“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…
In this post, Eric Griffin, Assistant Professor at New Mexico Highlands University, discusses his paper Plant host identity and soil macronutrients explain little variation in sapling endophyte community composition: Is disturbance an alternative explanation?, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Harper Prize. You can see a full list of all shortlisted papers in the Harper…
Biodiversity and plant functional traits Connor Fitzpatrick’s video podcast: Phylogenetic relatedness, phenotypic similarity and plant–soil feedbacks Connor is a plant ecologist who got his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. He studies the ecological and evolutionary importance of interactions between plants and soil and focuses on how variation within and among plant…
Global changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems Lucia Fuchslueger’s video podcast: Drought history affects plant and microbial C turnover after a subsequent drought event Lucia Fuchslueger received her PhD from the University of Vienna (supervised by Andreas Richter and Michael Bahn). Lucia is currently a postdoc at Antwerpen University investigating how soil microbes mediate processes involved in organic matter…
Competition, plant enemies and defense mechanisms Felipe Albornoz’s video podcast: Native soilborne pathogens equalize differences in competitive ability between plants of contrasting nutrient-acquisition strategies Felipe Albornoz did his PhD at The University of Western Australia where he worked on mycorrhizal fungi in a 2 million years chronosequence. He studied how pedogenesis and plant communities influenced ectomycorrhizal…
In this new video podcast, Marc-Olivier Martin-Guay highlights the role of belowground responses in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship, asking three main questions: does adding below-ground biomass change diversity effect estimations? Do species shift their biomass allocation strategies within mixtures? Do we interpret correctly the origins of these diversity effects when ignoring below-ground biomass? Have a look at the…
In this video podcast, Alissa Brown highlights the role of shade tolerance and mycorrhizal type on conspecific negative density dependence in seedlings and saplings in forest. Alissa’s findings have recently been published in Journal of Ecology. Have a look at the video to discover what she found! If you want to know more, check out the full…
In this new video podcast, Xiaojuan Liu explains how species richness impacts growth-trait relationships in subtropical forest. These results are part of a large forest biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiment in China (BEF China) and have just been published in Journal of Ecology (see Bongers et al. 2019). Xiaojuan’s video can also be found on the Journal of Ecology YouTube…
