Intuitively, it may seem that from the perspective of an individual bacterium the ocean is a vast, dilute, and largely homogeneous environment. Microbial oceanographers have typically considered the ocean from this point of view. In reality, marine bacteria inhabit a chemical seascape that is highly heterogeneous down to the microscale, owing to ubiquitous nutrient patches, plumes, and gradient...

We report evidence of hierarchical resource selection by large herbivores and plant neighbouring effects in a Mediterranean ecosystem. Plant palatability was assessed according to herbivore foraging decisions. We hypothesize that under natural conditions large herbivores follow a hierarchical foraging pattern, starting at the landscape scale, and then selecting patches and individual plants. A ...

It is essential for the sustainable development of farmland landscapes to balance ecosystem service trade-offs and improve resource use efficiency during crop production. Thus, an integrative concept-centric qualitative approach was applied by combining patch–corridor–matrix model landscape ecology layout theory farming systems into a theoretical framework. The thesis concludes that comprises t...

[1] The future carbon balance of high-latitude ecosystems is dependent on the sensitivity of biological processes (photosynthesis and respiration) to the physical changes occurring with permafrost thaw. Predicting C exchange in these ecosystems is difficult because the thawing of permafrost is a heterogeneous process that creates a complex landscape. We measured net ecosystem exchange of C usin...

Resisting and recovering from disturbances is a necessity for most species. The strategy is sometimes collective, depending on the aggregation of interacting individuals into regular patterns. However, relating patterns of abundance across scales to both individual behavior and population persistence remains a major challenge for ecology. Such patterns are found in many ecosystems (1), ranging ...