Richard P. Shefferson is an Associate Professor at the Organization for Programs on Environmental Sciences; a relatively new unit within the University of Tokyo aimed at research on global environmental problems and the fundamental sciences related to them. He is an evolutionary ecologist studying life history evolution in long-lived plants and fungi, and the evolution…
Dominik Merges (PhD candidate, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre) has written a blog post about his recently published Journal of Ecology article about the spatial patterns of plant-associated fungi. When you think of Swiss alpine valleys, you might think of gentle mountain slopes covered with conifers (see picture 1). These tree line forests present…
Maxime Cailleret and colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (Switzerland) recently published a review titled ‘Ozone effects on European forest growth – Towards an integrative approach‘. Maxime tell us more about the paper below. Tropospheric ozone is a key greenhouse gas responsible for 5-16% of the global temperature change since preindustrial…
Liesje Mommer‘s research focuses on “belowground plant-plant interactions” within the Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Recently, the theme of her research has expanded to include plant-fungal interactions, as root-root interactions cannot be understood without considering the myriad of microbes in the soil. To reveal these ‘hidden’ interactions and the consequences…
Hugo Saiz (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain) tells us more about his recently published Journal of Ecology article about plant spatial association networks across dryland ecosystems… Not surprisingly, the use of networks has increased considerably in community ecology in recent years. Network analysis allows studying ecological communities as a whole while providing valuable information about…
Northern Arizona University press release – written by Kerry Bennett (Office of the Vice President for Research) The complex Serengeti ecosystem, which spans 12,000 square miles extending from northern Tanzania into southwestern Kenya, is home to millions of animals, including 70 species of large mammals. It is a hotspot for mammal diversity—including herbivores such as wildebeest,…
Dr Tim Curran and colleagues have written a blog post about their recently accepted paper ‘Community-level flammability declines over 25 years of plant invasion in grasslands‘… It is widely recognised that plant invasions result in changes to fire regimes, in some cases even leading to reduced fire frequency and fire intensity. In our study, we show…
University of Connecticut press release A new study of the Amazon rainforest by researchers at UConn and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research, published in the Journal of Ecology, examines what happens to plants if their seed dispersers are no longer present. When it comes to spreading their seeds, many trees in…
The Editor’s Choice paper for this issue is Woodland resilience to regional drought: Dominant controls on tree regeneration following overstorey mortality by Miranda Redmond and colleagues. Associate Editor Peter Bellingham has taken a closer look at the paper and shares his thoughts below… All but one of the warmest years since 1880, based on global combined land and…
Volume 106 Issue 2 of Journal of Ecology is now online! This issue includes a Special Feature titled ‘Mycorrhizal fungi as drivers and modulators of ecosystem processes‘. Edited by Nina Wurzburger and Karina Clemmensen, the special feature brings together 7 papers and an editorial on the topic of how mycorrhizal fungi contribute to ecosystem function. In…
