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Diet composition is among the most important yet least understood dimensions of animal ecology. Inspired by the study of species abundance distributions (SADs), we tested for generalities in the structure of vertebrate diets by characterising them as dietary abundance distributions (DADs). We compiled data on 1167 population-level diets, representing >500 species from six vertebrate classes, spanning all continents and oceans. DADs near-universally (92.5%) followed a hollow-curve shape, with scant support for other plausible rank-abundance-distribution shapes. This strong generality is inherently related to, yet incompletely explained by, the SADs of available food taxa. By quantifying dietary generalisation as the half-saturation point of the cumulative distribution of dietary abundance (sp50, minimum number of foods required to account for 50% of diet), we found that vertebrate populations are surprisingly specialised: in most populations, fewer than three foods accounted for at least half the diet. Variation in sp50 was strongly associated with consumer type, with carnivores being more specialised than herbivores or omnivores. Other methodological (sampling method and effort, taxonomic resolution), biological (body mass, frugivory) and biogeographic (latitude) factors influenced sp50 to varying degrees. Future challenges include identifying the mechanisms underpinning the hollow-curve DAD, its generality beyond vertebrates, and the biological determinants of dietary generalisation., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Disease may play a critical role in invasions by nonnative plants and animals that currently threaten global biodiversity. For example, a generalist viral pathogen has been recently implicated in one of the most extensive plant invasions worldwide, the invasion and domination of California's perennial grasslands by exotic annual grasses. To date, disease has never been quantitatively assessed as a cause of this invasion. Using a model with field-estimated parameters, we demonstrate that pathogen presence was necessary to reverse competitive outcome and to allow exotic annual grass invasion and dominance. Although pathogen-induced reversal of a competitive hierarchy has been suggested as a mechanism of species invasion, here we quantitatively demonstrate the importance of this phenomenon by using field-derived parameters in a dynamical model. Pathogen-mediated reversals in competitive balance may be critically important for understanding past, and predicting future, invasions.

Many disease systems exhibit complexities not captured by current theoretical and empirical work. In particular, systems with multiple host species and multiple infectious agents (i.e., multi-host, multi-agent systems) require novel methods to extend the wealth of knowledge acquired studying primarily single-host, single-agent systems. We outline eight challenges in multi-host, multi-agent systems that could substantively increase our knowledge of the drivers and broader ecosystem effects of infectious disease dynamics.

Robert M. "Bob" May, Lord May of Oxford, O.M., who was the second recipient of the Ecological Society of America's Robert H. MacArthur Award, passed away at the age of 84 in Oxford, UK, on April 28, after a long illness. After a brief return to Australia, May was hired at Princeton to be a colleague of MacArthur and others; but sadly, he became in effect MacArthur's replacement after the latter's untimely death. Both Birch, who won the ESA's Eminent Ecologist Award in 1988, and the brilliant physicist Freeman Dyson, who was at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study when May visited on a sabbatical in 1971, had suggested that Bob talk with MacArthur about whether he should change fields and become a theoretical ecologist. Bob continued to retain a Visiting Professorship at Princeton, where he would visit Princeton colleagues and friends and lecture on almost an annual basis until his declining health made that impossible; he received an honorary degree along with President Bill Clinton at Princeton's 250th anniversary in 1996. [Extracted from the article]

The article informs that investments to prevent tropical deforestation and to limit wildlife trade will protect against future zoonosis outbreaks. It mentions that clear link between deforestation and virus emergence such as COVID-19 pandemic suggests that a major effort to retain intact forest cover would have a large return on investment even if its only benefit was to reduce virus emergence events.

