Volume 107, Issue 1 of Journal of Ecology is now online!
This issue is a bumper issue! It is made up of 40 papers which includes 5 Open Access papers.
The first paper, which is the editor’s choice paper for this issue, is about how disease plays a role in determining host range limits of plants. The study by Bruns et al. looks into the distribution of anther‐smut disease, a sterilizing pollinator‐transmitted disease, to determine whether disease was present at the host range limits in four alpine plant species in the Alps of northwest Italy. The paper provides the first empirical evidence that vector or sexually transmitted diseases, such as anther‐smut disease, can be maintained at host range limits. You can find out more about this paper in Emily Bruns’s video podcast.
Other highlights include a study on grassland species and genetic diversity by Jennifer Rowntree and Hayley Craig and a paper about how we can use herbarium specimens to study historic herbivory levels from Emily Meineke et al. There are also papers that look into the effects of our warming ocean, and how it can cause the expansion of mangrove ranges (Coldren et al., 2018) and affect the function of kelp forests (Pessarrodona et al., 2018).
This issue’s cover image shows a forest dominated by balsam fir (Abies balsamea) in northeastern Québec, Canada, which is suffering from a spruce budworm outbreak. The image is related to the paper by De Grandpré et al. about tree mortality in boreal forests and the photo was taken by Luc Guindon. You can see some more of the fantastic images submitted to the journal below:
Journal of Ecology Blog 