As habitats change, the effectiveness of animal‐mediated seed dispersal increasingly depends on animal responses to altered structure and resources. With habitat loss and degradation accelerating across the tropics, understanding how dispersers' foraging behavior and movement influence seed removal and deposition is critical to promoting forest regeneration. In a tropical lowland landscape of southeastern Mexico with varying levels of human disturbance, we studied how black howler monkeys' Alouatta pigra foraging behavior influences the seed dispersal services they provide. Additionally, given the species' long gut transit time, we examined how their movement patterns across spatial and temporal scales directly and indirectly shape seed dispersal distance. We found that habitat disturbance significantly reduced food resource availability and frugivory levels, limiting the black howler monkeys' ability to support natural forest succession through seed dispersal. However, by dispersing seeds an average of 90.98 ± 59.59 m from the parent plant and 88.23 ± 47.55 m between samples, black howler monkeys may reduce mortality risks associated with distance‐ and density‐dependent effects. At the smallest spatiotemporal scale, relative turning angles best predicted seed dispersal distance, indicating that goal‐oriented movement can enhance animals' seed dispersal roles. For black howler monkeys, this may be a necessary compensatory strategy for navigating lower‐quality habitats, helping disperse seeds over longer distances. At broader scales, an increase in weekly activity areas – driven by low resource availability – was associated with greater seed dispersal distance. Ultimately, our results show that animal responses to habitat disturbance can influence seed dispersal, potentially affecting forest regeneration and ecosystem resilience. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding animal resilience dynamics to more accurately predict and manage the long‐term impacts of disturbance on biodiversity and ecosystem health.

Droughts, increasingly frequent under human‐driven climate change, are expected to intensify globally. Both pulsed and prolonged droughts can strongly affect organismal survival and population dynamics, potentially altering terrestrial communities and ecosystems. Understanding how drought influences communities is therefore critical for predicting and mitigating its impacts. Here, we conducted two meta‐analyses that evaluate two components of communities: community composition and species interactions, revealing overall negative effects of drought in both analyses. By synthesizing experimental and observational studies across terrestrial ecosystems, we show that while drought consistently restructures community composition in ways that scale with severity and duration, its effects on species interactions are more heterogeneous and do not scale predictably, revealing a decoupling between community reorganization and interaction dynamics. In particular, we found negative effects on species richness, and on plant and arthropod community composition, and predation and decomposition were more likely to be negatively affected by drought. Drought's effects also varied among biomes: community composition was most altered in grasslands and boreal forests, whereas trophic interactions in forests consistently weakened under drought, reflected as reduced rates of predation, herbivore attack, and litter consumption. Although drought is expected to harm systems across taxa and biomes, we also identified cases where drought had no overall effect, suggesting the potential resilience of some communities and stability of certain trophic interactions. Overall, our meta‐analyses demonstrate that drought can disrupt ecological communities on a global scale and underscores the importance of targeted monitoring of drought effects in terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in regions of high risk.

Integration of the evolutionary history with distribution of extant species is necessary to explain present‐day diversity, particularly for ‘foundation' species, such as seagrasses, which create habitats of socioecological relevance. Here, we resolved if varying evolutionary history of seagrass families has imprinted the distribution ranges of extant species. Then, we resolved whether the persistence of seagrass families is linked to the extension of their ranges, particularly between those of predominant tropical or temperate distribution. We found strong phylogenetic signal for both the latitudinal midpoint and extent in the distribution of seagrasses, reflecting the legacy of the ancestral niche, with the latitudinal midpoint directly connecting with the thermal niches of extant seagrasses. Still, no phylogenetic signal was observed for the longitudinal extent and area covered by seagrasses. Tropical regions have accumulated seagrasses over longer periods, i.e. the tropics act as ‘museums' for seagrass' diversity, linked to longer phylogenetic lineages depth (a proxy to older species), wider ranges and lower extinction. Temperate families, with comparatively reduced ranges, have otherwise displayed an evolutionary history with considerable extinction. Still, Posidoniaceae show more recent speciation, so temperate regions are current ‘cradles' for seagrasses diversity. In conclusion, the persistence and diversification of seagrass families has imprinted their current ranges.

