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A survey was conducted to evaluate the number of tree-hole breeding mosquito species and their distribution in the six principal woodland types in Israel. Out of approximately 3,000 mature trees examined, only 38 contained holes that retained water for extended periods of time, and breeding mosquitoes were observed in 27 of them. Two specialized tree-hole breeders, Aedes pulchritarsis Rondani and Aedes geniculatus Oliver, were found breeding at several sites in northern Israel, always at locations 500 m above sea level (a.s.l) and with high annual precipitation. Aedes albopictus Skuse which, in Israel, is known as an opportunistic container breeder, was found in this study to have adapted remarkably well to breeding in tree holes and was found in most forest types investigated and in most tree species which had adequate tree holes. Two other species, Culiseta annulata Schrank and Culex pipiens Linnaeus instars, were found in one of the tree holes, but did not survive to reach maturity.

Tree cavities are a critical multi-annual resource that can limit populations and structure communities of cavity-nesting vertebrates. We examined the regional and local factors influencing lifetime productivity (number and richness of occupants) of individual tree cavities across two divergent forest ecosystems: temperate mixed forest in Canada and subtropical Atlantic Forest, Argentina. We predicted that (1) species would accumulate more rapidly within cavities in the species-rich system (Argentina: 76 species) than the poorer system (Canada: 31 species), (2) cavity characteristics associated with nest-site selection in short-term studies would predict lifetime cavity productivity, and (3) species would accumulate more rapidly across highly used cavities than across cavities used only once, and in Argentina than in Canada. We monitored and measured nesting cavities used by birds and mammals over 22 breeding seasons (1995–2016) in Canada and 12 breeding seasons (2006–2017) in Argentina. Cavities were used an average of 3.1 times by 1.7 species in Canada and 2.2 times by 1.4 species in Argentina. Species richness within cavities increased with number of nesting events at similar rates in Canada and Argentina, in both cases much slower than expected if within-cavity species assemblages were random, suggesting that lifetime richness of individual cavities is more strongly influenced by local ecological factors (nest site fidelity, nest niche) than by the regional species pool. The major determinant of lifetime cavity productivity was the cavity’s life span. We found only weak or inconsistent relationships with cavity characteristics selected by individuals in short-term nest-site selection studies. Turnover among (vs. within) cavities was the primary driver of diversity at the landscape scale. In Canada, as predicted, species accumulation was fastest when sampling across high-use cavities. In Argentina, the rates of species accumulation were similar across high-and low-use cavities, and fastest when both high-and low-use cavities were pooled. These findings imply that biodiversity of cavity nesters is maintained by a mix of long-lived (highly productive, legacy trees) and many high-turnover (single-use, fast decaying) tree cavities. Conservation of both long-lasting and single-use cavities should be incorporated into decisions about stand-level forest management, regional land use policies, and reserve networks.

Most knowledge about bacterial evolution and ecological interactions comes from laboratory studies. One difference between the wild and most laboratory experiments is the diversity of bacterial taxa present. Understanding how wild bacteria respond to perturbation therefore requires consideration of how ecological sorting, colonization, and genetic changes of constituent species interact. Ecological sorting of species might reduce evolutionary rates and make communities robust to disturbance, or it could amplify selection pressures and lead to unstable co-evolutionary cascades. Even estimates of basic rates of ecological sorting, dispersal, and genetic change are rare. Here, we addressed these knowledge gaps by liming wild decomposer communities living in beech tree holes and tracking ecological and evolutionary responses for 12 weeks. Overall, tree hole communities were extremely robust to liming involving short-term pulses up to 4 pH units and long-term increases up to 2 pH units. Species diversity and composition displayed significant but small changes in treatment tree holes compared to control ones. New bacterial taxa colonized at a low rate that did not vary with liming. Genetic changes in the frequency of single nucleotide polymorphisms in metagenome assembled genomes occurred at rates that were both comparable to and correlated with ecological changes in the same metagenome assembled genomes, but the rate of genetic changes did not vary between limed and control tree holes. Analysis of rates of genetic change estimated low effective population size (~104) and generation times of roughly 1 day. Our study provides estimates of rates of ecological and evolutionary processes in wild bacterial communities, which displayed remarkable robustness to our experimental perturbation.

