How Will Climate Change Affect Community Stability? There’s a great deal of concern and uncertainty over the patterns and causal mechanisms that underlie community grassland change in response to climate change (Ratajczak & Ladwig 2019). Experimental work is needed to better understand the potentially synergistic effects of global change stressors on stability of grasslands. In…
Volume 108 Issue 4 of Journal of Ecology is now available online! Our latest issue features a variety of fascinating articles, including research on the rapid evolution of a legume–rhizobium mutualism in restored prairies, evidence that changing precipitation patterns adversely affect floral resources and pollinator attraction in agricultural grasslands and insights into the seasonal succession of functional traits in…
The Editor’s Choice article for Journal of Ecology’s latest issue Volume 108 Issue 3 is “Seagrass ecosystem metabolic carbon capture in response to green turtle grazing across Caribbean meadows” by Johnson et al. Associate Editor Randall Hughes explores this paper in more detail and explains what makes this paper so novel and valuable. Vegetated marine ecosystems such…
The cover image for Journal of Ecology’s latest issue was taken by Philippe Cohen. This photo relates to research article: Fire history and plant community composition outweigh decadal multi‐factor global change as drivers of microbial composition in an annual grassland by Qin, Zhu, Chiariello, Field & Peay. This article was also selected as the Editor’s Choice paper for…
The Editor’s Choice article for Volume 108 Issue 1 is “Growth–trait relationships in subtropical forest are stronger at higher diversity“ by Bongers et al. This study assessed how growth–trait relationships at the individual tree level are impacted by species richness at community and local neighbourhood scales. This Editor’s Choice article highlights the impact that species richness can have…
The Editor’s Choice article for Volume 107 Issue 6 is a study by Quintana‐Ascencio et al., which looks at the role of seed dormancy, dispersal and fire history on plant population dynamics, distribution and abundance. Associate Editor, Shurong Zhou, discusses this new research paper in more detail. Biodiversity conservation and management depend on our understanding of population dynamics at…
The Editor’s Choice article for Volume 107 Issue 5 is a study by Zhang et al., which outlines their new SRUD approach for measuring plant diversity dynamics. Associate Editor, Hans Cornelissen, discusses the importance of this new method. Many thousands of researchers have been concerned with what drives and threatens biodiversity. They have investigated whether biodiversity provides benefits…
The African savannas are vast expanses of terrestrial ecosystems that host an array of plants and animals and their interactions that have continued to fascinate ecologists and the public alike. Many important conceptual advances regarding plant-herbivore interactions, and particularly the role of grazing animals, have come from studies in these ecosystems including: accelerating turnover of…
The Editor’s Choice article for Volume 107 Issue 2 is a study by Leunda et al. about long-term treeline dynamics. Associate Editor Bérangère Leys has taken a closer look at the paper in the blog post below… Ecosystem responses to climate change is a great concern and a lot of effort has been made to…
The Editor’s Choice article for issue for Volume 106 Issue 6 is a study by Wooliver et al. about the role fungi plays in the variation of plant responses to nitrogen enrichment. Senior Editor Amy Austin has taken a closer look at the paper in the blog post below… Nitrogen deposition generated by human activities (industry,…
