While climatic extremes are predicted to increase with global warming, we know little about the effect of climatic variability on biome distribution. Here, we show that rainy El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events can enhance tree recruitment in the arid and semiarid ecosystems of north-central Chile and northwest Peru. Tree-ring studies in natural populations revealed that rainy El Niño ep...

Humans are altering the global distributional ranges of plants, while their co-evolved herbivores are frequently left behind. Native herbivores often colonise non-native plants, potentially reducing invasion success or causing economic loss to introduced agricultural crops. We developed a predictive model to forecast novel interactions and verified it with a data set containing hundreds of obse...

Citation: Plass-Johnson JG, Bednarz VN, Hill JM, Jompa J, Ferse SCA and Teichberg M (2018) Contrasting Responses in the Niches of Two Coral Reef Herbivores Along a Gradient of Habitat Disturbance in the Spermonde Archipelago, Indonesia. Front. Mar. Sci. 5:32. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2018.00032 Contrasting Responses in the Niches of Two Coral Reef Herbivores Along a Gradient of Habitat Disturbance in...

Understanding the impacts of invasive species requires placing invasion within a full community context. Plant invaders are often considered in the context of herbivores that may drive invasion by avoiding invaders while consuming natives (enemy escape), or inhibit invasion by consuming invaders (biotic resistance). However, predators that attack those herbivores are rarely considered as major ...

A three population system with a top predator population, i.e. the herbivores, and two prey populations, grass and trees, is considered to model the interaction of herbivores with natural resources. We apply the model for four natural mountain parks in Northern Italy, three located in the Eastern Alps, two of which in the Dolomites and one in the Julian Alps, and one in the Maritime Alps, North...

Differences between native and exotic species in competitive ability and susceptibility to herbivores are hypothesized to facilitate coexistence. However, little fieldwork has been conducted to determine whether these differences are present in invaded communities. Here, we experimentally examined whether asymmetries exist between native and exotic plants in a community invaded for over 200 yea...

Understanding woolly mammoth ecology is key to understanding Pleistocene community dynamics and evaluating the roles of human hunting and climate change in late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions. Previous isotopic studies of mammoths' diet and physiology have been hampered by the 'mammoth conundrum': woolly mammoths have anomalously high collagen δ(15)N values, which are more similar to coeval ...

Interactions among endophytic fungi, woody plants and herbivores are usually studied emphasizing fungal mediated plant-herbivore interactions. Seeking evidence for indication of causal relationships between fungi and herbivores sharing the host plant has been self-feeding reasoning in endophyte literature since the findings that some endophytes, particularly seed-borne grass-endophytes in agron...

Wild radish is an annual plant that exhibits broad spectrum induced resistance to herbivores. In two experiments, we placed potted plants [control, manually clipped, and damaged byPieris rapae(L.) larvae] in theÞeld andassayed forovipositionbyP. rapae(a specialist herbivore), damage by ßea beetles (a specialist herbivore), and damage by rabbits (a generalist herbivore). Induced responses attrac...

Previous bone collagen carbon and nitrogen isotopic studies of Late Pleistocene European cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) have shown that these bears frequently had low nitrogen isotope values, similar to those of herbivores and indicating either unusual physiology related to hibernation or a herbivorous diet. Isotopic analysis of animal bone from the Peştera cu Oase (Cave with Bones), Romania, show...