Mexico is famous for being one of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. This amazing biodiversity is owed to the wide-ranging topography of the country – varying from 0 to 5600 metres above sea level – with the most diverse areas being in the southern and south-eastern parts of the country. Approximately 10% of…
Each year, as well as selecting an overall winner for the Harper Prize (see Martina’s interview), the editors of Journal of Ecology also select two highly commended papers. This year we had two fantastic highly commended papers by Kris Kramer-Walter et al. titled ‘Root traits are multidimensional: specific root length is independent from root tissue density and…
The Harper Prize 2016 for the best paper published in Journal of Ecology by an early career researcher has been awarded to Martina Treurnicht. Martina and colleagues collected 3454 population-level records from across the global range of these species in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa. The findings of her paper entitled ‘Environmental drivers of…
Ecologists and evolutionary biologists for many decades happily coexisted largely ignoring each other. This separation was clearest in theory where ecological models assumed fixed, constant parameters, so evolution could not occur, and population genetics models assumed fixed selection coefficients which summarised all underlying ecological process that influence fitness. To an extent this reflected the obvious…
The latest issue of Journal of Ecology (105:4) includes a Special Feature reviewing how plant ecological research can contribute to Global Food Security. Below, Senior Editors, David Gibson and Richard Bardgett tell us more about their Special Feature. A burgeoning human population coupled with ongoing climate change is precipitating a global food security crisis. By…
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…
Volume 105 Issue 4 of Journal of Ecology is now online! The July 2017 issue of Journal of Ecology includes a special feature titled; Ecological solutions to global food security. Edited by David Gibson and Richard Bardgett, this special feature considers the ways that plant ecologists can help meet the challenges of food production and…
Public University of Navarre press release: Mixed Scots pine and beech forests can grow more as they complement each other in the use of resources, unless rainfall is low In an article published in Journal of Ecology, researchers from the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre and the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) have analysed the two…
Journal of Ecology Associate Editors Jane Catford and Rob Salguero-Gómez were both keynote speakers at this year’s PopBio conference. Here is their report… A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of attending PopBio2017 in Halle, Germany. This was the 30th annual conference of the Plant Population Biology Section of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria…
Press release from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Woody vines, known as lianas, compete intensely with trees and their numbers are on the rise in many tropical forests around the world. A new study, published in Journal of Ecology, from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama shows that lianas prevent canopy trees from…
jecologyblog.com 