Tree‐related microhabitats (TreMs), such as water‐filled tree holes (WTHs), are important structures for forest biodiversity, providing habitats for many specialized species, which are however impaired by the intensive forest management of the past. Strategies to maintain and promote TreMs in managed forests, e.g. by establishing old‐growth forest patches as stepping stones, have been implemented, but their success has rarely been tested. We experimentally created WTHs in old‐growth patches that were established to connect forest nature reserves (FNRs) in a beech forest in Germany. Eight years after creation, we sampled, identified, and measured traits of the invertebrate community that colonized the WTHs. We then investigated how spatial and environmental variables affected taxonomic and functional attributes of communities and populations. A total of 2407 individuals of 13 species were sampled, the majority of which were insect larvae. Abundance, as well as taxonomic and functional diversity attributes and community composition, were influenced by environmental and spatial factors, generally supporting the patch‐dynamics and species‐sorting metacommunity archetype. At the population level, both spatial and environmental factors affected the abundance and functional diversity of body size distributions, suggesting that dispersal capacities, microhabitat requirements, and competitive abilities of individual species structure communities. The distance to the FNRs had a positive effect on total invertebrate abundance and the abundance of the specialized marsh beetle Prionocyphon serricornis, and a weak negative effect on the functional diversity of the community. Our study underpins the stepping‐stone concept of connecting FNRs. The species colonized all newly created microhabitats from source populations, indicating that these patches increase connectivity between the FNRs and thus contribute to forest biodiversity conservation. The negative effects of distance to FNRs on functional diversity suggest that distances between habitat patches should be kept small for such a strategy to be successful and sustainable in the long term.

It is very important to promote plant growth and decrease the nitrogen leaching in soil, to improve nitrogen (N) utilization efficiency. In this experiment, we designed a new fertilization strategy, fruit tree hole storage brick (FTHSB) application under subsurface drip irrigation, to characterise the effects of FTHSB addition on N absorption and utilization in grapes. Three treatments were set in this study, including subsurface drip irrigation (CK) control, fruit tree hole storage brick A (T1) treatment, and fruit tree hole storage brick B (T2) treatment. Results showed that the pore number and size of FTHSB A were significantly higher than FTHSB B. Compared with CK, T1 and T2 treatments significantly increased the biomass of different organs of grape, N utilization and 15 N content in the roots, stems and leaves, along with more prominent promotion at T1 treatment. When the soil depth was 15–30 cm, the FTHSB application significantly increased the soil 15 N content. But when the soil depth was 30–45 cm, it reduced the soil 15 N content greatly. T1 and T2 treatments obviously increased the activities of nitrite reductase (NR) and glutamine synthetase (GS) in grape leaves, also the urease activity(UR) in 30 cm of soil. Our findings suggest that FTHSB promoted plant N utilization by reducing N loss in soil and increasing the enzyme activity related to nitrogen metabolism. In addition, this study showed that FTHSB A application was more effective than FTHSB B in improving nitrogen utilization in grapes.

Human activities in forests lead to alteration or even destruction of habitats for numerous organisms, often resulting in a decline of biodiversity. Insects inhabiting water‐filled tree holes may be especially sensitive to human impact as they require these microhabitats for at least part of their life cycle, with larvae mainly feeding on plant and animal debris accumulating in the water until they actively disperse in their adult stage. The processes leading to successful colonization of these microhabitats are not well understood, and it is unclear how forest management could influence them. We used sequential collection and recording of larval communities in artificial tree‐hole analogues to study the process of colonization by aquatic tree‐hole insects. We focused on the effects of parameters related to forest management as well as microhabitat properties on abundance, species richness, and community composition during colonization of artificial tree holes by aquatic tree‐hole insects. We observed complex, and partly species‐specific, temporal patterns of colonization of these new microhabitats. We found that the forest management intensity index ForMI, tree composition of forests as well as distance to natural water‐filled tree holes and debris type were important in shaping community composition of insect larvae inhabiting tree holes across the entire colonization process. Larval abundance was negatively affected by increased distance to natural microhabitats and by changes in microclimate. Our results suggest that forest management significantly impacts microhabitat colonization dynamics of tree‐hole insects, emphasizing the need for less‐intensively managed forests to support natural tree‐hole communities. We recommend the protection, creation, and maintenance of tree‐related microhabitats, for example, through the promotion of habitat trees in managed forests, to sustain higher abundances of tree‐hole inhabitants. Our findings underline the ecological value of water‐filled tree holes and support their integration into forest conservation strategies as both essential habitats and valuable indicators of environmental change. The present study demonstrates the effects of forest management on insect communities during the colonization of artificial tree holes and reveals a dynamic, species‐specific pattern of colonization. It highlights the negative effects of forest management intensity and the dominant tree species of the forest stand on insect abundance and community composition, in addition to the influence of dispersal distances and physico‐chemical water parameters. The study underscores the role of suitable forest management practices in preserving water‐filled tree holes and supporting biodiversity in forests.

Suicide has become a critical concern, necessitating the development of effective preventative strategies. Social media platforms offer a valuable resource for identifying signs of suicidal ideation. Despite progress in detecting suicidal ideation on social media, accurately identifying individuals who express suicidal thoughts less openly or infrequently poses a significant challenge. To tackle this, we have developed a dataset focused on Chinese suicide narratives from Weibo’s Tree Hole feature and introduced an ensemble model named Text Convolutional Neural Network based on Social Network relationships (TCNN-SN). This model enhances predictive performance by leveraging social network relationship features and applying correction factors within a weighted linear fusion framework. It is specifically designed to identify key individuals who can help uncover hidden suicidal users and clusters. Our model, assessed using the bespoke dataset and benchmarked against alternative classification approaches, demonstrates superior accuracy, F1-score and AUC metrics, achieving 88.57%, 88.75% and 94.25%, respectively, outperforming traditional TextCNN models by 12.18%, 10.84% and 10.85%. We assert that our methodology offers a significant advancement in the predictive identification of individuals at risk, thereby contributing to the prevention and reduction of suicide incidences.