Stability patterns can vary across scales within ecological systems. Understanding cross‐scale stability patterns can be important for informing conservation and management in landscapes. To identify underlying drivers of stability at local (habitat) and regional (floodplain) scales, both compositional and aggregate variability in terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, and variability and synchrony between aquatic invertebrates and fish, were investigated in a dynamic floodplain landscape. Synchrony between local aquatic invertebrate communities was low, likely driven by local differences in flood disturbance. However, terrestrial invertebrates had high composition and biomass synchrony, consistent with more homogeneous terrestrial conditions (e.g. temperature). Fish biomass had lower variability than aquatic invertebrates, indicating mobile predators may benefit from spatially heterogeneous conditions. Preserving spatial environmental heterogeneity will therefore likely be important for maintaining landscape‐scale stability across multiple trophic levels in dynamic river environments.

Invasion of native communities by introduced species is known to depend on the introduced species' traits, biotic resistance and propagule pressure. Each of these factors has been studied individually, but the interactions between them need further attention. For example, propagule pressure is considered an important predictor of invader success, but its effect is likely mediated by native composition and invader traits. Similarly, biotic resistance arises through the effects of local community assembly processes on native‐exotic interactions, but is generally studied using native diversity alone. Here we examined interactions between propagule pressure and native community assembly processes in determining exotic species abundance, using spatially‐explicit community assembly simulations. Unlike most previous studies on propagule pressure, we focused on long‐term abundance of the focal introduced species, rather than the probability of establishment, as the former is more strongly associated with invasive species' impacts than the latter. We found that the abundance of a generalist invader in simulated communities varied widely with the characteristics of the native community, particularly the degree of native niche specialization. Similarly, the sensitivity of invader abundance to propagule pressure strongly depended on the community context. But despite the importance of native community characteristics in general, native richness in particular was an unreliable predictor of invasibility. The frequently‐invoked negative diversity–invasibility relationship was only seen when the native community showed strict limiting similarity without character displacement. This likely explains why empirical evidence for the negative diversity–invasibility relationship is mixed, as previous community assembly research suggests that natural communities do not always show limiting similarity. Thus, these results provide a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the role of propagule pressure and native diversity in biological invasions.

Seed dispersal is a fundamental ecological process influencing the evolution of plant life‐history strategies. In fleshy‐fruited plants dispersed by mutualistic frugivores, variation in fruit traits among closely related species may shape the temporal and spatial dynamics of dispersal events critical to population success. Here, we test a tradeoff model for dispersal strategies, inspired by Grime's triangle of life‐history tradeoffs, that links fruit quality and seed traits (e.g. nutrients, chemical defenses, seed dormancy) to plant reliance on frugivore‐mediated dispersal. The model predicts that species producing nutrient‐rich, rewarding fruits benefit from frequent frugivory interactions, leading to enhanced seed deposition and seedling recruitment across broader spatial and temporal scales. Conversely, species investing in chemically defended fruits or seed dormancy are expected to rely less on frugivores and more on vegetative reproduction or persistent seed banks. We experimentally evaluated this model using three Solanum species (Solanaceae) with distinct fruit traits and seed dormancy levels. For each species, we documented frugivory interactions and conducted a seed‐addition experiment in the field mimicking frugivore dispersal to assess how the spatial and temporal patterns of seed deposition by frugivores affect seedling emergence. Our results show that the Solanum species with sugar‐rich fruits experienced higher frugivory rates and greater seedling emergence under seed‐addition treatments mimicking frugivore dispersal. In contrast, species investing more in pulp defenses or seed dormancy engaged in fewer frugivory interactions and had lower seedling emergence in seed addition treatments mimicking dispersal by frugivores. Altogether, our findings show that differences in fruit traits and quality can mediate tradeoffs among dispersal strategies, leading to interspecific variation in how strongly plant species may rely on frugivory mutualisms for recruitment.

Speciation, extinction, and dispersal are the historical processes influencing the spatial distribution of lineages and strongly influence diversity patterns. Here, we apply a recently developed methodological approach to quantify the relative legacies in situ diversification history (i.e. diversification occurring in the biogeographical region) and historical dispersal (inferred from ex‐situ diversification) on current diversity patterns of the plant genus Myrcia (Myrtaceae) in assemblages distributed across the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. To distinguish among these processes, we proposed a framework that characterized the assemblages based on the mean colonization age of the assemblages, phylogenetic structure, species richness and proportion of in situ diversification. Our results suggest that environmental dynamics have played an important role in shaping diversity. In the Southern Atlantic Forest, environmentally stable areas appear to have served as cradles for cold‐adapted lineages. In the central region, environmental instability in this montane area seems to be an unstable area acting as cradle, with assemblages showing moderate to high in situ diversification and intermediate colonization ages. In the Northern Atlantic Forest, older and richer assemblages with high phylogenetic diversity suggest climatic stability and a museum role. In contrast, the Central‐West region, with younger colonization ages and a higher proportion of lineage dispersal, appears to act as an unstable sink for lineages. By combining community phylogenetics and diversification metrics, we infer evolutionary legacies at the assemblage level and disentangle the roles of in situ diversification and lineage dispersal. In some regions of Atlantic Forest lineage dispersal appears more relevant, possibly due to weaker selection pressures. In contrast, colder areas may have favored lineages with broader climatic tolerance. Our findings reveal distinct biogeographic dynamics across the Atlantic Forest, including areas acting as cradles, sinks, and refugia, and demonstrate the value of assemblage‐level diversification metrics in understanding within‐biome evolutionary processes and their influence on current diversity patterns.

