Including ecosystem functions into restoration ecology has been repeatedly suggested, yet there is limited evidence that this is taking place without bias to certain habitats, species, or functions. We reviewed the inclusion of ecosystem functions in restoration and potential relations to habitats and species by extracting 224 publications from the literature (2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013). Most studies investigated forests, fewer grasslands or freshwaters, and fewest wetlands or marine habitats. Of all studies, 14% analyzed only ecosystem functions, 44% considered both biotic composition and functions, 42% exclusively studied the biotic component, mostly vascular plants, more rarely invertebrates or vertebrates, and least often microbes. Most studies investigating ecosystem functions focused on nutrient cycling (26%), whereas productivity (18%), water relations (16%), and geomorphological processes (14%) were less covered; carbon sequestration (10%), decomposition (6%), and trophic interactions (6%) were rarely studied. Monitoring of ecosystem functions was common in forests and grasslands, but the functions considered depended on the study organisms. These associations indicate research opportunities for certain habitats, species, and functions. Overall, the call to include ecosystem functions in restoration has been heard; however, a lack of clarity about the ecosystem functions to be included and deficits of feasible field methods are major obstacles for a functional approach. Restoration ecology should learn from recent advances in rapid assessment of ecosystem functions, and by a closer integration with biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research. Not all functions need to be measured in all ecosystems, but more functions than the few commonly addressed would improve the understanding of restored ecosystems.

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Abstract1. Biological conclusions drawn from phylogenetic comparative methods can be sensitive to uncertainty in species sampling, phylogeny and data. To be confident about our conclusions, we need to quantify their robustness to such uncertainty.2. We present sensiPhy, an r-package, to easily and rapidly perform sensitivity analysis for phylogenetic comparative methods. sensiPhy allows researchers to evaluate the sampling effort, detect influential species and clades, assess phylogenetic uncertainty and quantify the effects of intraspecific variation, for phylogenetic regression and for metrics of phylogenetic signal, diversification and trait evolution.3. Uniquely, sensiPhy allows users to simultaneously quantify the effects of different types of uncertainty and potential interactions among them.4. Using real data, we show how conclusions from comparative methods can be affected by uncertainty and how sensiPhy can help determine if a conclusion is robust.5. By providing a single, intuitive and user-friendly resource that can evaluate various sources of uncertainty, sensiPhy aims to encourage researchers, and particularly less-experienced users, to incorporate sensitivity analyses in their phylogenetic comparative analyses. K E Y W O R D Sbias, diversification, PGLS, phylogenetic regression, robustness, trait evolution | Methods in Ecology and EvoluঞonPATERNO ET Al. biology (Cooper et al., 2016;Cornwell & Nakagawa, 2017;Donoghue & Ackerly, 1996). Here, we present sensiPhy, an r-package, to perform sensitivity analysis for the most frequently used phylogenetic comparative methods. Our main goal is to make it easier for lessexperienced users to implement the best practices when running comparative analyses. To our knowledge, this is the first effort to combine in a single resource functions to account for three types of uncertainty in commonly used comparative methods. | THE s e n s i P h y PACK AG EsensiPhy is written in the r-language (R Core Team, 2017) and is available on the CRAN repository. The package provides an umbrella of statistical and graphical methods to estimate and report sensitivity to uncertainty in phylogenetic comparative analysis (PGLS, phylogenetic signal, diversification and trait evolution). We leverage methods implemented in the r-packages Phylolm, Phytools and geiger (Harmon, Weir, Brock, Glor, & Challenger, 2008;Ho & Ané, 2014;Revell, 2012) and implement functions to perform sensitivity analysis for phylogenetic generalized least squares models (PGLS; both using linear and logistic regression models), for estimates of phylogenetic signal in trait data (Blomberg, Garland, & Ives, 2003;Pagel, 1999), for macroevolutionary models (both continuous and discrete, binary, traits) and estimates of diversification rates (Harmon et al., 2008;Magallon & Sanderson, 2001). For each type of sensitivity analysis, a specific set of diagnostics graphics and summary statistics are provided ( Figure 1). In all PGLS functions, the evolutionary model to use can be specified (e.g. Brownian Motion and Ornst...

Aims Our main aims are to test how: (1) different nurse species modulate the early establishment of multiple beneficiary species in a degraded area; (2) the intensity and direction of species‐specific interactions between nurse and beneficiary species change during beneficiary ontogeny. Location A shrubby Caatinga forest at Petrolina, northeast Brazil, degraded by grazing and logging activities in recent decades. Methods We conducted a factorial multi‐species experiment in which seeds and seedlings of five beneficiary species were sown in the presence and absence of three pioneer tree species. Beneficiary species performance was monitored for different ontogenetic stages. Results We found evidence of species‐specific facilitation in which the intensity and outcome of the interactions between nurse and beneficiary species varied depending on species identity. Additionally, for most combinations of nurse and beneficiary species, ontogenetic shifts from positive to neutral or negative interactions were observed with increasing beneficiary age. Conclusions We provide experimental evidence that nurse and beneficiary species identity simultaneously influence the balance between facilitation and competition. Our results suggest that ontogenetic shifts may be a widespread phenomenon in semi‐arid ecosystems. We discuss that a key mechanism explaining these findings is the match between what nurse species offer and what beneficiary species require in terms of resources and conditions. As a consequence, different nurse species tend to favour or inhibit unique sets of beneficiary species beneath their canopies. We argue that species‐specific facilitation is an overlooked mechanism promoting β‐diversity during community succession.

The Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to provide the means and incentives for upscaling restoration efforts worldwide. Although ecosystem restoration is a broad, interdisciplinary concept, effective ecological restoration requires sound ecological knowledge to successfully restore biodiversity and ecosystem services in degraded landscapes. We emphasize the critical role of knowledge and data sharing to inform synthesis for the most robust restoration science possible. Such synthesis is critical for helping restoration ecologists better understand how context affects restoration outcomes, and to increase predictive capacity of restoration actions. This predictive capacity can help to provide better information for evidence‐based decision‐making, and scale‐up approaches to meet ambitious targets for restoration. We advocate for a concerted effort to collate species‐level, fine‐scale, ecological community data from restoration studies across a wide range of environmental and ecological gradients. Well‐articulated associated metadata relevant to experience and social or landscape contexts can further be used to explain outcomes. These data could be carefully curated and made openly available to the restoration community to help to maximize evidence‐based knowledge sharing, enable flexible re‐use of existing data and support predictive capacity in ecological community responses to restoration actions. We detail how integrated data, analysis and knowledge sharing via synthesis can support shared success in restoration ecology by identifying successful and unsuccessful outcomes across diverse systems and scales. We also discuss potential interdisciplinary solutions and approaches to overcome challenges associated with bringing together subfields of restoration practice. Sharing this knowledge and data openly can directly inform actions and help to improve outcomes for the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Flower biomass varies widely across the angiosperms. Each plant species invests a given amount of biomass to construct its sex organs. A comparative understanding of how this limited resource is partitioned among primary (male and female structures) and secondary (petals and sepals) sexual organs on hermaphrodite species can shed light on general evolutionary processes behind flower evolution. Here, we use allometries relating different flower biomass components across species to test the existence of broad allocation patterns across the angiosperms. Based on a global dataset with flower biomass spanning five orders of magnitude, we show that heavier angiosperm flowers tend to be male-biased and invest strongly in petals to promote pollen export, while lighter flowers tend to be female-biased and invest more in sepals to insure their own seed set. This result demonstrates that larger flowers are not simple carbon copies of small ones, indicating that sexual selection via male–male competition is an important driver of flower biomass evolution and sex allocation strategies across angiosperms.

Physical structures built by animals challenge our understanding of biological processes and inspire the development of smart materials and green architecture. It is thus indispensable to understand the drivers, constraints, and dynamics that lead to the emergence and modification of building behavior. Here, we demonstrate that spider web diversification repeatedly followed strikingly similar evolutionary trajectories, guided by physical constraints. We found that the evolution of suspended webs that intercept flying prey coincided with small changes in silk anchoring behavior with considerable effects on the robustness of web attachment. The use of nanofiber based capture threads (cribellate silk) conflicts with the behavioral enhancement of web attachment, and the repeated loss of this trait was frequently followed by physical improvements of web anchor structure. These findings suggest that the evolution of building behavior may be constrained by major physical traits limiting its role in rapid adaptation to a changing environment.

A prominent question in animal research is how the evolution of morphology and ecology interact in the generation of phenotypic diversity. Spiders are some of the most abundant arthropod predators in terrestrial ecosystems and exhibit a diversity of foraging styles. It remains unclear how spider body size and proportions relate to foraging style, and if the use of webs as prey capture devices correlates with changes in body characteristics. Here we present the most extensive dataset to date of morphometric and ecological traits in spiders. We used this dataset to estimate the change in spider body sizes and shapes over deep time and to test if and how spider phenotypes are correlated with their behavioural ecology. We found that phylogenetic variation of most traits best fitted an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model, which is a model of stabilizing selection. A prominent exception was body length, whose evolutionary dynamics were best explained with a Brownian Motion (free trait diffusion) model. This was most expressed in the araneoid clade (ecribellate orb-weaving spiders and allies) that showed bimodal trends towards either miniaturization or gigantism. Only few traits differed significantly between ecological guilds, most prominently leg length and thickness, and although a multivariate framework found general differences in traits among ecological guilds, it was not possible to unequivocally associate a set of morphometric traits with the relative ecological mode. Long, thin legs have often evolved with aerial webs and a hanging (suspended) locomotion style, but this trend is not general. Eye size and fang length did not differ between ecological guilds, rejecting the hypothesis that webs reduce the need for visual cue recognition and prey immobilization. For the inference of the ecology of species with unknown behaviours, we propose not to use morphometric traits, but rather consult (micro-)morphological characters, such as the presence of certain podal structures. These results suggest that, in contrast to insects, the evolution of body proportions in spiders is unusually stabilized, and ecological adaptations are dominantly realized by behavioural traits and extended phenotypes in this group of predators. This work demonstrates the power of combining recent advances in phylogenomics with trait-based approaches to better understand global functional diversity patterns through space and time.