Make it easier to be green: Solutions for a more sustainable planet.

We urgently need solutions to make our use of the planet's resources more sustainable and protect nature. A new collection of articles outlines a vision for a better tomorrow that draws on new advances in the development of green technologies.

Global change ecology: Science to heal a damaged planet.

Humanity has drastically altered the biophysical systems that sustain life on Earth. We summarize progress and chart future directions in the emerging field of global change ecology, which studies interactions between organisms and their changing environment.

Viruses direct carbon cycling in lake sediments under global change.

Global change is altering the vast amount of carbon cycled by microbes between land and freshwater, but how viruses mediate this process is poorly understood. Here, we show that viruses direct carbon cycling in lake sediments, and these impacts intensify with future changes in water clarity and terrestrial organic matter (tOM) inputs. Using experimental tOM gradients within sediments of a clear and a dark boreal lake, we identified 156 viral operational taxonomic units (vOTUs), of which 21% strongly increased with abundances of key bacteria and archaea, identified via metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). MAGs included the most abundant prokaryotes, which were themselves associated with dissolved organic matter (DOM) composition and greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. Increased abundances of virus-like particles were separately associated with reduced bacterial metabolism and with shifts in DOM toward amino sugars, likely released by cell lysis rather than higher molecular mass compounds accumulating from reduced tOM degradation. An additional 9.6% of vOTUs harbored auxiliary metabolic genes associated with DOM and GHGs. Taken together, these different effects on host dynamics and metabolism can explain why abundances of vOTUs rather than MAGs were better overall predictors of carbon cycling. Future increases in tOM quantity, but not quality, will change viral composition and function with consequences for DOM pools. Given their importance, viruses must now be explicitly considered in efforts to understand and predict the freshwater carbon cycle and its future under global environmental change.

Wildfire smoke impacts lake ecosystems.

Wildfire activity is increasing globally. The resulting smoke plumes can travel hundreds to thousands of kilometers, reflecting or scattering sunlight and depositing particles within ecosystems. Several key physical, chemical, and biological processes in lakes are controlled by factors affected by smoke. The spatial and temporal scales of lake exposure to smoke are extensive and under-recognized. We introduce the concept of the lake smoke-day, or the number of days any given lake is exposed to smoke in any given fire season, and quantify the total lake smoke-day exposure in North America from 2019 to 2021. Because smoke can be transported at continental to intercontinental scales, even regions that may not typically experience direct burning of landscapes by wildfire are at risk of smoke exposure. We found that 99.3% of North America was covered by smoke, affecting a total of 1,333,687 lakes ≥10 ha. An incredible 98.9% of lakes experienced at least 10 smoke-days a year, with 89.6% of lakes receiving over 30 lake smoke-days, and lakes in some regions experiencing up to 4 months of cumulative smoke-days. Herein we review the mechanisms through which smoke and ash can affect lakes by altering the amount and spectral composition of incoming solar radiation and depositing carbon, nutrients, or toxic compounds that could alter chemical conditions and impact biota. We develop a conceptual framework that synthesizes known and theoretical impacts of smoke on lakes to guide future research. Finally, we identify emerging research priorities that can help us better understand how lakes will be affected by smoke as wildfire activity increases due to climate change and other anthropogenic activities.

Microplastics and anthropogenic fibre concentrations in lakes reflect surrounding land use.

Pollution from microplastics and anthropogenic fibres threatens lakes, but we know little about what factors predict its accumulation. Lakes may be especially contaminated because of long water retention times and proximity to pollution sources. Here, we surveyed anthropogenic microparticles, i.e., microplastics and anthropogenic fibres, in surface waters of 67 European lakes spanning 30° of latitude and large environmental gradients. By collating data from >2,100 published net tows, we found that microparticle concentrations in our field survey were higher than previously reported in lakes and comparable to rivers and oceans. We then related microparticle concentrations in our field survey to surrounding land use, water chemistry, and plastic emissions to sites estimated from local hydrology, population density, and waste production. Microparticle concentrations in European lakes quadrupled as both estimated mismanaged waste inputs and wastewater treatment loads increased in catchments. Concentrations decreased by 2 and 5 times over the range of surrounding forest cover and potential in-lake biodegradation, respectively. As anthropogenic debris continues to pollute the environment, our data will help contextualise future work, and our models can inform control and remediation efforts.

