Australia’s giant forests may become increasingly at risk with climate change —What should we do?

Newly published article, finds that among Australian tall wet eucalypt forest, severe fires are likelier in hotter, drier climates – suggesting vulnerability to climate change: “Bioclimatic drivers of fire severity across the Australian geographical range of giant Eucalyptus forests” by Furlaud, Prior, Williamson & Bowman. Here, authors James Furlaud and David Bowman discuss their research…

Cover stories: Volume 109 Issue 3

The cover image for our March issue shows Letharia vulpina, a lichen typical of high‐altitude forests in the Alps. Author and photographer, Juri Nascimbene, and lead author, Hugo Saiz, share the story behind this image and their related research article “Networks of epiphytic lichens and host trees along elevation gradients: Climate change implications in mountain…

World Wildlife Day 2021: Forests and Livelihoods

3rd March is World Wildlife Day! For 2021, World Wildlife Day is being celebrated under the theme ‘Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet’, as a way to highlight the central role of forests in sustaining the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people globally, and particularly of Indigenous and local communities with historic ties…

Keep your forests tight with pedunculate oak

In this latest Author Blog, Lionel R. Hertzog and Michael P. Perring discuss their recent paper: ‘Overstorey composition shapes across-trophic level community relationships in deciduous forest regardless of fragmentation context.’ Community ecology is complex; some even say that it is a mess (Lawton, 1999). After all, everything apparently depends on everything else in diffuse ways.…

How do tree fern understories impact conifer–angiosperm forest dynamics?

Brock et al. recently published their new article “The hare, tortoise and crocodile revisited: Tree fern facilitation of conifer persistence and angiosperm growth in simulated forests” in Journal of Ecology. Author James Brock discusses this research in more detail and explains how tree fern understories are important determinants of forest structure. Establishing how conifers compete…