Alice Ardichvili, Sorbonne University, discusses her article: Spatial context allows the evolution of the control of nitrification by plants Once upon a time The project began a long time ago, in the late 1990s, when my PhD advisor J-C was still a carefree and enthusiastic individual. He and his colleagues observed that a common grass…
Anna Florianová (@IBOTCZ; @popecolIBOT), Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, describes her article: Climate-driven shifts in plant-soil feedback of a perennial grass species As the climate changes, scientists are becoming increasingly interested in how these shifts impact plant growth. Climate change does not only have direct effects on plants, but may also affect…
The Editor’s Choice for our May issue is “Herbivore dung stoichiometry drives competition between savanna trees and grasses” by Judith Sitters & Harry Olde Venterink. This article shows that browsing and grazing herbivores potentially help maintain the tree‐grass balance in African savanna, through variation in the nitrogen (N) to phosphorus (P) ratio of their dung! Here the…
Lead author Marion Donald discusses her recently published Journal of Ecology article: Context-dependent variability in the population prevalence and individual fitness effects of plant-fungal symbiosis. Find out more about about this investigation into intermediate symbiont prevalence. Microbial symbionts are common partners of nearly every macro-organism on Earth. While some symbioses are deeply integrated, rendering them…
Author Qianna Xu provides further insights for their new research article, which explores the impacts of nitrogen and water levels on plant community composition. Recently published in Journal of Ecology, Volume 107 Issue 5. This article is part of our latest Special Feature: Is Phylogenetic and Functional Trait Diversity a Driver or a Consequence of…
The latest issue of Journal of Ecology includes a Special Feature guest edited by Nicholas Barber, David Gibson and Holly Jones. Below, Holly discusses the inspiration behind the Special Feature & summarises each of the research articles. When scientists think of healthy ecosystems, they often think of ecosystems that have lots of different species. Diverse ecosystems are more resilient,…
Michigan State University Press Release Once upon a time, it was thought that crop diseases affected only crops. New research shows, however, that a common wheat virus can spread and harm perennial native grasses. In their Journal of Ecology paper, researchers from Michigan State University, Kansas University and Virginia University show that farmers and scientists need to…
In our second podcast in the EcoGist series, Justin Dohn of Colorado State University in Colorado, USA, describes his paper on tree effects on grass growth in Savannas. P.S. To give credit where it’s due, EcoGists are modeled after the 60 second science podcasts of Scientific American. If you haven’t heard them before, definitely go have a…
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