Alpine treelines are expected to move upslope with a warming climate. However, so far treelines have responded inconsistently and future shifts remain difficult to predict since many factors unrelated to temperature, such as biotic interactions, affect responses at the local scale. Especially during the earliest regeneration stages, trees can be strongly influenced by alpine vegetation via both competition and facilitation. We aimed to understand the relative importance of these two types of interaction in different...

Post-dispersal predation in epiphytes is poorly documented. In the course of a study on in situ germination of two Tillandsia species in a deciduous forest in Yucatan, Mexico, post-dispersal seed predation rates by the Yucatan deer mouse (Peromyscus yucatanicus) averaged 90%. Post-dispersal predation was thus more limiting than drought.

Little is known about the potential for acclimatization or adaptation of corals to ocean acidification and even less about the molecular mechanisms underpinning these processes. Here we examine global gene expression patterns in corals and their intracellular algal symbionts from two replicate population pairs in Papua New Guinea that have undergone long-term acclimatization to natural variation in pCO2. In the coral host, only 61 genes were differentially expressed in response to pCO2 environment, but the...

1. Global concern about human impact on biological diversity has triggered an intense research agenda on drivers and consequences of biodiversity change in parallel with international policy seeking to conserve biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions. Quantifying the trends in biodiversity is far from trivial, however, as recently documented by meta-analyses which report little if any net change of local species richness through time. 2. Here, we summarize several limitations of species richness as a metric...