Climate warming has direct and indirect effects on microbes associated with carbon cycling in northern lakes.

Northern lakes disproportionately influence the global carbon cycle, and may do so more in the future depending on how their microbial communities respond to climate warming. Microbial communities can change because of the direct effects of climate warming on their metabolism and the indirect effects of climate warming on groundwater connectivity from thawing of surrounding permafrost, especially at lower landscape positions. Here we used shotgun metagenomics to compare the taxonomic and functional gene composition of sediment microbes in 19 peatland lakes across a 1600-km permafrost transect in boreal western Canada. We found microbes responded differently to the loss of regional permafrost cover than to increases in local groundwater connectivity. These results suggest that both the direct and indirect effects of climate warming, which were respectively associated with loss of permafrost and subsequent changes in groundwater connectivity interact to change microbial composition and function. Archaeal methanogens and genes involved in all major methanogenesis pathways were more abundant in warmer regions with less permafrost, but higher groundwater connectivity partly offset these effects. Bacterial community composition and methanotrophy genes did not vary with regional permafrost cover, and the latter changed similarly to methanogenesis with groundwater connectivity. Finally, we found an increase in sugar utilization genes in regions with less permafrost, which may further fuel methanogenesis. These results provide the microbial mechanism for observed increases in methane emissions associated with loss of permafrost cover in this region and suggest that future emissions will primarily be controlled by archaeal methanogens over methanotrophic bacteria as northern lakes warm. Our study more generally suggests that future predictions of aquatic carbon cycling will be improved by considering how climate warming exerts both direct effects associated with regional-scale permafrost thaw and indirect effects associated with local hydrology.

Reproductive collapse in European beech results from declining pollination efficiency in large trees.

Climate warming increases tree mortality which will require sufficient reproduction to ensure population viability. However, the response of tree reproduction to climate change remains poorly understood. Warming can reduce synchrony and interannual variability of seed production ("masting breakdown") which can increase seed predation and decrease pollination efficiency in trees. Here, using 40 years of observations of individual seed production in European beech (Fagus sylvatica), we showed that masting breakdown results in declining viable seed production over time, in contrast to the positive trend apparent in raw seed count data. Furthermore, tree size modulates the consequences of masting breakdown on viable seed production. While seed predation increased over time mainly in small trees, pollination efficiency disproportionately decreased in larger individuals. Consequently, fecundity declined over time across all size classes, but the overall effect was greatest in large trees. Our study showed that a fundamental biological relationship-correlation between tree size and viable seed production-has been reversed as the climate has warmed. That reversal has diverse consequences for forest dynamics; including for stand- and biogeographical-level dynamics of forest regeneration. The tree size effects suggest management options to increase forest resilience under changing climates.

Temperature-mediated microbial carbon utilization in China's lakes.

Microbes play an important role in aquatic carbon cycling but we have a limited understanding of their functional responses to changes in temperature across large geographic areas. Here, we explored how microbial communities utilized different carbon substrates and the underlying ecological mechanisms along a space-for-time substitution temperature gradient of future climate change. The gradient included 47 lakes from five major lake regions in China spanning a difference of nearly 15°C in mean annual temperatures (MAT). Our results indicated that lakes from warmer regions generally had lower values of variables related to carbon concentrations and greater carbon utilization than those from colder regions. The greater utilization of carbon substrates under higher temperatures could be attributed to changes in bacterial community composition, with a greater abundance of Cyanobacteria and Actinobacteriota and less Proteobacteria in warmer lake regions. We also found that the core species in microbial networks changed with increasing temperature, from Hydrogenophaga and Rhodobacteraceae, which inhibited the utilization of amino acids and carbohydrates, to the CL500-29-marine-group, which promoted the utilization of all almost carbon substrates. Overall, our findings suggest that temperature can mediate aquatic carbon utilization by changing the interactions between bacteria and individual carbon substrates, and the discovery of core species that affect carbon utilization provides insight into potential carbon sequestration within inland water bodies under future climate warming.

