Dina in ‘t Zandt discusses her recent paper Local soil legacy effects in a multispecies grassland community are underlain by root foraging and soil nutrient availability. Find out more about their soil legacy experiments and how their results differed from the theory. Biodiversity plays a key role in ecosystem structure and function, with plant community…
Author Vincent Merckx discusses recently published Journal of Ecology article: Mycoheterotrophic plants living on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are generally enriched in 13C, 15N and 2H isotopes by Gomes et al. Find out more about mycoheterotrophic plants, which have a symbiotic relationship with fungi, and why they are important. Plants without photosynthesis All biology textbooks will…
Journal of Ecology has just published a new research article by Morente-López et al. ‘Gene flow effects on populations inhabiting marginal areas: origin matters’. Lead author Javier Morente-López discusses the paper and its implications. Climate change is causing species to experience new environmental pressures, leading to changes in their distributions and affecting ecological niches. It…
Here we take a closer look at a fascinating plant defense article by Calixto et al., which has recently been published in Journal of Ecology. Author Kleber Del-Claro explains different methods for anti-herbivore plant defenses and shares the results of this research, which is the first to show that ant recruitment via extrafloral nectar follows…
Author Maria Leunda offers an insight into the research behind her paper Ice cave reveals environmental forcing of long‐term Pyrenean tree line dynamics, which won our 2019 Harper Prize. Maria also further discusses how she ended up doing this exciting research and introduces her study site in the Central Pyrenees. Alpine ecosystems are particularly sensitive…
Author Joseph Hawes discusses recently published Journal of Ecology article: A large-scale assessment of plant dispersal mode and seed traits across human-modified Amazonian forests by Hawes et al. Find out more about the effects of disturbance on functional traits related to seed dispersal in a tropical forest and the implications of this for the future.…
Author Hao Ran Lai discusses recently published Journal of Ecology article: “Functional traits that moderate tropical tree recruitment during post-windstorm secondary succession” by Lai et al. Find out more about their study on what causes differences in tree recruitment in a tropical lowland forest in Singapore. Understanding how species respond to environmental changes is becoming an…
“We are nothing if we do not deal with our roots.” Author Mauro Brum offers an insight into his paper “Hydrological niche segregation defines forest structure and drought tolerance strategies in a seasonal Amazon forest“, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Harper Prize. Mauro also discusses his further research and what (and who!) inspired him to…
The Journal of Ecology article “Can novel pest outbreaks drive ecosystem transitions in northern‐boreal birch forest?” was shortlisted for the Harper Prize early researcher award earlier this spring. In this blog post, first author Ole Petter Laksforsmo Vindstad explains how the emergence of novel climate-driven outbreaks by phytophagous insects came to define the trajectory of…
In this post author Katie Baer, offers an insight into her paper Declining demographic performance and dispersal limitation influence the geographic distribution of the perennial forb Astragalus utahensis (Fabaceae), which was shortlisted for the 2019 Harper Prize. Katie also discusses her wider research and ecological career. You can see a full list of all shortlisted papers in the Harper…
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