Concepts

When organisms dependent on synchronized milestones adapt to environmental changes at different rates, causing their reproductive, feeding, and/or migration patterns to become asynchronous

Mutually beneficial interaction between flowering plants and their animal pollinators where plants provide nectar/pollen rewards and animals provide pollination services

Global temperature increase and associated changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather affecting ecosystems worldwide

Spatial gradients in elevation that capture variation in temperature, soil age and type, disturbance regimes, and land-use histories providing important insights into how organisms, communities, and e...

When a genotype produces different phenotypes under differing environmental conditions

Behavioral choices and time allocation patterns of pollinators when visiting flowers, including flower choice, handling time, and visitation frequency

A measure of community diversity that accounts for both species richness and relative abundance, calculated using the Shannon-Weiner index

The framework that climate affects species abundances and distributions both directly through physiological effects and indirectly through effects on multi-trophic species interactions

Behaviors that reduce the likelihood of predation, including vigilance and evasion tactics

Duration that snowpack remains on the ground providing water inputs to trees

Negative interactions between individuals of different species competing for limited resources

Way in which individuals distribute themselves across landscape, including movement patterns and spatial organization like home range size and overlap

Number of days from autumn snow onset to spring snowmelt, providing temperature stabilization and protection for overwintering organisms

Temporal changes in groundwater storage volumes in response to climate variability and hydrologic forcing

Fresh weight minus dry weight divided by dry weight

The ratio of leaf area to dry mass, often associated with dry conditions as it reduces surface area and water loss from the leaf

The ability of an organism to successfully transfer pollen between flowers for plant reproduction

Plant fitness measured through various components including fruit set, seed production, and seeds per plant

Frequency of pollinator visits to flowers measured as visits per individual per minute or visits per flower per minute

The combined process of water evaporation from soil and plant surfaces and water transpiration from plant leaves, representing a major component of the water budget that increases with warming tempera...

Temperature-dependent physiological and behavioral responses that affect organism fitness and population dynamics

Mutually beneficial herbivore-predator associations where sap-feeding insects provide honeydew food for ants in exchange for protection against predators

Survival of organisms through winter diapause or dormancy, often related to environmental conditions during overwintering

The study of how animals search for and utilize food resources in their environment

Manipulative experiments that alter abiotic conditions or reciprocally transplant individuals to understand and predict the effects of environmental change on biological communities and ecosystem func...

The functioning of ecosystems including processes such as carbon and nutrient cycling and storage, community- and ecosystem-level responses, and overall ecosystem properties and processes

The concept that organisms face competing demands for limited resources during development that create trade-offs between different fitness components

Foraging behavior where floral visitors bypass the floral opening and access nectar by chewing holes in nectar spurs or using pre-existing holes

Reduced seed set resulting from insufficient pollen receipt, particularly affecting females when hermaphrodite density and frequency increases

Physiological stress experienced by plants due to reduced water availability that can harm fitness by inducing leaf loss, reducing flower size, and decreasing seed production

Vocal signals produced in response to predator detection to warn conspecifics or communicate threat information

The influence of surrounding plant species composition and density on individual plant fitness and associated herbivore behavior

The depth of water that would result from melting the snowpack, quantified as peak snow water equivalent and snow disappearance rate

A method used to quantify social relationships that not only quantifies the direct relationship between a focal individual and its social partners, but also describes the position of the focal individ...

Changes in species geographic distributions in response to changing climate conditions, typically involving movement to higher elevations or latitudes

Selection where individual fitness depends on the local frequency rather than global frequency, creating population structure with groups varying in genetic and phenotypic composition

Consumption of plant material by animals, measured as browse occurrence on host plants

Changes in population size and structure over time driven by vital rates and environmental factors

Indirect effects of predators on lower trophic levels mediated through changes in intermediate consumer behavior or abundance

The coordination between plant and microbial diversity, wherein both communities experience large shifts in composition following disturbance or when a perturbation disrupts their coordinated response

CO2 efflux from soils to atmosphere representing combination of autotrophic respiration (root respiration) and heterotrophic respiration (microbial decomposition)

The distance at which an individual initiates moving away from an approaching humans, reflecting flightiness of an animal in response to a potential predator

Behavioral, physiological, and life-history changes that reduce the risk of predation but have associated energetic or fitness costs to prey individuals and populations