Krishna Moorthy, S. M. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2026

Long-term liana infestation leaves architectural legacies in host trees

Lianas are an integral component of tropical forests, and their increasing abundance may alter forest structure and function. Whether infested host trees are shorter and smaller-crowned because lianas suppress them, or because lianas preferentially colonise already small trees, has remained unresolved. We used a longitudinal dataset of individual liana infestation histories spanning fourteen years (2011-2025), combined with terrestrial laser scanning (TLS)-derived structural metrics for 251 trees across 67 species on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. Bayesian analyses showed that persistently infested trees were shorter (11.0%), with smaller crown projected area (22.3%) and crown volume (25.9%) than never-infested trees; the 95% credible intervals for these effects excluded zero. Pre-infestation crown architecture did not credibly predict subsequent colonisation. These patterns are more consistent with persistent infestation imposing lasting architectural legacies than with strong pre-existing architectural susceptibility, suggesting rising liana abundance may progressively reduce forest stature and canopy density, with implications for tropical carbon storage projections.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2026

Still Lost in Definitions: How Resilience Is Used in Ecology

Resilience is a central concept in ecology and environmental policy, yet its meaning and quantification remain inconsistent across subfields. Clarifying how resilience is defined and measured across the subfields of ecology is therefore a critical step towards delivering coordinated efforts to strengthen resilience research. Here, we analyse 594 studies published between 1977 and 2025 to determine how resilience is quantified across ecological contexts. Using large language models to extract structured data and conditional inference forests to assess predictors of metric choice, we show that resilience is most commonly ([~]25%) quantified using recovery rate and recovery degree, but no single metric dominates. Crucially, study attributes like organisational level, methodological approach, and disturbance regime explain only a small fraction of variation in metric selection. Despite this apparent inconsistency, more than 90% of studies draw from a shared set of six quantitative dimensions of resilience. This combination of weak constraint and latent convergence suggests that resilience metrics function as a flexible but implicitly standardised toolkit rather than as context-specific constructs. We argue that this hidden structure provides a foundation for a unified, multidimensional resilience framework that can support synthesis across ecological systems and improve the translation of resilience science into conservation and policy.

ecology↗