Although it has been suggested that Pleistocene climate changes drove population differentiation and speciation in many groups of organisms, population genetic evidence in support of this scenario has been ambiguous, and it has often been difficult to distinguish putative vicariance from simple isolation by distance. The sky island communities of the American Southwest present an ideal system i...

Understanding how the environment influences patterns of diversity is vital for effective conservation management, especially in a changing global climate. While assemblage structure and species richness patterns are often correlated with current environmental factors, historical influences may also be considerable, especially for taxa with poor dispersal abilities. Mountain-top regions through...

Projections of future climate change depend upon future anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In preparation for its Fifth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change implemented a new approach to generating emissions scenarios, called ‘Representative Concentration Pathways’ (RCPs), which replace the scenarios in the ‘Special Report on Emissions Scenarios’ (SRES). The RCP...

BACKGROUND In recent decades the frequency and severity of natural disturbances by e.g., strong winds and insect outbreaks has increased considerably in many forest ecosystems around the world. Future climate change is expected to further intensify disturbance regimes, which makes addressing disturbances in ecosystem management a top priority. As a prerequisite a broader understanding of distur...

The analysis of presupposition projection lead researchers to posit in the early 1980's that the meaning of a clause should be viewed as its Context Change Potential rather than as its truth conditions (Heim 1983, following Stalnaker 1974). We argue that this 'dynamic turn' was misguided, and that it leads straight into a dilemma: either one follows Stalnaker in his pragmatic analysis, in which...

Large-scale biogeographical shifts in vegetation are predicted in response to the altered precipitation and temperature regimes associated with global climate change. Vegetation shifts have profound ecological impacts and are an important climate-ecosystem feedback through their alteration of carbon, water, and energy exchanges of the land surface. Of particular concern is the potential for war...

Climate envelope models (CEMs) are widely used to forecast future shifts in species ranges under climate change, but these models are rarely validated against independent data, and their fundamental assumption that climate limits species distributions is rarely tested. Here, we use the data on the introduction of five South African dung beetle species to Australia to test whether CEMs developed...

Eruptive forest insects are highly influential agents of change in forest ecosystems, and their effects have increased with recent climate change. State-dependent life histories contribute significantly to the population dynamics of eruptive forest insect herbivores; however, the proximate mechanisms by which these species shift between states is poorly understood. Laboratory bioassays were con...

Eco-certification has become an increasingly popular market-based tool in the endeavor to reduce negative environmental impacts from fisheries and aquaculture. In this study, we aimed at investigating which psychological consumer characteristics influence demand for eco-labeled seafood by correlating consumers’ stated purchasing of eco-labeled seafood to nine variables: environmental knowledge ...

BACKGROUND Traditional agro-pastoral practices are in decline over much of the Alps (MacDonald et al. 2000), leading to shrub and tree encroachment, and this represents one of the main threats for the conservation of alpine biodiversity, as many plant and animal species are dependent on the presence of semi-natural open habitats. However, quantifying this environmental change and assessing its ...