Luiz Rezende and Martín Pareja, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, discuss their article: Foliar herbivory pushes plant individuals towards the periphery of a plant-floral visitor interaction network Ecological interactions have fascinated naturalists for centuries. Watching bees and butterflies visit flowers continues to mesmerise and nurture a love of nature in children and adults…
Si-Chong Chen (@SichongChen), Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discusses her article: Large seeds as a defensive strategy against partial granivory in the Fagaceae Imagine you are an acorn. You’re packed with nutrients and a perfect meal for animals like squirrels and birds. But you’re not just food; you’re also a seed…
Author Sally Archibald discusses newly published article: “Browsing is a strong filter for savanna tree seedlings in their first growing season” by Archibald, Twine, Mthabini, & Stevens. This research found that establishment limitation through early browsing is an under-recognised constraint on savanna tree species distributions When trying to explain why an organism is found in…
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…
The cover image for our April issue shows a rodent herbivore alongside black mangrove seedlings, in a Florida salt marsh. Author and photographer, Rachel S. Smith, describes how she and her team tracked down this mystery mangrove muncher!This image relates to recently published research article: “Dead litter of resident species first facilitates and then inhibits sequential life…
How do seasonal changes in climate influence ecological interactions in an extrafloral nectary‐bearing plant community? Find out in recently published Journal of Ecology paper by Calixto et al. Author Kleber Del-Claro explains how climate can directly and indirectly impact ant–plant–herbivore interactions, and how we can better understand these changes by considering plant phenology over time.…
Here we take a closer look at a fascinating plant defense article by Calixto et al., which has recently been published in Journal of Ecology. Author Kleber Del-Claro explains different methods for anti-herbivore plant defenses and shares the results of this research, which is the first to show that ant recruitment via extrafloral nectar follows…
Journal of Ecology recently published an exciting new research paper by Johnson et al. “Seagrass ecosystem metabolic carbon capture in response to green turtle grazing across Caribbean meadows.” Author Robert Johnson discusses this research in more detail and presents further insights into how green turtle grazing affects carbon dynamics, within seagrass ecosystems. Green turtle abundance is…
The cover image for Journal of Ecology’s latest issue was taken by Johan Martinelli. Here Johan retells the story behind capturing this incredible reindeer photograph. This photo relates to recently published research article “Experimental evidence of the long‐term effects of reindeer on Arctic vegetation greenness and species richness at a larger landscape scale” by Sundqvist et al. I…
The Journal of Ecology has recently published new research by Villar et al. “The cryptic regulation of diversity by functionally complementary large tropical forest herbivores.” Read more about their work in this post & Part 1, written by authors Nacho Villar & Mauro Galetti. To Janzen or not to Janzen? The standard Janzen-Connell hypothesis (JCH)…
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