Dark Matter Enhances Interactions within Both Microbes and Dissolved Organic Matter under Global Change.

There are vast but uncharacterized microbial taxa and chemical metabolites (that is, dark matter) across the Earth's ecosystems. A lack of knowledge about dark matter hinders a complete understanding of microbial ecology and biogeochemical cycles. Here, we examine sediment bacteria and dissolved organic matter (DOM) in 300 microcosms along experimental global change gradients in subtropical and subarctic climate zones of China and Norway, respectively. We develop an indicator to quantify the importance of dark matter by comparing co-occurrence network patterns with and without dark matter in bacterial or DOM assemblages. In both climate zones, dark matter constitutes approximately 30-56% of bacterial taxa and DOM metabolites and changes connectivity within bacterial and DOM assemblages by between -15.5 and +61.8%. Dark matter is generally more important for changing network connectivity within DOM assemblages than those of microbes, especially in the subtropical zone. However, the importance of dark matter along global change gradients is strongly correlated between bacteria and DOM and consistently increased toward higher primary productivity because of increasing temperatures and nutrient enrichment. Our findings highlight the importance of microbial and chemical dark matter for changing biogeochemical interactions under global change.

Phototrophic Biofilms Transform Soil-Dissolved Organic Matter Similarly Despite Compositional and Environmental Differences.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is the most reactive pool of organic carbon in soil and one of the most important components of the global carbon cycle. Phototrophic biofilms growing at the soil-water interface in periodically flooding-drying soils like paddy fields consume and produce DOM during their growth and decomposition. However, the effects of phototrophic biofilms on DOM remain poorly understood in these settings. Here, we found that phototrophic biofilms transformed DOM similarly despite differences in soil types and initial DOM compositions, with stronger effects on DOM molecular composition than soil organic carbon and nutrient contents. Specifically, growth of phototrophic biofilms, especially those genera belonging to Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria, increased the abundance of labile DOM compounds and richness of molecular formulae, while biofilm decomposition decreased the relative abundance of labile components. After a growth and decomposition cycle, phototrophic biofilms universally drove the accumulation of persistent DOM compounds in soil. Our results revealed how phototrophic biofilms shape the richness and changes in soil DOM at the molecular level and provide a reference for using phototrophic biofilms to increase DOM bioactivity and soil fertility in agricultural settings.

Predictions of biodiversity are improved by integrating trait-based competition with abiotic filtering.

All organisms must simultaneously tolerate the environment and access limiting resources if they are to persist. Approaches to understanding abiotic filtering and competitive interactions have generally been developed independently. Consequently, integrating those factors to predict species abundances and community structure remains an unresolved challenge. We introduce a new synthetic framework that models both abiotic filtering and competition by using functional traits. First, our framework estimates species carrying capacities along abiotic gradients. Second, it estimates pairwise competitive interactions as a function of species trait differences. Applied to the study of a complex wetland community, our combined approach more than doubles the explained variance of species abundances compared to a model of abiotic tolerances alone. Trait-based integration of competitive interactions and abiotic filtering improves our ability to predict species abundances, bringing us closer to more accurate predictions of biodiversity structure in a changing world.

MASTREE+: Time-series of plant reproductive effort from six continents.