: Parasites primarily affect food web structure through changes to diversity and complexity. However, compared to free-living species, their life-history traits lead to more complex feeding niches and altered motifs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing number of zoonotic diseases spilling over from a range of wild animal species represents a particular concern for public health, especially in light of the current dramatic trend of biodiversity loss. To understand the ecology of these multi-host pathogens and their response to environmental degradation and species extinctions, it is necessary to develop a theoretical framework that takes into account realistic community assemblages. Here, we present a multi-host species epidemiological model that includes empirically determined patterns of diversity and composition derived from community ecology studies.We use this framework to study the interaction between wildlife diversity and directly transmitted pathogen dynamics. First, we demonstrate that variability in community composition does not affect significantly the intensity of pathogen transmission. We also show that the consequences of community diversity can differentially impact the prevalence of pathogens and the number of infectious individuals. Finally, we show that ecological interactions among host species have a weaker influence on pathogen circulation than inter-species transmission rates. We conclude that integration of a community perspective to study wildlife pathogens is crucial, especially in the context of understanding and predicting infectious disease emergence events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tree cover is a fundamental structural characteristic and driver of ecosystem processes in terrestrial ecosystems, and trees are a major global carbon (C) sink. Fire and herbivores have been hypothesized to play dominant roles in regulating trees in African savannas, but the evidence for this is conflicting. Moving up a trophic scale, the factors that regulate fire occurrence and herbivores, such as disease and predation, are poorly understood for any given ecosystem. We used a Bayesian statespace model to show that the wildebeest population irruption that followed disease (rinderpest) eradication in the Serengeti ecosystem of East Africa led to a widespread reduction in the extent of fire and an ongoing recovery of the tree population. This supports the hypothesis that disease has played a key role in the regulation of this ecosystem. We then link our state-space model with theoretical and empirical results quantifying the effects of grazing and fire on soil carbon to predict that this cascade may have led to important shifts in the size of pools of C stored in soil and biomass. Our results suggest that the dynamics of herbivores and fire are tightly coupled at landscape scales, that fire exerts clear top-down effects on tree density, and that disease outbreaks in dominant herbivores can lead to complex trophic cascades in savanna ecosystems. We propose that the long-term status of the Serengeti and other intensely grazed savannas as sources or sinks for C may be fundamentally linked to the control of disease outbreaks and poaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parasitism is the most common consumer strategy among organisms, yet only recently has there been a call for the inclusion of infectious disease agents in food webs. The value of this effort hinges on whether parasites affect food-web properties. Increasing evidence suggests that parasites have the potential to uniquely alter food-web topology in terms of chain length, connectance and robustness. In addition, parasites might affect food-web stability, interaction strength and energy flow. Food-web structure also affects infectious disease dynamics because parasites depend on the ecological networks in which they live. Empirically, incorporating parasites into food webs is straightforward. We may start with existing food webs and add parasites as nodes, or we may try to build food webs around systems for which we already have a good understanding of infectious processes. In the future, perhaps researchers will add parasites while they construct food webs. Less clear is how food-web theory can accommodate parasites. This is a deep and central problem in theoretical biology and applied mathematics. For instance, is representing parasites with complex life cycles as a single node equivalent to representing other species with ontogenetic niche shifts as a single node? Can parasitism fit into fundamental frameworks such as the niche model? Can we integrate infectious disease models into the emerging field of dynamic food-web modelling? Future progress will benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations between ecologists and infectious disease biologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Many pathogens and parasites attack multiple host species, so their ability to invade a host community can depend on host community composition. We present a graphical isocline framework for studying disease establishment in systems with two host species, based on treating host species as resources. The isocline approach provides a natural generalization to multi-host systems of two related concepts in disease ecology – the basic reproductive rate of a parasite, and threshold host density. Qualitative isocline shape characterizes the threshold community configurations that permit parasite establishment. In general, isocline shape reflects the relative forces of inter- and intraspecific transmission of shared parasites. We discuss the qualitative implications of parasite isocline shape for issues of mounting concern in conservation ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim in conducting annual horizon scans is to identify issues that, although currently receiving little attention, may be of increasing importance to the conservation of biological diversity in the future. The 15 issues presented here were identified by a diverse team of 22 experts in horizon scanning, and conservation science and its application. Methods for identifying and refining issues were the same as in two previous annual scans and are widely transferable to other disciplines. The issues highlight potential changes in climate, technology and human behaviour. Examples include warming of the deep sea, increased cultivation of perennial grains, burning of Arctic tundra, and the development of nuclear batteries and hydrokinetic in-stream turbines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]