Impact of belowground biomass responses on the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationship

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…

Plant traits and mycorrhizae mediate Janzen-Connell effect in tree saplings

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…

Growth-trait relationships depend on species richness in subtropical forest

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…

Harper Prize winner Q&A (part 2)

This year’s Harper Prize winner is Rutuja Chitra-Tarak for her paper; The roots of the drought: Hydrology and water uptake strategies mediate forest‐wide demographic response to precipitation. Rutuja received a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, went onto to do a post-doc at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, USA, and is now a post-doctoral…

Can marine ecosystem functioning be maintained under climate change?

This new video podcast from Albert Pessarrodona focuses on marine ecology and shows that climate warming is strongly affecting underwater forests. But will ecosystem functions be maintained? In this video, Albert answer this question and highlights the main results of his recently published Journal of Ecology paper titled “Can ecosystem functioning be maintained despite climate‐driven shifts in species…

Frequency-dependent disease transmission can affect host distribution

In this video podcast, Emily Bruns explains the findings of her recently published paper  in Journal of Ecology: Is there a disease‐free halo at species range limits? The codistribution of anther‐smut disease and its host species. Watch the video to see how Emily validates the theory that frequency-dependent disease transmission can affect host populations! Emily’s video can also be…

Harper Prize Highly Commended Papers 2017: Plant-Soil Interactions (Part 2)

In this second Harper Prize video podcast, I present the findings of my highly commended paper entitled ‘Stoichiometric N:P flexibility and mycorrhizal symbiosis favour plant resistance against drought‘. This experiment was carried out at The University of Sydney (Australia) with Alberto Canarini and Feike Dijkstra through a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation.…

Harper Prize Highly Commended Papers 2017: Plant-Soil Interactions (Part 1)

Each year, as well as selecting an overall winner for the Harper Prize (Jenny Zambrano, see previous blog post), the editors of Journal of Ecology also select two highly commended papers. This year the two highly commended papers are from Connor Fitzpatrick et al. titled ‘Phylogenetic relatedness, phenotypic similarity and plant–soil feedbacks‘ and myself, Pierre Mariotte et al.…