Significant gaps remain in understanding the response of plant reproduction to environmental change. This is partly because measuring reproduction in long-lived plants requires direct observation over many years and such datasets have rarely been made publicly available. Here we introduce MASTREE+, a data set that collates reproductive time-series data from across the globe and makes these data freely available to the community. MASTREE+ includes 73,828 georeferenced observations of annual reproduction (e.g. seed and fruit counts) in perennial plant populations worldwide. These observations consist of 5971 population-level time-series from 974 species in 66 countries. The mean and median time-series length is 12.4 and 10 years respectively, and the data set includes 1122 series that extend over at least two decades (≥20 years of observations). For a subset of well-studied species, MASTREE+ includes extensive replication of time-series across geographical and climatic gradients. Here we describe the open-access data set, available as a.csv file, and we introduce an associated web-based app for data exploration. MASTREE+ will provide the basis for improved understanding of the response of long-lived plant reproduction to environmental change. Additionally, MASTREE+ will enable investigation of the ecology and evolution of reproductive strategies in perennial plants, and the role of plant reproduction as a driver of ecosystem dynamics.

Aún existen importantes vacíos en la comprensión de la respuesta reproductiva de las plantas al cambio medioambiental, en parte, porque su monitoreo en especies de plantas longevas requiere una observación directa durante muchos años, y estos conjuntos de datos rara vez han estado disponibles. Aquí presentamos a MASTREE +, una base de datos que recopila series de tiempo de la reproducción de las plantas de todo el planeta, poniendo a disposición estos datos de libre acceso para la comunidad científica. MASTREE + incluye 73.828 puntos de observación de la reproducción anual georreferenciados (ej. conteos de semillas y frutos) en poblaciones de plantas perennes en todo el mundo. Estas observaciones consisten en 5971 series temporales a nivel de población provenientes de 974 especies en 66 países. La mediana de la duración de las series de tiempo es de 10 años (media = 12.4 años) y el conjunto de datos incluye 1.122 series de al menos dos décadas (≥20 años de observaciones). Para un subconjunto de especies bien estudiadas, MASTREE +incluye un amplio conjunto de series temporales replicadas en gradientes geográficos y climáticos. Describimos el conjunto de datos de acceso abierto disponible como un archivo.csv y presentamos una aplicación web asociada para la exploración de datos. MASTREE+ proporcionará la base para mejorar la comprensión sobre la respuesta reproductiva de plantas longevas al cambio medioambiental. Además, MASTREE+ facilitará los avances en la investigación de la ecología y la evolución de las estrategias reproductivas en plantas perennes y el papel de la reproducción vegetal como determinante de la dinámica de ecosistemas.

Microbial and Environmental Processes Shape the Link between Organic Matter Functional Traits and Composition.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a large and complex mixture of molecules that fuels microbial metabolism and regulates biogeochemical cycles. Individual DOM molecules have unique functional traits, but how their assemblages vary deterministically under global change remains poorly understood. Here, we examine DOM and associated bacteria in 300 aquatic microcosms deployed on mountainsides that span contrasting temperatures and nutrient gradients. Based on molecular trait dimensions of reactivity and activity, we partition the DOM composition into labile-active, recalcitrant-active, recalcitrant-inactive, and labile-inactive fractions and quantify the relative influences of deterministic and stochastic processes governing the assembly of each. At both subtropical and subarctic study sites, the assembly of labile or recalcitrant molecules in active fractions is primarily governed by deterministic processes, while stochastic processes are more important for the assembly of molecules within inactive fractions. Surprisingly, the importance of deterministic selection increases with global change gradients for recalcitrant molecules in both active and inactive fractions, and this trend is paralleled by changes in the deterministic assembly of microbial communities and environmental filtering, respectively. Together, our results highlight the shift in focus from potential reactivity to realized activity and indicate that active and inactive fractions of DOM assemblages are structured by contrasting processes, and their recalcitrant components are consistently sensitive to global change. Our study partitions the DOM molecular composition across functional traits and links DOM with microbes via a shared ecological framework of assembly processes. This integrated approach opens new avenues to understand the assembly and turnover of organic carbon in a changing world.

Chemical and microbial diversity covary in fresh water to influence ecosystem functioning.

