Biological soil crusts (hereafter, biocrusts) are communities of microorganisms that regulate key ecosystem processes such as water distribution, soil erosion, and nutrient cycling in drylands worldwide. The nature of biocrust function can be influenced by multiple environmental factors, including climatic conditions (e.g., precipitation), interactions with plants, and anthropogenic disturbances. Animal regulation of biocrust function has received less research attention, focusing primarily on livestock trampling and to a much lesser extent on biocrust consumption by mesofauna....

This dataset was used to create Figure 1 within the linked On the Nature of Things article. The article describes how botanists have historically contributed to the field of invasion biology and why botanists should be an important contributor in the coming years. To make this point, we compared the relative frequencies of google ngrams containing the words 'invasive species', 'invasive plants', or the sum of frequencies from several different animal taxa including: ‘invasive insects’,...

The Red-cockaded Woodpecker ( Dryobates borealis , RCW) was listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1973 due to significant population declines resulting from habitat loss and fragmentation, and the species has been intensively managed since then. We reviewed management strategies commonly used to conserve the RCW, emphasizing studies conducted after publication of the most recent Recovery Plan in 2003, to evaluate the efficacy of each strategy across the RCW’s range and identify demographic...

Molluscs biomineralize structures that vary in composition, form, and function, prompting questions about the genetic mechanisms responsible for their production and the evolution of these mechanisms. Chitons (Mollusca, Polyplacophora) are a promising system for studies of biomineralization because they build a range of calcified structures including shell plates and spine- or scale-like sclerites. Chitons also harden the calcified teeth of their rasp-like radula with a coat of iron (as magnetite). Here we present the genome...

Biogeochemical cycling has often been characterized by physical and microbial processes, yet animals can be essential mediators of energy and nutrients in ecosystems. Excretion by aggregated animals can be an important local source of inorganic nutrients in green food webs, however, whether animals are a source of dissolved energy that can support brown food webs is understudied. We tested whether animal aggregations are a substantial flux of bioavailable dissolved organic matter (DOM) by studying spatially...

Fasta sequence for the D. grimshawi Rheb gene model