Are non-native plant species similar to natives in harsh environments? Evidence from the central Chilean Andes.

Vinka Anic and Lohengrin Cavieres, University of Concepción in Chile, discuss their article: Functional and phylogenetic similarity between native and non-native plant species along an elevational gradient in the central Chilean Andes: No evidence for the preadaptation hypothesis The establishment of non-native species is expected to be constrained in regions affected by harsh environmental conditions…

Plant trait networks: Shifting of whole phenotypes with aridity and functional richness

Camila Medeiros, University of California, Los Angeles, discusses her article: Simplification of woody plant trait networks among communities along a climatic aridity gradient Motivation Plants are enormously diverse across regions, even within specific ecosystems, and zooming in on individual plants, one finds great diversity among their traits. Variation of all kinds of traits can play…

Woody plant encroachment in forest-grassland mosaics: How do woody plant functional traits change above and below-ground?

Raissa Jardim, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, describes her article: Unveiling above- and below-ground ecological strategies that underlie woody plant encroachment in grasslands, in both English and Portuguese. Woody plant encroachment in forest-grassland mosaics Forests and grasslands aren’t always neatly separated ecosystems. In many places they coexist side by side, creating beautiful but complex mosaics…

How is polyploidy affecting the evolution and diversity of plant functional traits? the case of Dianthus broteri complex

Javier López-Jurado discusses recent article: Polyploidy promotes divergent evolution across the leaf economics spectrum and plant edaphic niche in the Dianthus broteri complex. Find out more about role of polyploidy – the state of having more than two paired sets of chromosomes – in overcoming constraints for the evolution of plant functional traits. Major functional traits in…

Why trait-based ecology is full of surprises

Noémie Pichon discusses her recent article: ‘Intraspecific trait changes have large impacts on community functional composition but do not affect ecosystem function‘. Find out more about this new research into intraspecific trait variation and its importance for understanding community functional composition. Trait variation is as large within as between species, but it doesn’t mean the…

Feng Jiang – Harper Prize Shortlist

For the past month, we have been featuring all the articles that were shortlisted for the Harper Prize 2020. The Harper Prize is an annual award for the best early career research paper published in Journal of Ecology. Feng Jiang’s paper ‘Tree mycorrhizal type mediates the strength of negative density dependence in temperate forests’ was one of the eight papers…

Alizée Mauffrey – Harper Prize Shortlist

Throughout May, we will be featuring all the articles that were shortlisted for the Harper Prize 2020. The Harper Prize is an annual award for the best early career research paper published in Journal of Ecology. Alizée’s article, Seaweed functional diversity revisited: Confronting traditional groups with quantitative traits was one of the eight papers shortlisted for this year’s award. About…

Call for proposals: Leveraging natural history collections to understand the impacts of global change

Natural history collections in museums, herbaria, seed banks, and tissue banks provide some of the most valuable information sources in an ecologist’s toolbox: time series data. These collections not only permanently archive preserved specimens, but also critical historical and contemporary information about how species distributions, interactions, and phenotypes respond to global change across time scales.…

Editor’s Choice: Volume 109 Issue 4

The Editor’s Choice for our April issue is “Dynamic feedbacks among tree functional traits, termite populations and deadwood turnover” by Guo, Tuo, Ci, Yan & Cornelissen. The findings of this article imply that tree functional composition, with variation in deadwood quality through decomposition time, can help to sustain termite populations and thereby forest carbon turnover. Here…

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…