Invisible to the naked eye lies a tremendous diversity of organic molecules and organisms that make major contributions to important biogeochemical cycles. However, how the diversity and composition of these two communities are interlinked remains poorly characterized in fresh waters, despite the potential for chemical and microbial diversity to promote one another. Here we exploited gradients in chemodiversity within a common microbial pool to test how chemical and biological diversity covary and characterized the implications for ecosystem functioning. We found that both chemodiversity and genes associated with organic matter decomposition increased as more plant litterfall accumulated in experimental lake sediments, consistent with scenarios of future environmental change. Chemical and microbial diversity were also positively correlated, with dissolved organic matter having stronger effects on microbes than vice versa. Under our experimental scenarios that increased sediment organic matter from 5 to 25% or darkened overlying waters by 2.5 times, the resulting increases in chemodiversity could increase greenhouse gas concentrations in lake sediments by an average of 1.5 to 2.7 times, when all of the other effects of litterfall and water color were considered. Our results open a major new avenue for research in aquatic ecosystems by exposing connections between chemical and microbial diversity and their implications for the global carbon cycle in greater detail than ever before.

Seed predation selects for reproductive variability and synchrony in perennial plants.

Annually variable and synchronous seed production by plant populations, or masting, is a widespread reproductive strategy in long-lived plants. Masting is thought to be selectively beneficial because interannual variability and synchrony increase the fitness of plants through economies of scale that decrease the cost of reproduction per surviving offspring. Predator satiation is believed to be a key economy of scale, but whether it can drive phenotypic evolution for masting in plants has been rarely explored. We used data from seven plant species (Quercus humilis, Quercus ilex, Quercus rubra, Quercus alba, Quercus montana, Sorbus aucuparia and Pinus pinea) to determine whether predispersal seed predation selects for plant phenotypes that mast. Predation selected for interannual variability in Mediterranean oaks (Q. humilis and Q. ilex), for synchrony in Q. rubra, and for both interannual variability and reproductive synchrony in S. aucuparia and P. pinea. Predation never selected for negative temporal autocorrelation of seed production. Predation by invertebrates appears to select for only some aspects of masting, most importantly high coefficient of variation, supporting individual-level benefits of the population-level phenomenon of mast seeding. Determining the selective benefits of masting is complex because of interactions with other seed predators, which may impose contradictory selective pressures.

Aged soils contribute little to contemporary carbon cycling downstream of thawing permafrost peatlands.

Vast stores of millennial-aged soil carbon (MSC) in permafrost peatlands risk leaching into the contemporary carbon cycle after thaw caused by climate warming or increased wildfire activity. Here we tracked the export and downstream fate of MSC from two peatland-dominated catchments in subarctic Canada, one of which was recently affected by wildfire. We tested whether thermokarst bog expansion and deepening of seasonally thawed soils due to wildfire increased the contributions of MSC to downstream waters. Despite being available for lateral transport, MSC accounted for ≤6% of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pools at catchment outlets. Assimilation of MSC into the aquatic food web could not explain its absence at the outlets. Using δ13 C-Δ14 C-δ15 N-δ2 H measurements, we estimated only 7% of consumer biomass came from MSC by direct assimilation and algal recycling of heterotrophic respiration. Recent wildfire that caused seasonally thawed soils to reach twice as deep in one catchment did not change these results. In contrast to many other Arctic ecosystems undergoing climate warming, we suggest waterlogged peatlands will protect against downstream delivery and transformation of MSC after climate- and wildfire-induced permafrost thaw.

Climate warming causes mast seeding to break down by reducing sensitivity to weather cues.

