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 2025 award, published in Volume 113:

🌿Qitong Wang: Rhizosphere as a hotspot for microbial necromass deposition into the soil carbon pool

🌿Jianguo Ma: Ammonium preference and microbial nitrification inhibition drive the expansion of a poisonous plant in alpine -meadows

🌿Harry Wells: Disturbances in drylands: Interactions among herbivory, drought, and termite activity in savanna plant communities

🌿Emily Wedel: Divergent resource-use strategies of encroaching shrubs: Can traits predict encroachment success in tallgrass prairie?

🌿Amanda Vieria da Silva: Ants on flowers: Protective ants impose a low but variable cost to pollination, moderated by location of extrafloral nectaries and type of flower visitor

🌿Jing Xiao: The proportion of low abundance species is a key predictor of plant β-diversity across the latitudinal gradient

🌿Paul Kühn & Raymond Umazekabiri: Nitrogen content of herbarium specimens from arable fields and mesic meadows reflect the intensifying agricultural management during the 20th century

🌿Jie Li: Plant species loss reduces rare soil microbes through diversity effects amplified by multitrophic interactions

🌿Xuening Zhang: Pollinator facilitation between florally contrasting congeners scales up to regional co-occurrence patterns

🌿Linus Söderquist: Population viability of the orchid Gymnadenia conopsea increases with population size but is not related to genetic diversity

Congratulations to all our shortlisted researchers and all our early career authors. The winner will be announced in the coming weeks, so watch this space for future announcements!