Lily Dun, Western Sydney University in New South Wales, Australia, and The University of Queensland in Queensland, Australia, discusses her article: Do trait-growth relationships vary with plant age in fire-prone heathland shrubs? When we think about plant growth, we often assume that certain functional traits—such as wood density, leaf structure, or biomass allocation—determine how fast…
Kechang Niu, Nanjing University in China, discusses his article: Plant species loss reduces rare soil microbes through diversity effects amplified by multitrophic interactions Background A key reason for the flourishing of life on Earth is that diverse groups of organisms mutually thrive in changing environments. However, increasing evidence shows that we are suffering the sixth…
Margaret W. Simon, University of Kansas, USA, discusses her article: Fast-growing annual plants drive disease spillover in multi-host communities Infectious plant diseases affect hosts in natural, agricultural, and urban systems. Modeling studies can help predict these effects, but traditional disease models were developed for animal systems. These models are not well suited for plant disease…
Hang Wang, Southwest Forestry University, discusses his article: Leaf biomechanical traits predict litter decomposability As ecologists, we often focus on how plants grow, reproduce, and interact with their environment. However, what happens after a plant has lived its life? More specifically, how do leaves breakdown after they fall to the ground? This process, known as…
Camila Medeiros, University of California, Los Angeles, discusses her article: Simplification of woody plant trait networks among communities along a climatic aridity gradient Motivation Plants are enormously diverse across regions, even within specific ecosystems, and zooming in on individual plants, one finds great diversity among their traits. Variation of all kinds of traits can play…
Raissa Jardim, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, describes her article: Unveiling above- and below-ground ecological strategies that underlie woody plant encroachment in grasslands, in both English and Portuguese. Woody plant encroachment in forest-grassland mosaics Forests and grasslands aren’t always neatly separated ecosystems. In many places they coexist side by side, creating beautiful but complex mosaics…
Ana Patricia Sandoval-Calderon and Yann Hautier, Utrecht University, discuss their article: Andean grassland stability across spatial scales increases with camelid grazing intensity despite biotic homogenization Nestled high in the Andes, a vibrant yet fragile ecosystem thrives under the watchful gaze of camelids. These ancient grasslands have been shaped over centuries by the grazing habits of…
Guangqi Zhang, UMR SILVA – INRAE, Grand-Est Nancy Research Center, discusses his article: Analyzing resilience of European beech tree to recurrent extreme drought events through ring growth, wood anatomy and stable isotopes As the climate warms, extreme weather events like droughts are expected to become more frequent and intense. A recent extreme and recurrent drought…
Donghao Wu, School of Ecology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-Sen University, discusses his article: Wood trait-decay relationships vary with topography and rainfall seasonality in a subtropical forest in China Wood trait-decay relationship Deadwood stores 8% of global forest carbon, and thus it is important to understand the dominant drivers of wood decomposition rates. Many physical…
Robert I. Colautti (@ColauttiLab), Queen’s University in Canada, discusses his article: Direct and indirect fitness effects of plant metabolites and genetic constraints limit evolution of allelopathy in an invading plant A storied history As a relatively young discipline, invasion ecology has developed through a proliferation of hypotheses that often fail to hold against careful experimentation.…
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