Environmental variation plays a central role in regulating processes at all levels of ecological organization. Environmental data (e.g., temperature, rainfall, stream discharge, water chemistry) are typically easy to collect in large quantity, a requirement for many datahungry time series tools. Unfortunately, these data are very rarely used effectively in ecology. Here we address this problem ...

We assess the response of pack ice penguins, Emperor (Aptenodytes forsteri) and Adélie (Pygoscelis adeliae), to habitat variability and, then, by modeling habitat alterations, the qualitative changes to their populations, size and distribution, as Earth’s average tropospheric temperature reaches 28C above preindustrial levels (ca. 1860), the benchmark set by the European Union in efforts to red...

Habitat invasibility is a central focus of invasion biology, with implications for basic ecological patterns and processes and for effective invasion management. ‘‘Invasibility’’ is, however, one of the most elusive metrics and misused terms in ecology. Empirical studies and meta-analyses of invasibility have produced inconsistent and even conflicting results. This lack of consistency, and subs...

Pyrogenic plants dominate many fire-prone ecosystems. Their prevalence suggests some advantage to their enhanced flammability, but researchers have had difficulty tying pyrogenicity to individual-level advantages. Based on our review, we propose that enhanced flammability in fire-prone ecosystems should protect the belowground organs and nearby propagules of certain individual plants during fir...

Protective mimicry has been studied extensively for over a century. Mimicry in a competitive context, however, has remained largely neglected. It has been overlooked in mimicry classification schemes, and few systems have been rigorously studied. We define ‘‘competitive mimicry’’ as mimicry that enables access to a defended resource or aids in defense of a resource. We explain how competitive m...

Today, Antarctica exhibits some of the harshest environmental conditions for life on Earth. During the last glacial period, Antarctic terrestrial and marine life was challenged by even more extreme environmental conditions. During the present interglacial period, polar life in the Southern Ocean is sustained mainly by large-scale primary production. We argue that during the last glacial period,...

Ecosystem engineering—the physical modification of habitats by organisms—can create patches with altered species richness relative to adjacent, unmodified patches. The effect of ecosystem engineering on patch-scale species richness is likely to be difficult to predict from the identity of the engineer, the resources altered as a result of engineering, or the identities of the affected species. ...

Ontogenetic development is a fundamental aspect of the life history of all organisms and has major effects on population and community dynamics. We postulate a general conceptual framework for understanding these effects and claim that two potential energetics bottlenecks at the level of the individual organism—the rate by which it develops and the rate by which it reproduces—form a fundamental...

Maternal effects are increasingly recognized as important drivers of population dynamics and determinants of evolutionary trajectories. Recently, there has been a proliferation of studies finding or citing a positive relationship between maternal size/age and offspring size or offspring quality. The relationship between maternal phenotype and offspring size is intriguing in that it is unclear w...

Analyses of growth response to resource availability are the basis for interpreting whether trophic trade-offs contribute to diversity. If different species respond most to resources that are limiting at different times, then those differences may trade off with other trophic or life-history traits that, together, help to maintain diversity. The statistical models used to infer trophic differen...