Plant genotypic variation and intra-specific diversity trump soil nutrient availability to shape old-field structure and function 1. Individual plant genotypes as well as genotypic diversity can shape the structure and function of ecosystems; however, the abiotic environment may modify these genotypic influences on ecosystem-level responses. 2. To explore how the interactions between plant [...]

Electromagnetic Model Reliably Predicts Radar Scattering Characteristics of Airborne Organisms The radar scattering characteristics of aerial animals are typically obtained from controlled laboratory measurements of a freshly harvested specimen. These measurements are tedious to perform, difficult to replicate, and typically yield only a small subset of the full azimuthal, elevational, and polarimetric radio [...]

Migrating birds make strategic decisions at multiple temporal and spatial scales. They must select flight altitudes, speeds, and orientations in order to maintain preferred directions of movement and to minimize energy expenditure and risk. Spring flights follow a rapid phenology, but how this rapid transit translates to in-flight decisions is not clear. We described flight [...]

Bumble bees (Bombus Latreille) provide indispensable ecosystem services for natural and agricultural systems by increasing crop yield and quality. With documented bumble bee declines throughout the world, the need for baseline data on these important insects becomes apparent. The bumble bees of Oklahoma have previously not been surveyed, hampering assessment of temporal change. The objectives [...]

Long-term drought in the southern Great Plains increases the vulnerability of coupled human-environment systems at a variety of scales. Developing better understandings of the dynamics at regional scales will become increasingly important as long-established land-use regimes break down in the face of climate change, resource depletion, and evolving governance. To demonstrate differential vulnerability during drought [...]

Globally, billions of flying animals undergo seasonal migrations, many of which occur at night. The temporal and spatial scales at which migrations occur and our inability to directly observe these nocturnal movements makes monitoring and characterizing this critical period in migratory animals’ life cycles difficult. Remote sensing, therefore, has played an important role in our [...]

Past global change studies have identified changes in species diversity as a major mechanism regulating temporal stability of production, measured as the ratio of the mean to the standard deviation of community biomass. However, the dominant plant functional group can also strongly determine the temporal stability. Here, in a grassland ecosystem subject to 15 years [...]

Concern about the sustainability of intercontinental-scale migration systems grows apace with global change. Traditional organism-centred approaches to this problem have provided insights at the population level, but not at the systems level. We are sceptical that an accumulation of data from a species-by-species approach will yield an understanding of these systems in the near term. [...]

Aerial predator–prey interactions may impact populations of many terrestrial species. Here, we use altitude loggers to study aerial foraging in a native insectivore, the purple martin (Progne subis), in the southern USA. Purple martins fed primarily on mating queens and males of the invasive red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta), and doubled their foraging efficiency [...]

Ecosystem services valuation has become a popular approach to weighing trade-offs in environmental management, particularly where natural resources such as freshwater are limited. The authors assessed multiple stakeholders’ social perception regarding a suite of ecosystem services in a south-central U.S. watershed that is water stressed and experiencing intense sociopolitical conflict. First, the ecosystem service beneficiaries [...]