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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB)
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Recent news
Congratulations to EEB Postdoc Fellow, Matthew Holding, for publication of article in Biology Letters!
The article is titled "Ambient temperature and toxic diets constrain snake venom resistance in a desert rodent."
Congratulations to new EEB Professor Anshuman Swain for his first publication from the University of Michigan!
The article, published in Ecosphere, is titled "Do olive ridley turtles select mates based on size? An investigation of mate size preference at a major arribada rookery."
RESEARCH FEATURE
EEB Postdoctoral Fellow Thiago Gonçalves-Souza and department Chair Professor Nate Sanders just published an article in Nature titled "Species turnover does not rescue biodiversity in fragmented landscapes."
Abstract: Habitat fragmentation generally reduces biodiversity at the patch scale (α diversity)1. However, there is ongoing debate about whether such negative effects can be alleviated at the landscape scale (γ diversity) if among-patch diversity (β diversity) increases as a result of fragmentation2,3,4,5,6. This controversial view has not been rigorously tested. Here we use a dataset of 4,006 taxa across 37 studies from 6 continents to test the effects of fragmentation on biodiversity across scales by explicitly comparing continuous and fragmented landscapes. We find that fragmented landscapes consistently have both lower α diversity and lower γ diversity. Although fragmented landscapes did tend to have higher β diversity, this did not translate into higher γ diversity. Our findings refute claims that habitat fragmentation can increase biodiversity at landscape scales, and emphasize the need to restore habitat and increase connectivity to minimize biodiversity loss at ever-increasing scales.
Michigan News did an excellent write -up of the article: find it here.
