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Here we introduce the BIODESERT survey, the first systematic field survey devoted to evaluating the joint impacts of grazing by domestic livestock and climate on the structure and functioning of dryland ecosystems worldwide. We describe the major characteristics and the field protocols used in this survey and the organizational aspects followed to carry it out succesfully.

Larvae of phantom midges are very sensitive to some pesticides, and populations can be severely affected by relatively low doses. The number of generations these flies produce each year is critical to their potential to recover from pesticide exposure, but this information has not been confirmed precisely. We found strong evidence that one species of phantom midge can have at least four generations per year. This evidence can be used to improve regulatory assessment of pesticides.

This study provides a record of co-occurrence patterns of tigers and leopards in a dry deciduous forest where both these sympatric predators coexist in high densities. Populations of large carnivores are decreasing on a global scale, and looking into their inter-species relationships is crucial to conserving these species. Our results show that leopards avoid tigers spatially in a dry deciduous system and show significant temporal overlap, with no fine-scale spatio-temporal avoidance.

We focus on the consequences of land-use intensity on functional trait variation within species. In general, only few effects on intraspecific trait variation were found showing a decreasing variation with increasing land-use intensity in forests but an increasing variation in grasslands. Although many studies confirmed strong land-use impacts on arthropod communities, we were not able to confirm similar effects at the intraspecific level.

We found that crowded neighborhoods reduced individual seed production via plant–plant competition, but they also made individual plants more attractive for some pollinator guilds, increasing visitation rates and, therefore, plant fitness. The balance between these two forces varied depending on the species identity and the spatial scale considered. Our results indicate that plant spatial aggregation plays an important role in defining the net effect of mutualistic and antagonistic interactions.

Our work presents a novel set of analyses to understand the geographic distribution of the disease vector ticks Dermacentor marginatus and D. reticulatus and summarize model uncertainties for interpreting results and identifying appropriate public health actions. We estimate the current potential distribution of important disease vectors, D. marginatus and D. reticulatus, and more importantly the future potential distribution of the species in response to global climate change in coming decades.

The dispersal of soil nematodes was not affected by plant spatial configurations, which mostly varied according to their life-history strategy. However, creeping bentgrass grown in a more clustered spatial configuration developed a larger aboveground biomass, which was coupled with a reduction in biomass of subsequently grown ryegrass and plantain. The negative plant–soil feedback may be attributed to the depleted soil nutrients by the stimulated plant growth due to plant–nematode interactions.

We highlight the arrival of 24 655 seeds in the experiment. We found that depending on how far the artificial perches are from the forest fragment, different seed communities are formed. It is also worth mentioning the extensive deposition of the alien species Australian cheesewood. The Tyrannidae bird family was the most represented. Artificial perches are efficient to increase seed rain in the fallow area but should be used with caution in landscapes with the presence of alien species.

We conducted a study on the response of plantation forests to climate change in the eastern Tibetan Plateau. Our study combined dendrochronology (basal area increment, BAI) and remote sensing (normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI) and found that tree growth was significantly correlated with drought index and temperature, and there was a significant positive correlation between BAI and NDVI. NDVI can be used to study the response of plantations to climate change.

We re-evaluate a recently published observation of a spider preying on a bat which made the news internationally and highlighted the potential negative impact of the spider. Spiders are not well loved creatures and often fall victim to false or exaggerated claims in the media. In the current case, we believe the authors' lack of familiarity with bat biology led them to an erroneous conclusion of predation, which was echoed by the media, when no evidence was shown to support this.