times, with global human expansion, species and habitat loss, climate change, and the emergence of new and previously-known infectious diseases. Biodiversity loss affects infectious disease risk by disrupting normal relationships between hosts and pathogens. Mosquito-borne pathogens respond to changing dynamics on multiple trans...

Parallel declines of wild pollinators and pollinator-dependent plants have raised alarms over the loss of pollination services in agroecosystems. A spatially explicit approach is needed to develop specific recommendations regarding the design of agricultural landscapes to sustain wild pollinator communities and the services they provide. I modeled pollination services in agroecosystems using a ...

Armoring shorelines to prevent erosion is a long-standing global practice that has well-documented adverse effects on coastal habitats and organisms. A relatively new form of shoreline protection, referred to as hybrid stabilization, incorporates created marsh in combination with a stabilizing structure such as a low-profile stone sill and is being implemented in many US coastal states as a mea...

BACKGROUND Significant shifts in climate are considered a threat to plants and animals with significant physiological limitations and limited dispersal abilities. The southern Appalachian Mountains are a global hotspot for plethodontid salamander diversity. Plethodontids are lungless ectotherms, so their ecology is strongly governed by temperature and precipitation. Many plethodontid species in...

Demand for information that can be used to manage loggerhead shrikes has recently increased because of concern over declining populations and loss of open, non-forested habitat. A previously-developed habitat model was modified to predict shrike habitat quality on Fort Riley Military Reservation (FRMR) in Kansas. Shrike habitat suitability indices were calculated based on the amount of potentia...

Recent studies have described the architecture of plant–animal mutualistic networks, but little is known on how such networks disassemble as a consequence of global change. This is a relevant question because 1) species interactions seem to be very susceptible to habitat loss, and 2) the loss of a critical fraction of interactions can abruptly change the topology of the entire network with pote...

Habitat loss from urban development threatens native plant populations in many regions of the world. In addition to direct plant mortality, urban intensification potentially impacts pollinator communities and in turn disrupts the pollination mutualisms that are critical to the viability of native plant populations. We placed standardized flowering plant arrays into woodlands along a gradient of...

Habitat fragmentation may severely affect survival of social insect populations as the number of nests per population, not the number of individuals, represents population size, hence they may be particularly prone to loss of genetic diversity. Erosion of genetic diversity may be particularly significant among social Hymenoptera such as bumblebees (Bombus spp.), as this group may be susceptible...

Factors that negatively affect the quality of wildlife habitat are a major concern for conservation. Non-native species invasions, in particular, are perceived as a global threat to the quality of wildlife habitat. Recent evidence indicates that some changes to understory plant communities in northern temperate forests of North America, including invasions by 3 non-native plant species, are fac...

may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. 1 INTRODUCTION Development in rural-urban fringe communities is increasing with the potential to damage healthy ecosystems and endanger the long-term persistence of resident flora and fauna Environmental impacts of development include loss, degradat...