Ecological niche models are useful tools to infer potential spatial and temporal distributions in vector species and to measure epidemiological risk for infectious diseases such as the Leishmaniases. The ecological niche of 28 North and Central American sand fly species, including those with epidemiological relevance, can be used to analyze the vector's ecology and its association with transmis...

Niche theory has driven a century of ecological investigations and has been the starting point for the few studies in existence of ecological ontology. This study investigates how scientists conceptualize niche theory, and uses that information to develop a high level ontological framework. That framework includes process, theory, entities, experiments, space, and time. These components are lin...

Results of previous studies from North America reported that only 14 out of the 20 items from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) were required to assess negative affect, somatic symptoms, and anhedonia. However, it remains unclear whether this three-factor structure of the CES-D would be valid in South Korea. The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of the...

An ongoing debate in ecology concerns the impacts of ecological drift and selection on community assembly. Here, we show that there is a sharp phase transition in diverse ecological communities between a selection dominated regime (the niche phase) and a drift dominated regime (the neutral phase). Simulations and analytic arguments show that the niche phase is favored in communities with large ...

Bioclimatic models are widely used to investigate the impacts of climate change on species distributions. Range shifts are expected to occur as species track their current climate niche yet the potential for exploitation of new ecological opportunities that may arise as ecosystems and communities remodel is rarely considered. Here we show that grasswrens of the Amytornis textilis-modestus compl...

Bats are unusual among mammals in showing great ecological diversity even among closely related species and are thus well suited for studies of adaptation to the ecological background. Here we investigate whether behavioral flexibility and simpleand complex-rule learning performance can be predicted by foraging ecology. We predict faster learning and higher flexibility in animals hunting in mor...

Understanding the mechanisms by which nonnative species successfully invade new regions and the consequences for native fauna is a pressing ecological issue, and one for which niche theory can play an important role. In this paper, we quantify a comprehensive suite of morphological, behavioral, physiological, trophic, and life-history traits for the entire fish species pool in the Colorado Rive...