Cold-water corals are azooxanthellate species found throughout the ocean at water depths down to 5000 m. They occur in patches, reefs or large mound structures up to 380 m high, and as ecosystem engineers create important habitats for a diverse fauna. However, the majority of these habitats are now within reach of deep-sea bottom trawling. Many have been severely damaged or are under threat, de...

The effects of herbivores on landscape patterns and ecosystem processes have generally been inferred only from small-plot or exclosure experiments. However, it is important to directly determine the interactions between herbivores and landscape patterns, because herbivores range over large portions of the landscape to meet requirements for food and shelter. In two valleys on Isle Royale, Michig...

We present a method to create universal, robust, targeted adversarial image patches in the real world. The patches are universal because they can be used to attack any scene, robust because they work under a wide variety of transformations, and targeted because they can cause a classifier to output any target class. These adversarial patches can be printed, added to any scene, photographed, and...

Fine-scale biodiversity is increasingly recognized as important to ecosystem-level processes. Remote sensing technologies have great potential to estimate both biodiversity and ecosystem function over large spatial scales. Here, we demonstrate the capacity of imaging spectroscopy to discriminate among genotypes of Populus tremuloides (trembling aspen), one of the most genetically diverse and wi...

In recent years there has been a shift in biodiversity conservation efforts from the confines of enclosed protected areas to a more expansive view of interlinked habitat patches across multiple land tenure types and land uses. However, much work remains on how conservation managers can intervene in such a system to achieve the sustainabil-ity of basic conservation goals. An agent-based model of...

The Levins metapopulation model describes the dynamics of several populations in patches of suitable habitat. These populations may go extinct, leaving empty patches of suitable habitat, but these empty patches may be recolonized by other populations via dispersal. The metapopulation can therefore persist if recolonizations balance local extinctions. This simple model has been criticized for it...

(1) Publish a theoretical manuscript (or group of manuscripts) that articulates our interdisciplinary approach to global ecosystem service valuation (2) Create a database that brings relevant social, economic, and ecological data together in a fully relational format (3) Develop an integrated, dynamic model of ecological and economic systems to more comprehensively evaluate ecosystem services a...

the present study was conducted to assess the effect of dung beetles on sheep dung removal and seed dispersal in semi steppe rangelands of shahrekord province with poor condition located in iran. therefore, the large (1 cm2) and small size (1 mm2) meshes were used and filled by sheep dung in six treatments. to evaluate the role of the insects in seeds translocation, three sizes of plastic beads...