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Many plants have precise pollen placement strategies, ensuring that large amounts of pollen are deposited on small and discrete areas of pollinators' bodies. This may lead to male–male competition if pre-existing pollen (1) is smothered or displaced by pollen from subsequent male flowers or (2) prevents subsequent pollen from attaching to pollinators. We investigated these alternative hypotheses u
The European Parliament voted against a proposal to curb the use of agricultural pesticides in November 2023. These chemicals, designed to protect crop yield from pest insects and other organisms, can contaminate the water and air and threaten the people and wildlife that maintain the vitality of our landscapes.In some respects, Europe and its governing bodies lead the world in setting and achievi
The concept of prefiguration has gained attention within environmental politics as a way to describe how everyday activism can enable transformation of unsustainable consumption practices, particularly around material necessities. Drawing on the case of Sweden’s flight-free movement, this article extends the research on prefigurative environmentalism to activism aimed at changing non-essential, ye
Transformative change toward sustainability is increasingly recognized as inevitable to avoid the collapse of socio-ecological systems. However, for a deep and system-wide transformation, governance approaches and policymaking need to be changed too. This paper discusses how a diverse value approach in environmental policymaking could be undertaken to foster transformative governance that can furt
Sustainability and migration are typically treated as discrete policy spheres in international, national, and local fora, separated in governance structures and institutions. This results in policy incoherence that hinders just transitions toward more sustainable societies cognizant of mobile realities. This explorative effort identifies the (dis)connections between policy domains using data colle
In addition to the major nutrients carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, many minor elements play an important role in the function of freshwater systems. Such elements may function as essential micronutrients, or they may affect the biota by being toxic, or they play an indirect role by influencing the mobility and availability of other elements. This chapter covers the fundamentals of important mino
Termites play an essential role in decomposing dead plant material in tropical ecosystems and are thus major sources of gaseous C emissions in many environments. In African savannas, fungus-growing termites are among the ecologically most influential termite species. We studied the gas exchange from mounds of two closely related fungus-growing species (Macrotermes subhyalinus and M. michaelseni, r
Bayesian decision analysis is a useful method for risk management decisions, but is limited in its ability to consider severe uncertainty in knowledge, and value ambiguity in management objectives. We study the use of robust Bayesian decision analysis to handle problems where one or both of these issues arise. The robust Bayesian approach models severe uncertainty through bounds on probability dis
Semi-arid and arid ecosystems are important for the global C cycle. Despite this, it remains unclear how organic matter fractions vary across latitudinal gradients, and what drives this variation, in dry ecosystems. In this study, we sampled soils from 100 sites across a latitudinal gradient in the dry valleys of southwestern China to explore the latitudinal patterns of light fraction organic matt
The planet is presently undergoing dramatic changes caused by human activities. We are living in the era of the Anthropocene, where our activities directly affect all living organisms on Earth. Insects constitute a major part of the world’s biodiversity and currently, we see dwindling insect biomass but also outbreaks of certain populations. Most insects rely on chemical communication to locate fo
Interspecific hybridization is the process where closely related species mate and produce offspring with admixed genomes. The genomic revolution has shown that hybridization is common, and that it may represent an important source of novel variation. Although most interspecific hybrids are sterile or less fit than their parents, some may survive and reproduce, enabling the transfer of adaptive var
Based on data from three surveys of the vascular flora of the province of Scania, southernmost Sweden, conducted 1938–1971, 1987–2006 and 2008–2015, we analyse the change in frequency of individual species and groups of species associated with particular vegetation types. A majority of all species have experienced a change in frequency since 1938, and this turnover has continued in recent decades.
Increase in surface water color (browning), caused by rising dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and iron concentrations, has been widely reported and studied in the last couple of decades. This phenomenon has implications to aquatic ecosystem function and biogeochemical carbon cycling. While recovery from acidification and changes in climate-related variables, such as precipitation and length of growi
How to feed the world is a vigorously debated question, but the extent to which possible solutions receive attention in the scientific literature has not been studied. Using textual analysis, we analyse 12,640 research articles to quantify how this discourse evolved over the last 50 years, distinguishing between a focus on three potential levers: total food production, per capita food demand, and
Disentangling the contributions of different processes that influence plant recruitment, such as competition and seed dispersal, is important given the increased human-mediated changes in tropical forest ecosystems. Previous studies have shown that seedling communities in an Afrotropical rainforest in southeastern Nigeria are strongly affected by the loss of important seed-dispersing primates, inc
Observations of increasing water color and organic carbon concentrations in lakes are widespread across the Northern Hemisphere. The drivers of these trends are debated. Declining atmospheric sulfur deposition has been put forward as an important underlying factor, since recovery from acidification enhances mobility of organic matter from surrounding soils. This would suggest that the current brow
Understanding what controls the lateral flux of organic and inorganic carbon from landscapes to surfacewaters is key to fully understanding terrestrial ecosystem carbon balances, the biogeochemistry of fresh-waters, and how the hydrologically-mediated movement of carbon between these ecosystems may be alteredby global change. In this paper, we synthesize current knowledge and identify major knowled
This book is meant as a guide to the evidence available for different conservation interventions and as a starting point in assessing their effectiveness. The assessments are based on the available evidence for the target group of species for each intervention. The assessment may therefore refer to different species or habitat to the one(s) you are considering. Before making any decisions about im
