Volume 109 Issue 4 of Journal of Ecology is now available online!
Our April issue contains a fascinating range of articles, including research that quantifies nectar production by flowering plants in urban and rural landscapes, a study which found that warming effects on wood decomposition depend on fungal assembly history and an article that examined the dynamics of canopy‐forming seaweed populations during a regional marine heatwave.
The Editor’s Choice paper for this issue is “Dynamic feedbacks among tree functional traits, termite populations and deadwood turnover” by Guo, Tuo, Ci, Yan & Cornelissen.
The findings of this article imply that tree functional composition, with variation in deadwood quality through decomposition time, can help to sustain termite populations and thereby forest carbon turnover.
You can find out more about this research in our Editor’s Choice blog, written by Amy Austin.
The cover image for this issue relates to “Dead litter of resident species first facilitates and then inhibits sequential life stages of range‐expanding species” by Smith, Blaze & Byers. The cover photograph, taken by Rachel S. Smith, on Florida’s Atlantic coast shows how black mangrove, Avicenniagerminans (seedlings on the left), is expanding northward into salt marshes with climate warming. Rodent herbivores – like this juvenile hispid cotton rat (Sigmodon hispidus) – that frequent the marsh may slow mangrove expansion by consuming mangrove propagules.
You can find out more about this image and the related research in our latest Cover Stories blog.
Please enjoy this gallery of potential cover images, which were submitted to the journal for this issue!
Journal of Ecology Blog 