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The use of functional information in the form of species traits plays an important role in explaining biodiversity patterns and responses to environmental changes. Although relationships between species composition, their traits, and the environment have been extensively studied on a case-by-case basis, results are variable, and it remains unclear how generalizable these relationships are across ecosystems, taxa and spatial scales. To address this gap, we collated 80 datasets from trait-based studies into a global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment and Space; "CESTES". Each dataset includes four matrices: species community abundances or presences/absences across multiple sites, species trait information, environmental variables and spatial coordinates of the sampling sites. The CESTES database is a live database: it will be maintained and expanded in the future as new datasets become available. By its harmonized structure, and the diversity of ecosystem types, taxonomic groups, and spatial scales it covers, the CESTES database provides an important opportunity for synthetic trait-based research in community ecology.

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Climate change and species invasions pose serious threats to biodiversity. Daphnia lumholtzi Sars, 1885, a cladoceran species native to Africa, Asia, and Oceania, has successfully invaded large sections of North and South America, there is evidence that the increase in the Earth's temperature and the number of reservoirs have facilitated this process. In this context, our study evaluated the effects of climate change on the invasive potential of D. lumholtzi, identifying the environmental suitability of non-native river basins around the world to invasion by this species. Using ecological niche modelling, we predicted potential distribution areas of D. lumholtzi in non-native continents at the present time, in 2050 and 2080. For future scenarios we considered two hypotheses of greenhouse gas emission: extreme (8.5 representative concentration pathways) and moderate (4.5 representative concentration pathways). We used different algorithms in niche models within the ensemble forecast approach to estimate the potential distribution of D. lumholtzi river basins worldwide. Furthermore, we developed a susceptibility index, that uses the presence of D. lumholtzi, its suitability information, area, and number of reservoirs to evaluate the susceptibility to invasion for each river basin. Our predictions showed that future climate change will have a strong influence on the invasive potential of D. lumholzti, potentially expanding its distribution in eastern North America and boosting invasion across Europe, especially at the end of the century. The susceptibility index also showed that many river basins that presently are not vulnerable to invasion by this species will become susceptible to invasion, these basins lie mainly in Europe. Our results will be useful for monitoring and mitigating the spread of this species, especially for river basins identified as highly susceptible to invasion. Thus, we suggested that D. lumholtzi should be a high priority for monitoring and preventive actions against invasion of these river basins. We also suggest that better risk assessments, that include invasive species and reservoirs, should be a priority in national energy development plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some organisms, such as aquatic insects, are transported from the upstream to downstream region of streams through a process called drift. This process occurs in passive and active ways and can be variable throughout the day, mainly between the nocturnal and diurnal periods. Here, we evaluate the periodicity of the drift of aquatic insects in two streams of the Middle Iguaçu basin, southern region of Brazil. We predicted that the drift of aquatic insects brings the highest richness, diversity and abundance during the nocturnal period, compared to the diurnal period. In addition, we expected that the composition of species is different between these periods. In each stream, aquatic insect sampling was carried out 10 times, for 24 hours, using drift nets. A total of 2,114 aquatic insect specimens were recorded, distributed in 26 families. Of these families, 20 were recorded during the diurnal period and 24 during the nocturnal period. Our results showed an increase in the diversity and abundance of aquatic insect drift in the nocturnal period. However, only abundance was significantly different between the periods. We attribute the higher abundance in nocturnal drift possibly to biological interactions. Thus, nocturnal drift can be a strategy of some aquatic insects to avoid visual predation by other invertebrates and/or vertebrates, in Neotropical streams. We highlight the importance of our study, because it can be used for comparison in surveys of lotic environments that have been impacted by human activity (e.g. by dam construction), which can alter the water flow, and consequently the pattern of insect drift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]