ecology research

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Collection  06 March 2024

Earth, Environment and Ecology Top 100 of 2023

This collection highlights the most downloaded* Earth science, environmental science and ecology research papers published by Scientific Reports in 2023. Featuring authors from around the world, these papers highlight valuable research from an international community.

You can also view the journal's overall Top 100 or the Top 100 within various subject areas . *Data obtained from SN Insights, which is based on Digital Science’s Dimensions.

An extraordinary fossil captures the struggle for existence during the Mesozoic

• Jordan C. Mallon

A new spinosaurid dinosaur species from the Early Cretaceous of Cinctorres (Spain)

• Andrés Santos-Cubedo
• Carlos de Santisteban
• Sergi Meseguer

Generation of equatorial plasma bubble after the 2022 Tonga volcanic eruption

• Atsuki Shinbori
• Takuya Sori
• Iku Shinohara

An ethological analysis of close-contact inter-cat interactions determining if cats are playing, fighting, or something in between

• N. Gajdoš-Kmecová
• D. S. Mills

The largest amber-preserved flower revisited

• Eva-Maria Sadowski
• Christa-Charlotte Hofmann

Climate warming and increasing Vibrio vulnificus infections in North America

• Elizabeth J. Archer
• Craig Baker-Austin
• Iain R. Lake

First terror bird footprints reveal functionally didactyl posture

• Ricardo N. Melchor
• Silverio F. Feola
• Lorena Herazo

New theropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Japan provides critical implications for the early evolution of ornithomimosaurs

• Soki Hattori
• Masateru Shibata
• Yoichi Azuma

Carbon dioxide reduction by photosynthesis undetectable even during phytoplankton blooms in two lakes

• Karla Münzner
• Silke Langenheder
• Eva S. Lindström

The rise of macropredatory pliosaurids near the Early-Middle Jurassic transition

• Daniel Madzia
• Benjamin P. Kear

Large-scale effects of offshore wind farms on seabirds of high conservation concern

• Stefan Garthe
• Henriette Schwemmer
• Moritz Mercker

Symbolic innovation at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in Eurasia shown by the personal ornaments from Tolbor-21 (Mongolia)

• Solange Rigaud
• Evgeny P. Rybin
• Nicolas Zwyns

Observed increases in North Atlantic tropical cyclone peak intensification rates

• Andra J. Garner

High probability of successive occurrence of Nankai megathrust earthquakes

• Yo Fukushima
• Tomoaki Nishikawa
• Yasuyuki Kano

A simple soil mass correction for a more accurate determination of soil carbon stock changes

• Ames F. Fowler
• Bruno Basso
• William F. Brinton

Bone aerophones from Eynan-Mallaha (Israel) indicate imitation of raptor calls by the last hunter-gatherers in the Levant

• Laurent Davin
• José-Miguel Tejero
• François Valla

Spontaneous action matching in dog puppies, kittens and wolf pups

• Claudia Fugazza
• Andrea Temesi
• Ákos Pogány

Characterization of the spontaneously recharging natural hydrogen reservoirs of Bourakebougou in Mali

• Eric Deville
• Aliou Boubacar Diallo

Reappraising the evolutionary history of the largest known gecko, the presumably extinct Hoplodactylus delcourti , via high-throughput sequencing of archival DNA

• Matthew P. Heinicke
• Stuart V. Nielsen
• Tony Gamble

Brazilian Amazon indigenous territories under deforestation pressure

• Celso H. L. Silva-Junior
• Fabrício B. Silva
• Maycon Melo

The risk of being bitten by a dog is higher on hot, sunny, and smoggy days

• Tanujit Dey
• Antonella Zanobetti
• Clas Linnman

Thousands of domestic and public supply wells face failure despite groundwater sustainability reform in California’s Central Valley

• Darcy Bostic
• Linda Mendez-Barrientos
• Victoria MacClements

Physics-informed deep learning to forecast \({\widehat{{\varvec{M}}}}_{{\varvec{m}}{\varvec{a}}{\varvec{x}}}\) during hydraulic fracturing

• David W. Eaton
• Jörn Davidsen

A new, rare, small-ranged, and endangered mountain snake of the genus Elaphe from the Southern Levant

