For almost 100 years plant ecologists have noticed that in some species, plants that seem to die come back two or more years after their last appearance. John Harper, the pioneering ecologist who set the stage for modern plant ecology with his writings on evolutionary approaches to studying the Plant Kingdom and his now quintessential…
The Editor’s Choice for the next issue of Journal of Ecology is “An ideal free distribution explains the root production of plants that do not engage in a tragedy of the commons game” by McNickle and Brown. Read the below commentary on the paper written by Journal of Ecology Editor Mark Rees. Author Gordon McNickle…
What proportion of the species in the world are woody? There are many ways to characterize a plant, but perhaps everyone (including the first known botanist Theophrastus of Eresus, one of Plato’s students) starts with a simple distinction between woody and herbaceous plants. For a recent research project on the evolution of this simplest plant…
We anticipate that issue 102:3 will be online this week. Consider it an Easter treat without the calories! The Editor’s Choice paper from this issue is “Restoration of a megaherbivore: landscape-level impacts of white rhinoceros in Kruger National Park, South Africa” by Cromsigt & te Beest. The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences published a press release on…
Large carnivores have succumbed to human pressure worldwide. They have been hunted to near or complete local extinction or their food sources have been reduced drastically. A recent review1 shows their continuing decline throughout the world. The review also highlighted the direct and indirect roles that large carnivores play in structuring trophic cascades, and the…
The Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) have published a press release on a paper published in Journal of Ecology,“Secondary dispersal by ants promotes forest regeneration after deforestation” by Gallegos, Hensen & Schleuning The press release can be accessed via this link and the authors have provided a summary of their paper below. Secondary dispersal promotes reforestation Most of the…
Today the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences released a press release on a paper published in Journal of Ecology, “Restoration of a megaherbivore: landscape-level impacts of white rhinoceros in Kruger National Park, South Africa” by Cromsigt & te Beest. The press release can be accessed via this link and the authors have kindly composed a brief summary of their…
Issue 102:2 of the Journal will be online very soon. The Editor’s Choice paper from this issue is “Probabilistic and spatially variable niches inferred from demography” by Diez et al. Editor’s Choice 102:2 Why do we find a species in some sites but not in others? Niche theory hypothesizes that a species’ distribution is governed by…
Earlier this month Journal of Ecology and the other BES journals introduced a new data archiving policy stating that all future articles accepted for publication will be published with the requirement that data used for the results will be made publicly accessible. This means that once a paper is accepted in one of the BES…
The Editor’s Choice paper from issue 102:1 of the Journal is The phenology–substrate-match hypothesis explains decomposition rates of evergreen and deciduous oak leaves by Pearse, Cobb & Karban. Read Associate Editor Rien Aerts’ commentary on the paper below. Editor’s Choice 102:1 Litter decomposition is the major pathway of energy and biomass transfer in most terrestrial ecosystems and…
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