Community similarity declines with increasing geographic distance if species tend to be locally adapted or if they are dispersal limited. The distance–decay of similarity has been shown for bacteria previously, but distinguishing between these competing mechanisms is difficult from observational surveys. I found little evidence of a relationship between geographic distance and similarity in community composition in an aquatic bacterial community. When bacterial colonization occurred into initially identical sterile microcosms across a woodland, a strong distance–decay relationship was observed after 28 days, implying that dispersal limitation created a strong pattern in these communities in the absence of environmental differences. This conclusion was not supported by the results of a reciprocal transplant experiment. When microcosms at the extremities of the study area were transplanted to the opposite end of the study area, the communities converged on the community composition at the site to which they were transplanted. This convergence did not depend on whether colonization into the microcosms was prevented, implying a minor role for dispersal limitation over these spatial and temporal scales. Additional manipulations of colonization rates were consistent with the hypothesis that dispersal limitation structured these communities over short time scales (a few days), but that dispersal limitation had a minor role over longer time scales (>7 days).

Background Orbivirus -induced hemorrhagic diseases cause high mortality in wild and captive white-tailed deer in North America. The role of different Culicoides species in Orbivirus transmission outside of areas of intensive animal production has not been established. At our study location, bluetongue virus (BTV) RNA-positive female Culicoides debilipalpis pools have been detected annually since 2012 when BTV transmission was noted in a captive deer herd. Identifying specific larval habitats of suspected vectors at active transmission sites is crucial both for identifying the source of the vectors and for subsequently planning intervention actions. Since C. debilipalpis larvae are known to develop in tree holes, this study was designed to use DNA barcoding to identify larvae collected from tree holes. Methods Adult female Culicoides were collected using light or emergence traps and morphologically identified to 11 species. Culicoides sonorensis were also obtained from a laboratory colony. Substrate was collected from tree holes and flooded with water to harvest floating larvae. Total DNA from three to seven adult females per species and 19 larvae was extracted. Two loci of the nuclear 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene, one locus each of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene and the nuclear 28S rRNA gene were amplified using loci-specific primers. Results All 61 adults were sequenced at each of the four loci under study. Since no single locus delineated all putative species and the COI locus yielded unreliable pseudogenes for two individuals of C. arboricola , sequences of all four loci were concatenated to maximize species separation and allow for larval association with identified adults. Sixteen larvae were clearly assigned to species based on DNA barcoding and phylogenetic results. Multiple larvae were assigned to each of the C. debilipalpis clade, the C. villosipennis clade, the C. arboricola clade and the C. nanus clade. Conclusions Of the approximately 62 species described in the southeast USA, 21 have now been barcoded and sequences are publicly available. In this study, we constructed a database composed of species-specific sequences of adult Culicoides and then identified larvae to species by matching their corresponding sequences with adults. Since Culicoides larvae are difficult to identify, using DNA barcoding to facilitate larval habitat surveys can be a valuable tool. Graphical Abstract

The formation of tree-cavities is an important ecological factor since many animals in woody habitats are cavity users. Recent research focuses on tree-cavity formation and the associated cavity networks in forest ecosystems. However, although traditional European orchards are important habitats for secondary cavity users, ecological research on the factors associated with the occurrence of cavities in fruit trees is widely missing. In particular, fruit tree pruning management may affect decay-cavity formation due to the pruning wounds allowing heart rot and decay to enter the tree. Here, we present a cross-sectional study investigating 608 fruit trees in 30 study plots of three European fruit-growing regions to identify factors associated with decay-cavity occurrence in fruit trees. Presence of decay-cavities was positively related to trunk diameter. Moreover, fruit trees of low vitality and with woodpecker-cavities featured more often decay-cavities than trees of high vitality or without woodpecker-cavities. Apple trees featured higher numbers of cavities at younger age than other fruit trees. Occurrence of decay-cavities was also related to the past removal of large main branches. Accordingly, traditional orchards are cavity-rich habitats if they comprise high proportion of old fruit trees, in particular apple trees, and if pruning management produces large pruning wounds. Thus, differential tree pruning and fruit-growing traditions across Europe result in different cavity densities in traditional orchards. Preservation of existing and potential cavity trees and selective removal of large branches from apple trees are recommended as conservation measures establishing high cavity densities and increasing the associated biodiversity in the agricultural landscape.