Climate variability has increased in recent decades, and this trend is predicted to continue. Globally, there is a rise in extreme temperatures, such as heatwaves, which are strengthening in both intensity and frequency. As ectotherms, insects are especially affected by temperature variation. Insects are the most speciose group of animals and important members of most terrestrial ecosystems, providing critical ecosystem services. Most studies of global change have investigated only a single stressor, yet insects rarely experience one stressor at a time. Two stressors that co‐occur are heatwaves and warming temperature regimes; thus, is it important that we study their interaction and whether diet may help mitigate negative effects from these stressors. We used a dietary generalist herbivore, the moth fall webworm Hyphantria cunea (Lepidoptera; hereafter, FW) and conducted a factorial experiment to test the separate and interactive effects of temperature warming, heatwave duration and host plant on FW fitness. We found significant interactions between temperature regime, heatwave duration and host plant. We also found that FW follow the temperature–size rule, but only when reared on one of the host plants, thereby supporting previous research that diet alters insect response to changes in temperature regime. Our results show that FW suffer reduced fitness when exposed to high temperatures and heatwaves, with more extreme temperatures and longer heatwaves resulting in increased negative effects on fitness. However, some of these negative effects may be attenuated by host plant identity, which could play an important role in how generalist herbivores respond to increasing extreme weather events as predicted by global change.

Mechanisms underlying community assembly, including those related to species interactions, vary across space and time. Plant–pollinator networks exemplify these dynamics, where link rewiring and turnover mediate adaptations to environmental changes. Bees rely on diverse floral resources (e.g. nectar, oil, pollen) for distinct life‐history aspects. However, how spatial and temporal variation in floral resources influences bee preferences, and the structure and assembly of plant–bee networks, remains understudied. This limits our ability to predict plant–bee pairings and, consequently, to understand interaction dynamics. Using finely resolved plant–bee interaction networks, we investigated how floral resource diversity modulates plant–bee network structure (e.g. modularity and nestedness), and plant network roles (i.e. participation in motifs of different classes, and contribution to nestedness and modularity). We found that spatiotemporal variation in floral resource diversity shapes plant–bee networks in complex ways across different network scales (i.e. from species roles and motifs to network structure). Specifically, while lower floral resource diversity increased network nestedness, higher diversity of floral resources increased network modularity. The effects of floral resource diversity across network scales (i.e. plant network roles and network structure) did not follow a consistent pattern, suggesting that floral resource diversity affected species roles and participation in motifs differently from the broader network structure. For example, plants offering specialised floral resources (e.g. oil) consistently increased modularity with greater floral diversity, as they interacted more within their modules and were associated with motif classes that promote modularity. In contrast, plants offering generalised resources (e.g. nectar) showed variable responses to increasing floral resource diversity across network scales. Our findings emphasise the importance of accounting for spatiotemporal changes in floral resources when studying plant–bee networks, and illustrate how including resource‐level information adds to our understanding of plant–pollinator network configuration.

A lack of information persists on external seed dispersal interactions, despite the rich diversity of potential dispersers. Roadkills offer a unique opportunity to obtain ecological data directly from carcasses. For 18 years, we collected road‐killed mammals in Toyama (Japan) and screened them for seed attachment. We then illustrated species interactions, quantified the number of plant species and seeds individual roadkill carried, and evaluated seasonal variations in the probability of seed attachment. We identified nine mammal species dispersing seeds from 16 distinct plant taxa. Most importantly, medium‐sized mammals (1.5–10.0 kg) accounted for approximately 88% of roadkill carrying seeds, with raccoon dogs Nyctereutes procyonoides dispersing the most seeds. Likely due to seed‐set phenology, we showed a significant increase in seed prevalence for roadkills occurring in autumn. We advocate for future studies in epizoochory to focus on potential animal dispersers community wide.