Relative to the NC individuals, the AH individuals demonstrated significantly heightened tendencies to approach ("pull") the heroin-related stimuli in comparison with the neutral stimuli, while their tendencies to avoid ("push") the heroin-related stimuli were marginally blunted, reflecting a special bias for AH individuals to behaviourally approach, and simultaneously resist to avoid, heroin-related cues.
Inputs of nitrogen into terrestrial ecosystems, mainly via the use of ammonium-based fertilizers in agroecosystems, are enormous, but the fate of this nitrogen under elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is not well understood. We have taken advantage of a 15-year free-air CO2 enrichment study to investigate the influence of elevated CO2 on the transformation of ammonium-nitrogen in a rice ecosystem in which ammonium is usually assumed to be stable under anaerobic conditions. We demonstrate that elevated CO2 causes substantial losses of ammonium-nitrogen that result from anaerobic oxidation of ammonium coupled to reduction of iron. We identify a new autotrophic member of the bacterial order Burkholderiales that may use soil CO2 as a carbon source to couple anaerobic ammonium oxidation and iron reduction. These findings offer insight into the coupled cycles of nitrogen and iron in terrestrial ecosystems and raise questions about the loss of ammonium-nitrogen from arable soils under future climate-change scenarios.
Although arboreal camera trapping is a growing field, it has rarely been used for monitoring plant-frugivore interactions in the trees. Frugivore foraging behavior generally occurs in trees, hence arboreal camera trapping can be a potentially useful tool for frugivory research. We developed a camera trap sampling method to monitor plant-frugivore interactions during mature fruiting periods. We used this method to monitor 318 individuals (camera sites) of 18 fleshy-fruit plant species on 22 subtropical land-bridge islands in the Thousand Island Lake, China. We recorded a total of at least 52 frugivorous animals, including a ground-foraging bird species (Lophura nycthemera) and several mammals with foraging behaviors in the trees. We also recorded 4399 independent interaction events, including 275 unique plant-bird interactions. We proposed a framework to classify interaction types and performed a sampling completeness test. We found that a sampling strategy that covered approximately a third of the fruit maturation period when most fruits were ripe was sufficient to sample plant-frugivore interactions. Our results demonstrated that our sampling method with camera transects is reliable to monitor plantfrugivore interactions in a fragmented landscape. This study helps to lay the methodological foundation for building networks of plant-frugivore interactions with arboreal camera trapping on large spatial/temporal scales. As a noninvasive, labor-saving, and largely unbiased sampling method, the field application of arboreal camera trapping in different regions can advance the technology of biodiversity monitoring and lead to more accurate biodiversity inventories in arboreal environments.
Habitat fragmentation impacts seed dispersal processes that are important in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, it is still unclear how habitat fragmentation affects frugivorous interactions due to the lack of high-quality data on plant-frugivore networks. Here we recorded 10,117 plant-frugivore interactions from 22 reservoir islands and six nearby mainland sites using the technology of arboreal camera trapping to assess the effects of island area and isolation on the diversity, structure, and stability of plant-frugivore networks. We found that network simplification under habitat fragmentation reduces the number of interactions involving specialized species and large-bodied frugivores. Small islands had more connected, less modular, and more nested networks that consisted mainly of small-bodied birds and abundant plants, as well as showed evidence of interaction release (i.e., dietary expansion of frugivores). Our results reveal the importance of preserving large forest remnants to support plant-frugivore interaction diversity and forest functionality.
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