• Daniel Jablonski
• Marco Antônio Ribeiro-Júnior

A widely-used eddy covariance gap-filling method creates systematic bias in carbon balance estimates

• Henriikka Vekuri
• Juha-Pekka Tuovinen
• Annalea Lohila

Spatial integration framework of solar, wind, and hydropower energy potential in Southeast Asia

• Anjar Dimara Sakti
• Pitri Rohayani
• Ketut Wikantika

Rapid population growth and high management costs have created a narrow window for control of introduced hippos in Colombia

• Amanda L. Subalusky
• Suresh A. Sethi

The provenance of the stones in the Menga dolmen reveals one of the greatest engineering feats of the Neolithic

• José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez
• Leonardo García Sanjuán
• Francisco Martínez-Sevilla

Beaver exploitation, 400,000 years ago, testifies to prey choice diversity of Middle Pleistocene hominins

• Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser
• Lutz Kindler
• Wil Roebroeks

Household energy-saving behavior, its consumption, and life satisfaction in 37 countries

• Xiangdan Piao
• Shunsuke Managi

Comparison of Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Illumina MiSeq sequencing with mock communities and agricultural soil

• Bo Maxwell Stevens
• Tim B. Creed
• Daniel K. Manter

The impact of floating photovoltaic power plants on lake water temperature and stratification

• Konstantin Ilgen
• Dirk Schindler

Partial COVID-19 closure of a national park reveals negative influence of low-impact recreation on wildlife spatiotemporal ecology

• Alissa K. Anderson
• John S. Waller
• Daniel H. Thornton

Sampling environmental DNA from trees and soil to detect cryptic arboreal mammals

• Michael C. Allen
• Robert Kwait
• Julie L. Lockwood

A new silesaurid from Carnian beds of Brazil fills a gap in the radiation of avian line archosaurs

• Rodrigo T. Müller
• Maurício S. Garcia

Assessing the climate change mitigation potential from food waste composting

• Tibisay Pérez
• Sintana E. Vergara
• Whendee L. Silver

Volcanic glass from the 1.8 ka Taupō eruption (New Zealand) detected in Antarctic ice at ~ 230 CE

• Stephen B. Piva
• Simon J. Barker
• Rewi M. Newnham

Land-use change is associated with multi-century loss of elephant ecosystems in Asia

• Shermin de Silva
• Peter Leimgruber

Impact of the Tambora volcanic eruption of 1815 on islands and relevance to future sunlight-blocking catastrophes

• Nick Wilson
• Veronika Valler
• Stefan Brönnimann

Statistical evaluation of character support reveals the instability of higher-level dinosaur phylogeny

• David Černý
• Ashley L. Simonoff

Climate change multi-model projections in CMIP6 scenarios in Central Hokkaido, Japan

• Shilei Peng
• Chunying Wang
• Ryusuke Hatano

An extinct deep-snouted Alligator species from the Quaternary of Thailand and comments on the evolution of crushing dentition in alligatorids

• Gustavo Darlim
• Kantapon Suraprasit
• Márton Rabi

A new Carboniferous edaphosaurid and the origin of herbivory in mammal forerunners

• Amy C. Henrici
• Stephanie E. Pierce

The difference between two brachycephalic and one mesocephalic dog breeds’ problem-solving performance suggests evidence for paedomorphism in behaviour

• Dorottya Júlia Ujfalussy
• Zsófia Bognár
• Enikő Kubinyi

35,000 years of recurrent visits inside Nerja cave (Andalusia, Spain) based on charcoals and soot micro-layers analyses

• Mª Ángeles Medina-Alcaide
• Ségolène Vandevelde
• Diego Garate

Anthropogenic influence on extremes and risk hotspots

• Francisco Estrada
• Pierre Perron
• Yohei Yamamoto

Neuroanatomy of the late Cretaceous Thescelosaurus neglectus (Neornithischia: Thescelosauridae) reveals novel ecological specialisations within Dinosauria

• David J. Button
• Lindsay E. Zanno

A new hazard scenario at Vesuvius: deadly thermal impact of detached ash cloud surges in 79CE at Herculaneum

