How the strategies of bilberry roots to access nutrients vary at small scales and with changes in nutrient availability

Barbara Meyers, University of Freiburg in Germany, discusses her article: Soil nutrient availability rather than spatial nutrient heterogeneity shapes the intraspecific response of root architectural, morphological and mycorrhizal traits in Vaccinium myrtillus Roots make up for a large proportion of plant biomass and play a central role in several plant functions: accessing water and nutrients…

How is litter decomposition affected by climate change in Mediterranean forests? Soil fauna has the key

Lead author Pablo Homet discusses recently published article: Soil fauna modulates the effect of experimental drought on litter decomposition in forests invaded by an exotic pathogen. Find out more about how litter mesofauna plays an important role in litter decomposition in a Mediterranean forest. Decomposition processes of dead organic matter are fundamental for life cycling.…

Can frequent mowing counteract the negative effect of multiple nutrients on plant diversity?

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…

Is resprouting a persistence trait in tropical forests?

Author James Dalling discusses recent paper “Nutrient availability predicts multiple stem frequency, an indicator of species resprouting capacity in tropical forests” by Heineman, Turner and Dalling. Read on to find out more about variations in the resprouting ability of tropical trees. The life of a tree is seldom the unobstructed path of a single stem…

Plant soil legacies and species coexistence in species-rich grasslands

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…

Harper Prize Shortlist 2019: Eric A. Griffin

In this post, Eric Griffin, Assistant Professor at New Mexico Highlands University, discusses his paper Plant host identity and soil macronutrients explain little variation in sapling endophyte community composition: Is disturbance an alternative explanation?, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Harper Prize. You can see a full list of all shortlisted papers in the Harper…

Interview with Eric Lind on the Nutrient Network (NutNet)

There seems to be less and less funding for ecology. In addition, ecological questions benefit from being carried out in a lot of different locations – this allows for more general conclusions. Traditionally, an ecologist would get a bunch of money and do the research at all the sites herself. Another way to do this…