One-way facilitation in plants has been found in many harsh environments and their role as structural forces governing species composition in plant communities is now well established. However, reciprocal positive effects benefiting two interacting species have seldom been reported and, in recent reviews, conceptually considered merely as facilitation when in fact there is room for adaptive strategies ...

Small rodents are prevalent and functionally important across the world's biomes, making their monitoring salient for ecosystem management, conservation, forestry, and agriculture. There is a growing need for cost-effective and noninvasive methods for large-scale, intensive sampling. Fecal pellet counts readily provide relative abundance indices, and given suitable analytical methods, feces could ...

Population size has increasingly been taken as the driver of past human environmental impact worldwide, and particularly in the Arctic. However, sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA), pollen and archaeological data show that over the last 12,000 years, paleoeconomy and culture determined human impacts on the terrestrial ecology of Arctic Norway. The large Mortensnes site complex (Ceavccagea ¯dgi, 70◦N) ...

<p>1. Plant biodiversity, which is fundamental for the delivery of ecosystem services, is in decline. Yet, knowledge about how plant biodiversity is perceived and appreciated is scarce. <p>2. We studied biologists' and laypeople's perception and appreciation for plant communities that differ in plant biodiversity,using ranges of plant biodiversity known to affect ecosystem services. We investigate ...

What drives ecosystem buildup, diversity, and stability? We assess species arrival and ecosystem changes across 16 millennia by combining regional-scale plant sedimentary ancient DNA from Fennoscandia with near-complete DNA and trait databases. We show that postglacial arrival time varies within and between plant growth forms. Further, arrival times were mainly predicted by adaptation to temperature, ...

Rangifer (caribou/reindeer) management has been suggested to mitigate the temperature- driven transition of Arctic tundra into a shrubland state, yet how this happens is uncertain. Here we study this much focused ecosystem state transition in riparian areas, where palatable willows (Salix) are dominant tall shrubs and highly responsive to climate change. For the state transition to take place, ...

The effects of climate change on species richness are debated but can be informed by the past. Here, we generated a sedimentary ancient DNA dataset covering 10 lakes and applied novel methods for data harmonization. We assessed the impact of Holocene climate changes and nutrients on terrestrial plant richness in northern Fennoscandia. We find that richness increased steeply during the rapidly warming ...

In the face of climate change, populations have two survival options − they can remain in situ and tolerate the new climatic conditions (“stay”), or they can move to track their climatic niches (“go”). For sessile and small-stature organisms like alpine plants, staying requires broad climatic tolerances, realized niche shifts due to changing biotic interactions, acclimation through plasticity, or ...

Tap av dyr er en utfordring og et sentralt tema i norsk tamreindrift. Dette kunnskapsgrunnlaget beskriver status for hva vi vet om tapsomfang, tapsårsaker og tapsammenhenger innen områdene tap av rein til rovvilt, sykdom, klimarelatert tap, påkjørsler og grunnet kumulative effekter. Videre setter den fokus på forebyggende tiltak og hvilke felt man trenger ytterligere kunnskapsbygging på. Gjennomgående ...

Variability in biotic interaction strength is an integral part of food web functioning. However, the consequences of the spatial and temporal variability of biotic interactions are poorly known, in particular for predicting species abundance and distribution. The amplitude of rodent population cycles (i.e., peak-phase abundances) has been hypothesized to be determined by vegetation properties ...