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…
To celebrate World Mangrove Day 2020, we’re taking a closer look at this important ecosystem and highlighting some of the fascinating mangrove papers that have been published in Journal of Ecology in recent years. In 2015, in order to raise awareness of the importance of mangrove ecosystems, the General Conference of UNESCO designated 26 July…
We would like to introduce the new Associate Editors for the Journal of Ecology blog. Rhosanna Jenkins and Rich Shefferson will be helping to manage the blog and secure new and interesting content. We very much look forward to seeing more posts from them in the future! Rhosanna Jenkins @RhosannaLMJ Rhosanna is a Scientific Modeller…
The cover image for our new issue shows a native New Zealand bee, visiting the flowers of an alien creeping thistle. Author and photographer, Carine Emer shares her insight into the ecology of New Zealand, this captivating photograph and her related research paper: Alien plants and flower visitors disrupt the seasonal dynamics of mutualistic networks by Arroyo‐Correa, Burkle…
Author Joseph Hawes discusses recently published Journal of Ecology article: A large-scale assessment of plant dispersal mode and seed traits across human-modified Amazonian forests by Hawes et al. Find out more about the effects of disturbance on functional traits related to seed dispersal in a tropical forest and the implications of this for the future.…
Author Hao Ran Lai discusses recently published Journal of Ecology article: “Functional traits that moderate tropical tree recruitment during post-windstorm secondary succession” by Lai et al. Find out more about their study on what causes differences in tree recruitment in a tropical lowland forest in Singapore. Understanding how species respond to environmental changes is becoming an…
“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…
