Throughout May, we are 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. Madelon’s article ‘Root‐niche separation between savanna trees and grasses is greater on sandier soils‘ was one of those shortlisted for this year’s award. About…
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…
We’re spotlighting the Looking for Cowslips citizen science campaign! Organiser Tsipe Aavik shares more about this citizen science project, the findings so far and how you can take part in this campaign. If you’re interested in getting involved with a cowslip survey this Spring, you can find out more here! You can also read the…
Cecilia Molina discusses her recently published Journal of Ecology article: Mowing does not redress the negative effect of nutrient addition on alpha and beta diversity in a temperate grassland. Find out more about the mechanisms driving diversity loss in a temperate grassland. Temperate grasslands are one of the major and most modified vegetation types in…
The Editor’s Choice for our February issue is “Spatial mapping of root systems reveals diverse strategies of soil exploration and resource contest in grassland plants“ by Lepik et al. This article combines fine‐scale measurements of plant root distributions with spatial statistics, yielding new insights into plant behavioural strategies. Here the handling Editor, JC Cahill, provides an overview…
Ilaíne Matos discusses the main findings and importance of her recent paper: Three eco‐physiological strategies of response to drought maintain the form and function of a tropical montane grassland. Find out more about the plant species of the ‘Campos de Altitude’ in Southeastern Brazil and how this research aims to help conserve them. We invite…
Dina in ‘t Zandt discusses her recent paper Local soil legacy effects in a multispecies grassland community are underlain by root foraging and soil nutrient availability. Find out more about their soil legacy experiments and how their results differed from the theory. Biodiversity plays a key role in ecosystem structure and function, with plant community…
How Will Climate Change Affect Community Stability? There’s a great deal of concern and uncertainty over the patterns and causal mechanisms that underlie community grassland change in response to climate change (Ratajczak & Ladwig 2019). Experimental work is needed to better understand the potentially synergistic effects of global change stressors on stability of grasslands. In…
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 Editor’s Choice article for Volume 107 Issue 5 is a study by Zhang et al., which outlines their new SRUD approach for measuring plant diversity dynamics. Associate Editor, Hans Cornelissen, discusses the importance of this new method. Many thousands of researchers have been concerned with what drives and threatens biodiversity. They have investigated whether biodiversity provides benefits…
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