European forests have been long regarded as invasion-resistant; however, recent findings suggest that invasive alien plant species increasingly colonise this ecosystem. In a new study published by Journal of Ecology, researchers from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Nebraska-Lincoln University and Jagiellonian University have analysed the mechanisms of invasion of alien walnut Juglans regia in over hundred forests…
Julienne Schiebold (University of Bayreuth) has written an article about her recently published paper; Exploiting mycorrhizas in broad daylight: Partial mycoheterotrophy is a common nutritional strategy in meadow orchids. With approximately 28,000 species, the Orchidaceae is often referred to as the largest plant family. Regardless of their geographical occurrence or life form, all orchid species are…
Public University of Navarre press release: Mixed Scots pine and beech forests can grow more as they complement each other in the use of resources, unless rainfall is low In an article published in Journal of Ecology, researchers from the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre and the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) have analysed the two…
Adam Clark (University of Minnesota) has just had his paper accepted in Journal of Ecology. Below, Adam tells us more about his study… Plant communities in the tropical forests of Central and South America are famously diverse, and by some estimates are home to more than a third of all tree species on earth. Two processes…
Kathy Gerst (Univeristy of Arizona) has written a background to her recently published study, and tells us of the importance of citizen science projects… The field of phenology investigates the timing of seasonal patterns of plants and animals and how seasonal activity relates to climate and weather. Phenology is considered a robust indicator of climate change…
Timm Döbert, from CSIRO in Australia, recently had a paper published in Journal of Ecology entitled “Logging increases the functional and phylogenetic dispersion of understorey plant communities in tropical lowland rainforest”. Below, his co-author Bruce Webber describes the context of the research and highlight the main findings of their study. How does logging affect the diversity of rainforest understorey plant…
Holly Vuong, from CSIRO in Canberra, Australia, recently had a paper published in Journal of Ecology entitled “Host species and environmental variation can influence rhizobial community composition”. Below, Holly presents the context of her study on plant-microbes interactions in nutrient and water limited Australian soils and summarizes the findings of her experiment. Out of about 1,350 Acacia species in…
For our next Invasive Species Week blog post, Rebecca Bunn and Ylva Lekberg have contributed a piece about their paper, which is included in our special Invasive Species Virtual Issue. Read their full paper here, free to access for a limited time. For an exotic plant to become invasive it must outcompete native plants. One of the…
Dean Pearson is a Research Ecologist based at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service. In this blog post, he gives some background to his recent Journal of Ecology paper; The tortoise and the hare: reducing resource availability shifts competitive balance between plant species. This week is Invasive Species Week – Dean’s paper was chosen to…
In this blog post, Pieter De Frenne (Ghent University) talks about his recently published Biological Flora of the British Isles paper on the perennial grass, Milium effusum… The choice of our study species was not easy. It is the year 2007. I have just graduated and started my PhD. I am at a meeting with my supervisors…
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