Nutrient-poor grasslands cover a substantial portion of the terrestrial surface and provide important ecosystem services ranging from forage and livestock production to stabilization of erosion-prone soils. The future of these grasslands under increased drought frequency and severity is difficult to predict, especially given the complex ecological interactions and feedbacks among plants, other organisms, and physical…
The Editor’s Choice paper for Issue 105.3 is titled; A global test for phylogenetic signal in shifts in flowering time under climate change. Authors Nicole Rafferty and Paul Nabity have written a blog post about their paper… Biological signals of climate change abound. One of the most conspicuous is changes in the timing of life history events,…
Associate Editor Matt McGlone (Landcare Research, New Zealand) has written the Editor’s Choice blog for issue 105.2 on the paper “An assessment of carbon and nutrient limitations in the formation of the southern Andes tree line” by Alex Fajardo and Frida Piper.
External disturbances are powerful drivers of community and ecosystem reorganization over most of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. As such, they cause losses of plant biomass, reset succession, modify stocks and fluxes of nutrients, and change trophic dynamics. Furthermore, most ecosystems are subjected to multiple disturbance agents, and these disturbances do not operate in isolation from…
If evolution happened anew, what would the present-day plant world look like? That is, would the randomized processes that govern evolutionary change tell a different story? And particularly for plants which are sessile organisms, is the starting point of ‘who gets there first’ the most important of all? Priority effects – the order and timing…
The Editor’s Choice paper for Issue 104:5 is titled ‘On the link between functional traits and growth rate: meta-analysis shows effects change with plant size, as predicted’ and was written by a team from the Department of Biological Sciences of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Many thanks to authors Anaïs Gibert, Daniel Falster and Mark Westoby for providing some…
Issue 104:4 is now online and the Editor’s Choice paper from this issue is Latitudinal variation in herbivory: hemispheric asymmetries and the role of climatic drivers by Zhang et al.
Associate Editor Richard Shefferson has written a post about the paper below.
Issue 104:3 is now online and the Editor’s Choice paper from this issue is Bioclimatic envelope models predict a decrease in tropical forest carbon stocks with climate change in Madagascar by Vieilledent et al. Associate Editor Emily Lines has written a post about the paper below. Editor’s Choice 104:3 Whether or not forest carbon stores will…
Issue 104:2 of Journal of Ecology is available online. The latest Editor’s Choice paper is Herbivore intoxication as a potential primary function of an inducible volatile plant signal by Veyrat et al. Senior Editor Amy Austin has written a commentary on what makes the paper so important below. Far from indolent, maize plants work to emit…
The Editor’s Choice paper for issue 103:6 is “Fog as a source of nitrogen for redwood trees: evidence from fluxes and stable isotopes” by Templer et al. Journal of Ecology Editor Amy Austin has written a commentary on the paper below, which is part of a new Special Feature on biogeochemical cycling edited by Amy…
