Yuhao Zhao

East China Normal University | ECNU · School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences

Aim To explore the impact of island area and isolation on multiple dimensions of ant biodiversity (taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity) and the underlying processes of community assembly on islands. Location Thousand Island Lake, Zhejiang, China, created by dam construction in 1959. Taxon Ants. Methods We sampled ants on 33 islands,...

Habitat loss and fragmentation reduce biodiversity and alter species composition in local communities. β diversity describes the variation in species composition between or among communities in fragmented landscapes and has two components: species turnover and nestedness. In this study, we assessed β diversity of ant assemblages on 24 island fragme...

The Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography postulates that larger and closer islands support higher biodiversity through the dynamic balance of colonization and extinction processes. The negative diversity–isolation (i.e. the distance to the mainland) relationship is derived based on the assumption that the mainland is the only source pool for i...

The Anthropocene's human-dominated habitat expansion endangers global biodiversity. However, large mammalian herbivores experienced few extinctions during the 20th century, hinting at potentially overlooked ecological responses of a group sensitive to global change. Using dental microwear as a proxy, we studied large herbivore dietary niches over a...

Anthropogenic activities have reshaped biodiversity on islands worldwide. However, it remains unclear how island attributes and land-use change interactively shape multiple facets of island biodiversity through community assembly processes. To answer this, we conducted bird surveys in various land-use types (mainly forest and farmland) using transe...

Reservoir islands formed by dam construction have the same history, clear boundaries, and large numbers that provide a natural platform for testing theories in ecology and biogeography. In this paper, we review studies of multiple zoological taxa on reservoir islands of a large lake in eastern China (Thousand Island Lake). This lake, created in 195...

Habitat fragmentation is altering species interactions worldwide. However, the mechanisms underlying the response of network specialization to habitat fragmentation remain unknown, especially for multi-trophic interactions. We here collected a large dataset consisting of 2670 observations of tri-trophic interactions among plants, sap-sucking aphids...

Aims: Nested subset pattern (nestedness) of species distributions is widespread in fragmented habitats. This study aims to explore the nested distribution pattern of aphid communities and the potential influencing mechanisms, including the effects of plant–aphid interaction and ant–aphid interaction on aphid community nesting structure, in the frag...

Urban green spaces provide regulating ecosystem services (RS) to humans and contribute to biodiversity conservation under urbanization pressure. However, trade-offs arise while making development decisions in urban green space planning, as the prioritization of enhancing RS may not always contribute to biodiversity conservation and vice versa. Ther...

Understory vegetation is a vital part of urban forests and provides a habitat for the sustainability of plant and animal biodiversity. Understory vegetation in urban forests is highly sensitive to anthropogenic stress and thus more prone to plant invasions. However, the influencing factors and invasion mechanisms of nonnative species (nonnatives) i...

Understanding how community phylogenetic and functional structures change over succession has gained increasing attention during the last decades, but the lack of long-term time-series data has limited our understanding of the patterns and mechanisms of these changes. This is especially the case for forest communities. Here we used an exceptionally...

Aim The equilibrium theory of island biogeography predicts the positive species–area relationship and the negative species–isolation relationship, resulting in higher species richness on large and close islands. Unlike species richness, soundscape diversity integrates sound from various sources (e.g. biophony, geophony and anthrophony). However, ho...

Habitat fragmentation impacts seed dispersal processes that are important in maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, it is still unclear how habitat fragmentation affects frugivorous interactions due to the lack of high-quality data on plant-frugivore networks. Here we recorded 10,117 plant-frugivore interactions from 22 reserv...

Many of the choices humans make with regard to infrastructure, urban planning and other phenomena have impacts that will last thousands of years. This can readily be seen in modern cities in which contemporary streets run along street grids that were laid out thousands of years prior or even in which ancient viaducts still play a role. However, rar...

Rodents are ubiquitous seed predators in nature and their size-related seed choice plays an important role in the plant’s community structure. However, to understand how size-related seed predation by rodents affects plant recruitment, it is fundamental to predict seeds and seedling response to rodent predation. We assessed the interactive effects...

This dataset is the latest and most complete one on species traits of Chinese birds. The 17 traits included body mass, body length, bill length, wing length, tail length, tarsus length, primary diet, clutch size, egg size, egg volume, nest site, nest type, flocking status, migrant status, endemic status, biogeographic distribution and the number o...

Aims: China has a total of 1,445 bird species and is the one of the countries with the richest bird diversity in the world. Species traits strongly determine the species’ ability to persist in a variety of environments and are fundamental to ecological, evolutionary and conservational research. Therefore, it is important to collecting data on life-...

Density‐dependent non‐monotonic species interactions are important in maintaining ecosystem stability and function, but empirical evidences are still rare. Rodents, as both seed dispersers and seed predators, have dual effects on plant regeneration and may result in non‐monotonic rodent‐plant interactions. According to the non‐monotonic models, the...

To explore the spatial patterns and influencing factors of ground ants species diversity in the Thousand Island Lake, China, we surveyed ground ants using pitfall traps, leaf litter extraction and hand collecting on 33 islands in May to August 2017 and 2018. We divided all ground ants into predator ants or omnivore ants according to their diet. We...

Abstract Background China has a relative high degree of endemism of birds due to its large area, diversified topography, and varied climates and habitats. Among the 77 Chinese endemic birds, 29 species are classified as threatened according to the officially released China Biodiversity Red List in 2015. Chinese endemic birds should be the focus of...

Habitat loss and fragmentation often leads to defaunation of large‐bodied mammals, and their loss could trigger release from top‐down control or food resource competition for small mammal seed dispersers, which in turn may affect the effectiveness of seed dispersal by altering the number of dispersed seeds or the manner in which they are dispersed....

Incorporating imperfect detection when estimating species richness has become commonplace in the past decade. However, the question of how imperfect detection of species affects estimates of functional and phylogenetic community structure remains untested. We used long‐term counts of breeding bird species that were detected at least once on islands...

China is one of the countries with the richest bird biodiversity in the world. Among the 1372 Chinese birds, 146 species are considered threatened and three species are regionally extinct according to the officially released China Biodiversity Red List in 2015. Here, we conducted the first extensive analysis to systematically investigate the patter...

Beta diversity describes the variation in species composition among communities within a region and it is determined by two antithetic processes: species turnover (or species replacement), and nestedness (or difference in richness). Beta-diversity partitioning aims to separate these two processes when examining species composition among communities...

1. Biodiversity change in anthropogenically transformed habitats is often nonrandom, yet the nature and importance of the different mechanisms shaping community structure are unclear. Here, we extend the classic Theory of Island Biogeography (TIB) to account for nonrandom processes by incorporating species traits and phylogenetic relationships into...

Island biogeography theory is an important part of community ecology, and its core process is species turnover, which is determined by species colonization and extinction. A large number of studies have shown that community dynamics of many biotic taxa can be affected by their dispersal abilities. Our study explored the effects of dispersal abiliti...