Yong-Deng He and Zhong-Ming Ye, Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discuss their article: Disentangling the mechanisms behind indirect interactions between plants via shared pollinators: Effects of neutral and niche-based processes In biodiversity hotspots like the alpine meadows of north-western Yunnan, more than 100 flowering species can bloom in a single season.…
Julissa Roja-Sandoval, University of Connecticut, discusses her article: Plant-pollinator interactions in a tropical dry forest: Spatiotemporal shifts in floral trait importance When we think about flowers and pollinators, it’s easy to imagine a perfect match: hummingbirds visiting red tubular flowers, bees buzzing around open yellow blooms, or butterflies sipping nectar from flowers with long tubes.…
Chun-Feng Yang, Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discusses their article: Nectar sugar concentration contributes to structuring bumble bee and plant interactions Why do flowers vary their nectar sugar concentrations? Producing nectar entails significant energetic costs for plants, with investment strongly correlated to sugar concentration. It is therefore believed that interspecific variation…
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…
Wim De Schuyter, Pieter De Frenne, Emiel De Lombaerde, Leen Depauw, Pallieter De Smedt, Lander Baeten, Kris Verheyen explore declining potential nectar production in this post and also at: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2745.14274 Springtime is upon us and soon new generations of insects will emerge and buzz around in our landscapes. In search for food, and later on…
This work came up on a solid and long-lasting collaboration between four institutions (from Spain, Mexico, Netherlands and Switzerland). This collaboration focussed, to a large extent, on investigating the ecological drivers and consequences of species interactions in natural or agro-forestry systems. Our research has focused on understanding the role of “bottom-up” factors (e.g., variation in…
The cover image for our August issue shows a female sharp-collared furrow bee visiting the flowers of a Mediterranean shrub. This image relates to the research article: Individual-based plant–pollinator networks are structured by phenotypic and microsite plant traits by Arroyo-Correa, Bartomeus, & Jordano. Lead author, Blanca Arroyo-Correa, and photographer, Curro Molina, discuss the biodiversity of Doñana National Park and…
Volume 109 Issue 8 of Journal of Ecology is now available online! Our August issue contains an essay review considering the past, present, and future of herbivore impacts on savanna vegetation, a paper that explores habitat fragmentation and food security in crop pollination systems & long-term study of primary succession in an Atlantic salt marsh. The Editor’s…
Blanca Arroyo-Correa discusses her recent article: Individual-based plant–pollinator networks are structured by phenotypic and microsite plant traits. Find out more about what this research reveals about the drivers underlying the context dependency of plant–pollinator interactions. The establishment of mutualistic interactions is influenced by the abiotic and biotic context in which they take place and therefore…
Throughout the last month, we have been 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. Here we hear more from Blanca Arroyo-Correa, who was jointly awarded this year’s prize alongside Atul Joshi! About me My academic…
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