Drought revisited: manipulating humidity changes the whole ball game

Authors Beatriz Aguirre and Alexandra (Sasha) Wright discuss the findings of their new article – The experimental manipulation of atmospheric drought: Teasing out the role of microclimate in biodiversity experiments. This article is also part of our upcoming Special Feature on Facilitative Mechanisms! Drought occurrence is increasing due to anthropogenic climate change. Drought can negatively…

Cover stories: Volume 109 Issue 2

The cover image for our new issue shows an ant standing on the tip of a Lafoensia pacari leaf in the Cerrado, Brazil. Author Kleber Del-Claro shares the story behind this stunning image, which was taken by co-author Denise Lange and relates to their recent research article “Climate seasonality drives ant–plant–herbivore interactions via plant phenology in an extrafloral…

Keep your forests tight with pedunculate oak

In this latest Author Blog, Lionel R. Hertzog and Michael P. Perring discuss their recent paper: ‘Overstorey composition shapes across-trophic level community relationships in deciduous forest regardless of fragmentation context.’ Community ecology is complex; some even say that it is a mess (Lawton, 1999). After all, everything apparently depends on everything else in diffuse ways.…

Marine Plant Ecology

Earlier this week Journal of Ecology published a new Virtual Issue on Freshwater Plant Ecology, which you can read in full here. In this post Rich Shefferson shares a selection of recent marine plant articles! The featured papers fall into four key research themes: Population, Community, Ecosystem & Evolution. I suppose I am not alone…

Cover Story and Editor’s Choice: Volume 108 Issue 2

The cover image for Journal of Ecology’s latest issue was taken by Philippe Cohen. This photo relates to research article: Fire history and plant community composition outweigh decadal multi‐factor global change as drivers of microbial composition in an annual grassland by Qin, Zhu, Chiariello, Field & Peay. This article was also selected as the Editor’s Choice paper for…

Disentangling how alien species shape the seasonal dynamics of plant-pollinator communities

“Alien plants and flower visitors disrupt the seasonal dynamics of mutualistic networks” by Arroyo-Correa, Burkle & Emer has just been published in Journal of Ecology. This study provides one of the first empirical reports of alien species shaping the seasonal dynamics of plant–flower visitor networks. Author, Blanca Arroyo-Correa, provides further insight into this research. The…

How do tree fern understories impact conifer–angiosperm forest dynamics?

Brock et al. recently published their new article “The hare, tortoise and crocodile revisited: Tree fern facilitation of conifer persistence and angiosperm growth in simulated forests” in Journal of Ecology. Author James Brock discusses this research in more detail and explains how tree fern understories are important determinants of forest structure. Establishing how conifers compete…