The Harper Prize is awarded annually by the British Ecological Society for the best paper in Journal of Ecology by an early career author. We are pleased to present the shortlisted papers for the 2024 award, published in Volume 112:

Daiki Takahashi: Deer grazing drove an assemblage-level evolution of plant dwarfism in an insular system
Eugénie Mas: Drought effects in Mediterranean forests are not alleviated by diversity-driven water source partitioning
Fiona Seaton: A diversity of diversities: Do complex environmental effects underpin associations between below- and above-ground taxa?
Haben Blondeel: Tree diversity reduces variability in sapling survival under drought
Joshua Brian: Release from aboveground enemies increases seedling survival in grasslands
Karina Guo: Using machine learning to link climate, phylogeny and leaf area in eucalypts through a 50-fold expansion of leaf trait datasets
Karl Andraczek: Weak reciprocal relationships between productivity and plant biodiversity in managed grasslands
Lena Sachsenmaier: Forest growth resistance and resilience to the 2018–2020 drought depend on tree diversity and mycorrhizal type
Rémi Bardou: Effects of cold water and aridity on Baja California mangrove survival and ecophysiological traits
Saisai Cheng: Reconciling plant and microbial ecological strategies to elucidate cover crop effects on soil carbon and nitrogen cycling

The winner will be announced in the coming weeks, so watch this space for future announcements!