Climate change is altering patterns of seed production worldwide with consequences for population recruitment and migration potential. For the many species that regenerate through synchronized, quasiperiodic reproductive events termed masting, these changes include decreases in the synchrony and interannual variation in seed production. This breakdown in the occurrence of masting features harms reproduction by decreasing the efficiency of pollination and increasing seed predation. Changes in masting are often paralleled by warming temperatures, but the underlying proximate mechanisms are unknown. We used a unique 39-year study of 139 European beech (Fagus sylvatica) trees that experienced masting breakdown to track the seed developmental cycle and pinpoint phases where weather effects on seed production have changed over time. A cold followed by warm summer led to large coordinated flowering efforts among plants. However, trees failed to respond to the weather signal as summers warmed and the frequency of reproductive cues changed fivefold. Less synchronous flowering resulted in less efficient pollination that further decreased the synchrony of seed maturation. As global temperatures are expected to increase this century, perennial plants that fine-tune their reproductive schedules based on temperature cues may suffer regeneration failures.

Using target sequence capture to improve the phylogenetic resolution of a rapid radiation in New Zealand Veronica.

PREMISE: Recent, rapid radiations present a challenge for phylogenetic reconstruction. Fast successive speciation events typically lead to low sequence divergence and poorly resolved relationships with standard phylogenetic markers. Target sequence capture of many independent nuclear loci has the potential to improve phylogenetic resolution for rapid radiations. METHODS: Here we applied target sequence capture with 353 protein-coding genes (Angiosperms353 bait kit) to Veronica sect. Hebe (common name hebe) to determine its utility for improving the phylogenetic resolution of rapid radiations. Veronica section Hebe originated 5-10 million years ago in New Zealand, forming a monophyletic radiation of ca 130 extant species. RESULTS: We obtained approximately 150 kbp of 353 protein-coding exons and an additional 200 kbp of flanking noncoding sequences for each of 77 hebe and two outgroup species. When comparing coding, noncoding, and combined data sets, we found that the latter provided the best overall phylogenetic resolution. While some deep nodes in the radiation remained unresolved, our phylogeny provided broad and often improved support for subclades identified by both morphology and standard markers in previous studies. Gene-tree discordance was nonetheless widespread, indicating that additional methods are needed to disentangle fully the history of the radiation. CONCLUSIONS: Phylogenomic target capture data sets both increase phylogenetic signal and deliver new insights into the complex evolutionary history of rapid radiations as compared with traditional markers. Improving methods to resolve remaining discordance among loci from target sequence capture is now important to facilitate the further study of rapid radiations.

Angiosperm speciation cools down in the tropics.

Recent evidence has questioned whether the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient (LDG), whereby species richness increases towards the Equator, results in higher rates of speciation in the tropics. Allowing for time heterogeneity in speciation rate estimates for over 60,000 angiosperm species, we found that the LDG does not arise from variation in speciation rates because lineages do not speciate faster in the tropics. These results were consistently retrieved using two other methods to test the association between occupancy of tropical habitats and speciation rates. Our speciation rate estimates were robust to the effects of both undescribed species and missing taxa. Overall, our results show that speciation rates follow an opposite pattern to global variation in species richness. Greater ecological opportunity in the temperate zones, stemming from less saturated communities, higher species turnover or greater environmental change, may ultimately explain these results.

Does Evolutionary History Correlate with Contemporary Extinction Risk by Influencing Range Size Dynamics?

Extinction threatens many species yet is predicted by few factors across the plant tree of life (ToL). Taxon age is one factor that may associate with extinction if occupancy of geographic and adaptive zones varies with time, but evidence for such an association has been equivocal. Age-dependent occupancy can also influence diversification rates and thus extinction risk where new taxa have small range and population sizes. To test how age, diversification, and range size were correlated with extinction, we analyzed 639 well-sampled genera representing 8,937 species from across the plant ToL. We found a greater proportion of species were threatened by contemporary extinction in younger and faster-diversifying genera. When we directly tested how range size mediated this pattern in two large, well-sampled groups, our results varied. In conifers, potential range size was smaller in older species and was correlated with higher extinction risk. Age on its own had no direct effect on extinction when accounting for its influence on range size. In palm species, age was neither directly nor indirectly correlated with extinction risk. Our results suggest that range size dynamics may explain differing patterns of extinction risk across the ToL, with consequences for biodiversity conservation.