We are delighted to announce the publication of our first Sprent Review in Journal of Ecology, by Julie Ardley and Janet Sprent on the “Evolution and biogeography of actinorhizal plants and legumes.” Here Richard Bardgett introduces the Sprent Reviews series, discusses the career of Janet Sprent and highlights the importance of this inaugural review paper!…
3rd March is World Wildlife Day! For 2021, World Wildlife Day is being celebrated under the theme ‘Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet’, as a way to highlight the central role of forests in sustaining the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people globally, and particularly of Indigenous and local communities with historic ties…
Authors Beatriz Aguirre and Alexandra (Sasha) Wright discuss the findings of their new article – The experimental manipulation of atmospheric drought: Teasing out the role of microclimate in biodiversity experiments. This article is also part of our upcoming Special Feature on Facilitative Mechanisms! Drought occurrence is increasing due to anthropogenic climate change. Drought can negatively…
In November 2019 two of the British Ecological Society journals, Journal of Ecology and Methods in Ecology and Evolution, began trialling a Transparent Peer Review process. This meant that (unless the authors opted out) the reviewer reports, author responses and editor decisions were made available on Publons for all of our published articles. 15 months…
Lead author Nick Tew discusses recent Journal of Ecology article: Quantifying nectar production by flowering plants in urban and rural landscapes. Find out more about the importance of residential gardens for nectar supply within urban areas of the UK. You can also read the press release for this article here. Insect pollinators are faced with…
Author James Dalling discusses recent paper “Nutrient availability predicts multiple stem frequency, an indicator of species resprouting capacity in tropical forests” by Heineman, Turner and Dalling. Read on to find out more about variations in the resprouting ability of tropical trees. The life of a tree is seldom the unobstructed path of a single stem…
The cover image for our new issue shows an ant standing on the tip of a Lafoensia pacari leaf in the Cerrado, Brazil. Author Kleber Del-Claro shares the story behind this stunning image, which was taken by co-author Denise Lange and relates to their recent research article “Climate seasonality drives ant–plant–herbivore interactions via plant phenology in an extrafloral…
The Editor’s Choice for our February issue is “Spatial mapping of root systems reveals diverse strategies of soil exploration and resource contest in grassland plants“ by Lepik et al. This article combines fine‐scale measurements of plant root distributions with spatial statistics, yielding new insights into plant behavioural strategies. Here the handling Editor, JC Cahill, provides an overview…
Volume 109 Issue 2 of Journal of Ecology is now available online! Our February issue contains a fascinating range of articles, including research studying bark beetle outbreaks, an essay review exploring the functions behind ecosystem multifunctionality and an article investigating the role of browsers in maintaining the openness of African savannas. The Editor’s Choice paper for this issue is “Spatial mapping of root…
Author Tom Ovenden examined the impact of extreme drought on Scots pine trees in recently published article, Life after recovery: Increased resolution of forest resilience assessment sheds new light on post‐drought compensatory growth and recovery dynamic. We hope you enjoy the brilliant video animation created by Tom to summarise the key findings of this research…
In this latest Author Blog, Lionel R. Hertzog and Michael P. Perring discuss their recent paper: ‘Overstorey composition shapes across-trophic level community relationships in deciduous forest regardless of fragmentation context.’ Community ecology is complex; some even say that it is a mess (Lawton, 1999). After all, everything apparently depends on everything else in diffuse ways.…
Georgia Hart-Fredeluces discusses her recently published Journal of Ecology article: ‘Simulated Indigenous fire stewardship increases the population growth rate of an understory herb‘. Find out more about about the importance of understanding Indigenous management practices to protecting plant biodiversity. Plant biodiversity is foundational to ecosystem integrity and human well-being, yet it continues to decline with…
Jessie Woodbridge discusses research recently published in the Journal of Ecology: “What drives biodiversity patterns? Using long-term multi-disciplinary data to discern centennial-scale change” Find out more about the research that reveals relationships between human population change, insect faunal group turnover, pollen diversity and climate trends through the Holocene. Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem…
It’s hard to believe that it has been a month since the Festival of Ecology! Like many other participants (if the Functional Ecology Twitter poll is an accurate representation), I was mixing my normal work with attending some of the online conference events of BES 2020. During the main festival, I caught some of the…
The cover image for our new issue shows Pamir Cinquefoil (Potentilla pamirica) in the Himalayan mountains. Lead author and photographer Jiri Dolezal and author Pierre Liancourt share the story behind this stunning image and their related research article “Climate warming drives Himalayan alpine plant growth and recruitment dynamics” by Dolezal, Jandova, Macek, Mudrak, Altman, Schweingruber & Liancourt.…
