Wednesday 5th December is World Soil Day 2018. This soil celebration gives me the opportunity to highlight great papers related to soil published in Journal of Ecology this year. While the role of soil in shaping plant community assembly, composition and diversity has long be recognized, the mechanisms involved to explain these effects are not always…
Kyoto University press release What factors sustain the diversity of life on our planet? This is the main question surrounding the study of biodiversity, but in spite of significant gains in our understanding of the field, many of the key factors defining it remain obscure. In a new paper published in Journal of Ecology, research…
Last year at the BES Annual Meeting in Ghent, I took part in an R package workshop where I learned the rudiments of scripting R packages. The ‘traitfindr’ package that our group came up with and started is, well,….still in progress. Nevertheless, the writing and introduction of new R packages is somewhat of a cottage…
Journal of Ecology Senior Editor Richard Bardgett shares some images from his fieldwork this year. Wasdale Head in the Lake District, UK (Photo: R. Bardgett) Grassland research sites at Wasdale Head in the English Lake District, where we are studying how grassland management alters the resistance and resilience of ecosystem properties to climate extremes. Vent,…
For the first post in our new fieldwork section on the blog, Salza Palpurina has shared some photos taken by her colleagues related to her recently published Journal of Ecology paper; The type of nutrient limitation affects the plant species richness–productivity relationship: Evidence from dry grasslands across Eurasia. Altai Mountains, Ongudai district, Altai Republic, Russia…
I am a scientist, an ecologist, and an introvert. In this blog post, I would like to share some thoughts and personal experiences on what it means to be an introvert working in science and how it can be challenging at times in the academic world. This is merely my view but I hope it…
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…
Robert Buchkowski has written a blog post about his Journal of Ecology paper on how interactions between green and brown food webs impact plants and nutrient cycling. Herbivores indirectly impact plant growth by altering the speed at which nutrients are recycled through the soil and back into plant tissue. Changes in plant leaf chemical or physical…
Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC) press release. An international research group led by the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC) in collaboration with the University of Zaragoza, Aberystwyth University (UK) and Bern Universität (Switzerland) have reconstructed long-term treeline dynamics from the Central Pyrenees for the first time. The results, published in Journal of Ecology, demonstrate that…
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,…
