For elk (Cervus elaphus) in the Gallatin drainage of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Montana, USA, wolf movements caused local predation risk to vary substantially on a time scale of days. Spatially and temporally fine-scaled data from GPS radio collars show that elk moved into the protective cover of wooded areas when wolves were present, reducing their use of preferred grassland foraging habitats that had high predation risk. By constraining habitat selection, wolves may have greater effects on elk dynamics than would be predicted on the basis of direct predation alone. Based on changes in the woody vegetation following the reintroduction of wolves, it has been suggested that antipredator responses by elk may be driving a trophic cascade in the Yellowstone ecosystem. However, studies to date have been hampered by a lack of direct data on spatial variation in predation risk, and the ways in which elk respond to variation in risk. Our data support a central portion of the hypothesis that elk antipredator behavior could drive a trophic cascade, but changes in elk numbers are also likely to have affected elk-plant interactions.

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Herbicide resistance jeopardizes the usefulness of valuable chemical tools and, therefore, weed management in many crop systems. Models must be developed to evaluate management tactics that prevent, delay, or reduce resistance. The complexity of biological processes involved in herbicide resistance also requires models to focus research and to integrate experiments. A population model was developed that improves upon previous attempts to predict herbicide resistance dynamics. The model incorporates plant population demographics with the Hardy-Weinberg concept for gene segregation. The model simulates the evolution, spread, and subsequent dynamics of resistance in the presence and absence of a herbicide. Analysis of model simulations identified two sets of biological processes as key factors in the evolution and dynamics of herbicide-resistant weed populations. These are processes that influence ecological fitness and gene flow. Several options are suggested as examples for the management of resistant weed populations.

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Aim The increased incidence of large fires around much of the world in recent decades raises questions about human and non-human drivers of fire and the likelihood of increased fire activity in the future. The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual framework for examining where human-set fires and feedbacks are likely to be most pronounced in temperate forests world-wide and to establish and test a methodology for evaluating this framework using palaeoecological records.Location Tasmania, north-western USA, southern South America and New Zealand. MethodsWe outline a conceptual framework for predicting the sensitivity of ecosystems to human impacts on fire regimes and then use a circum-Pacific comparison of existing historical reconstructions of fire, climate, human settlement and vegetation to evaluate this approach.Results Previous research investigating important controls on fire activity shows that the sensitivity of temperate ecosystems to human-set fires is modulated by the frequency of natural fire occurrence, fuel moisture and fuel type and availability. Palaeoecological data from four temperate regions suggest that the effects of anthropogenic burning are greatest where fire is naturally rare, vegetation is poorly adapted to fire and fuel biomass is abundant and contiguous. Alternatively, where fire activity is naturally high and vegetation is well adapted to fire, evidence of human influence on fire and vegetation is less obvious.Main conclusions Palaeofire records suggest that the most dynamic and persistent ecosystem transitions occur where human activities increase landscape flammability through fire-vegetation feedbacks. Rapid forest transitions in biomassrich ecosystems such as New Zealand and areas of Tasmania and southern South America illustrate how landscapes experiencing few fires can shift past tipping points to become fire-prone landscapes with new alternative stable state communities. Comparisons of palaeoecological data from different regions with similar biophysical gradients but different human settlement histories can provide new opportunities for understanding ecosystem vulnerability to fire-climate-human interactions.