Ecology

Coexistence of many species under a random competition–colonization trade-off

1. Zachary R. Miller
2. Maxime Clenet
3. Katja Della Libera
4. François Massol
5. Stefano Allesina

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Being a tree crop increases the odds of experiencing yield declines irrespective of pollinator dependence

1. Marcelo A. Aizen
2. Gabriela Gleiser
3. Thomas A. Kitzberger
4. Ruben Milla

Reviewed by Peer Community in Ecology

Overconfidence undermines global wildlife abundance trends

1. Thomas Frederick Johnson
2. Andrew P Beckerman
3. Dylan Z Childs
4. Christopher A Griffiths
5. Pol Capdevila
6. Christopher F Clements
7. Marc Besson
8. Richard D. Gregory
9. Eva Delmas
10. Gavin Thomas
11. Karl Evans
12. Tom Webb
13. Rob Freckleton

Reviewed by PREreview

Emergent coexistence in multispecies microbial communities

1. Chang-Yu Chang
2. Djordje Bajić
3. Jean C. C. Vila
4. Sylvie Estrela
5. Alvaro Sanchez

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Algae drive convergent bacterial community assembly at low dilution frequency

1. Kaumudi H. Prabhakara
2. Seppe Kuehn

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Mosquito community composition shapes virus prevalence patterns along anthropogenic disturbance gradients

1. Kyra Hermanns
2. Marco Marklewitz
3. Florian Zirkel
4. Anne Kopp
5. Stephanie Kramer-Schadt
6. Sandra Junglen

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper will be of interest to scientists in the fields of virology, entomology, ecology and epidemiology as the paper explores the drivers of viral and host composition in natural and disturbed ecosystems. The data are of high quality and have been rigorously assessed.However, important additional information on the transmission ecology of these viruses and their relationship with the environment is lacking, making it difficult to interpret the results from a disease ecology perspective.

Reviewed by eLife

Multiplexed microfluidic screening of bacterial chemotaxis

1. Michael R Stehnach
2. Richard J Henshaw
3. Sheri A Floge
4. Jeffrey S Guasto

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript presents a valuable new microfluidic tool that will allow researchers from different fields to rapidly quantify the chemotactic response of microbes to chemical gradients that have different strengths. Using planktonic bacteria, this paper convincingly shows that a multiplexed microfluidic device produces similar results to previously described microfluidic devices that generate only one gradient at a time. By performing on-chip dilutions, this device allows data for six different gradient strengths to be generated simultaneously, potentially reducing both experimental effort and biological variability.

Reviewed by eLife

Temperature sensitivity of the interspecific interaction strength of coastal marine fish communities

1. Masayuki Ushio
2. Testuya Sado
3. Takehiko Fukuchi
4. Sachia Sasano
5. Reiji Masuda
6. Yutaka Osada
7. Masaki Miya

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents important findings regarding the quantification of dynamics in fish communities in changing ecosystems by combining a large-scale environmental DNA metabarcoding time series with novel statistical approaches. The methods are convincing, with controlled experiments, thorough statistical analyses, and a substantial dataset covering two years of detailed observation, which can provide sufficient power to detect fine-scale ecological interactions. This work is relevant for informing future research on assessing community stability under climate change.

Reviewed by eLife

Learning the functional landscape of microbial communities

1. Abigail Skwara
2. Karna Gowda
3. Mahmoud Yousef
4. Juan Diaz-Colunga
5. Arjun S. Raman
6. Alvaro Sanchez
7. Mikhail Tikhonov
8. Seppe Kuehn

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

Metabolic consequences of various fruit-based diets in a generalist insect species

1. Laure Olazcuaga
2. Raymonde Baltenweck
3. Nicolas Leménager
4. Alessandra Maia-Grondard
5. Patricia Claudel
6. Philippe Hugueney
7. Julien Foucaud

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This useful study uses untargeted metabolomics to help us understand how some herbivores are able to be generalists, rather than specializing in the metabolism of specific plant species. This is an important area, since little is known about how generalist insect species metabolize their food. In its current form, the study lacks ecological relevance due to the exclusive use of refined sampling procedures, and the metabolomic analysis is incomplete.

Reviewed by eLife