• Alessandra Pensa
• Guido Giordano
• Pier Paolo Petrone

GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration

• Roeland Kindt
• Lars Graudal
• Ramni Jamnadass

Marine records reveal multiple phases of Toba’s last volcanic activity

• G. Del Manzo

The degree of urbanisation reduces wild bee and butterfly diversity and alters the patterns of flower-visitation in urban dry grasslands

• Johann Herrmann
• Sascha Buchholz
• Panagiotis Theodorou

Episodic transient deformation revealed by the analysis of multiple GNSS networks in the Noto Peninsula, central Japan

• Takuya Nishimura
• Yoshihiro Hiramatsu
• Yusaku Ohta

Unraveling Amazon tree community assembly using Maximum Information Entropy : a quantitative analysis of tropical forest ecology

• Luiz de Souza Coelho
• Hans ter Steege

An assessment of whether long-term global changes in waves and storm surges have impacted global coastlines

• Mandana Ghanavati
• Arjen P. Luijendijk

Organic geochemical evidence of human-controlled fires at Acheulean site of Valdocarros II (Spain, 245 kya)

• Lavinia M. Stancampiano
• Susana Rubio-Jara
• Clayton R. Magill

Playing “hide and seek” with the Mediterranean monk seal: a citizen science dataset reveals its distribution from molecular traces (eDNA)

• Elena Valsecchi
• Giacomo Tavecchia
• Paolo Galli

Air-conditioning adoption and electricity demand highlight climate change mitigation–adaptation tradeoffs

• Francesco Pietro Colelli
• Ian Sue Wing
• Enrica De Cian

Assessing the United Nations sustainable development goals from the inclusive wealth perspective

• Yogi Sugiawan
• Robi Kurniawan

Palaeoenvironments and hominin evolutionary dynamics in southeast Asia

• Anne-Marie Bacon
• Nicolas Bourgon
• Jean-Jacques Hublin

Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over the past six decades

• Audrey Minière
• Karina von Schuckmann

A bolder conservation future for Indonesia by prioritising biodiversity, carbon and unique ecosystems in Sulawesi

• Wulan Pusparini
• Andi Cahyana
• David W. Macdonald

Assessing the relative impacts and economic costs of Japanese knotweed management methods

• Sophie Hocking
• Trisha Toop
• Daniel Eastwood

Machine learning and statistical classification of birdsong link vocal acoustic features with phylogeny

• Moises Rivera
• Jacob A. Edwards
• Sarah M. N. Woolley

Genetic diversity patterns of lionfish in the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean reveal a rapidly expanding stepping-stone bioinvasion process

• Rodrigo Maggioni
• Rafael S. Rocha
• Marcelo O. Soares

AMOC decline and recovery in a warmer climate

• Paulo Nobre
• Sandro F. Veiga
• Carlos A. Nobre

A collaborative and near-comprehensive North Pacific humpback whale photo-ID dataset

• Ted Cheeseman
• Ken Southerland
• Phil Clapham

Explaining population booms and busts in Mid-Holocene Europe

• Dániel Kondor
• James S. Bennett
• Peter Turchin

Centenarian lifespans of three freshwater fish species in Arizona reveal the exceptional longevity of the buffalofishes ( Ictiobus )

• Alec R. Lackmann
• Stuart A. Black
• Jeffrey A. Lackmann

Necrophagy by insects in Oculudentavis and other lizard body fossils preserved in Cretaceous amber

• Mónica M. Solórzano‑Kraemer
• Enrique Peñalver
• Adolf M. Peretti

The first description of dermal armour in snakes

• Petra Frýdlová
• Veronika Janovská
• Daniel Frynta

Seafood label quality and mislabelling rates hamper consumer choices for sustainability in Australia

• Megan E. Cundy
• Julia Santana-Garcon
• Chris Wilcox

The first petrographic characterisation of a prehistoric rock crystal mine in the Swiss Alps

• Thomas Hess
• Josef Mullis
• Leander Franz

Data driven pathway analysis and forecast of global warming and sea level rise

• Jiecheng Song
• Guanchao Tong

Scenarios of land use and land cover change in the Colombian Amazon to evaluate alternative post-conflict pathways

• William-J. Agudelo-Hz
• Natalia-C. Castillo-Barrera
• Murcia-García Uriel

The median eyes of trilobites

• Brigitte Schoenemann
• Euan N. K. Clarkson

Subsistence of early anatomically modern humans in Europe as evidenced in the Protoaurignacian occupations of Fumane Cave, Italy

• Ana B. Marín-Arroyo
• Gabriele Terlato
• Marco Peresani

Possible origins and implications of atypical morphologies and domestication-like traits in wild golden jackals ( Canis aureus )

• Ayelet Barash
• Shlomo Preiss-Bloom
• Yaron Dekel

Environmental ranking of European industrial facilities by toxicity and global warming potentials

• Szilárd Erhart
• Kornél Erhart

Three-dimensional dental microwear in type-Maastrichtian mosasaur teeth (Reptilia, Squamata)

• Femke M. Holwerda
• Jordan Bestwick
• Anne S. Schulp

Understanding physical climate risks and their implication for community adaptation in the borana zone of southern Ethiopia using mixed-methods research

• Mulugeta Shibru
• Alfred Opere
• Maina Gichaba

Multiple mitogenomes indicate Things Fall Apart with Out of Africa or Asia hypotheses for the phylogeographic evolution of Honey Bees ( Apis mellifera )

• Steven M. Carr

Skeletal convergence in thunniform sharks, ichthyosaurs, whales, and tunas, and its possible ecological links through the marine ecosystem evolution

• Ryosuke Motani
• Kenshu Shimada

A new toothless pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota with comments on the Chaoyangopteridae

• Xiaolin Wang
• Alexander W. A. Kellner
• Zhonghe Zhou

Hunting behavior of a solitary sailfish Istiophorus platypterus and estimated energy gain after prey capture

• Ryan K. Logan
• Sarah M. Luongo
• Mahmood S. Shivji

Critically endangered Rice’s whales ( Balaenoptera ricei ) selectively feed on high-quality prey in the Gulf of Mexico

• Jeremy J. Kiszka
• Michelle Caputo
• Lance P. Garrison

Machine learning-based country-level annual air pollutants exploration using Sentinel-5P and Google Earth Engine

• Bijay Halder
• Iman Ahmadianfar
• Zaher Mundher Yaseen

Climate-driven habitat shifts of high-ranked prey species structure Late Upper Paleolithic hunting

• Peter M. Yaworsky
• Shumon T. Hussain
• Felix Riede

Regional and temporal variability of Indian summer monsoon rainfall in relation to El Niño southern oscillation

• K. S. Athira
• Raju Attada

Applying an ecosystem services framework on nature and mental health to recreational blue space visits across 18 countries

• Joanne K. Garrett
• Mathew P. White
• Lora E. Fleming

Exponential increases in high-temperature extremes in North America

• Ali Davariashtiyani
• Mohsen Taherkhani
• Sean Vitousek

Human-mediated dispersal drives the spread of the spotted lanternfly ( Lycorma delicatula )

• Zachary S. Ladin
• Donald A. Eggen
• Vincent D’Amico

The environmental controls on efficiency of enhanced rock weathering in soils

• Eric Sonnenthal

Resolving the 21st century temperature trends of the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere with satellite observations

• Florian Ladstädter
• Andrea K. Steiner
• Hans Gleisner

Regionally high risk increase for precipitation extreme events under global warming

• Cristian Martinez-Villalobos
• J. David Neelin

Effects of Climate change on temperature and precipitation in the Lake Toba region, Indonesia, based on ERA5-land data with quantile mapping bias correction

• Hendri Irwandi
• Mohammad Syamsu Rosid

A probable koala from the Oligocene of central Australia provides insights into early diprotodontian evolution

• Arthur I. Crichton
• Robin M. D. Beck
• Gavin J. Prideaux

Overwintering and breeding patterns of monarch butterflies ( Danaus plexippus ) in coastal plain habitats of the southeastern USA

• Michael R. Kendrick
• John W. McCord

Ancient DNA re-opens the question of the phylogenetic position of the Sardinian pika Prolagus sardus (Wagner, 1829), an extinct lagomorph

• Valerio Joe Utzeri
• Elisabetta Cilli
• Luca Fontanesi

Increase in the wave power caused by decreasing sea ice over the Sea of Okhotsk in winter

• Shinsuke Iwasaki

Identification of illegally dumped plastic waste in a highly polluted river in Indonesia using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery

• Emenda Sembiring
• Danang Surya Candra

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