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…

Shrub Expansion in the Arctic: Quantifying and Explaining the Transformation of Tundra Landscapes

Anna Derkacheva, Gerald “JJ” Frost, Howie Epstein, and Ksenia Ermokhina, of HSE University in Russia, Alaska Biological Research, Inc., the University of Virginia, and the Russian Academy of Sciences (respectively), discuss their article: Landscape patterns of shrubification in the Siberian low arctic: A machine learning perspective The Arctic tundra is experiencing some of the strongest…

The woody plant takeover: encroaching shrubs show diverse growth strategies in a tallgrass prairie

Emily Wedel, from Kansas State University’s Konza Prairie Biological Station, describes her article: Divergent resource-use strategies of encroaching shrubs: Can traits predict encroachment success in tallgrass prairie? Background: Attack of the shrubs The expansive grasslands that once dominated North America’s Central Great Plains have all but disappeared. The remaining grass-dominated regions that avoided conversion to…

Cover stories: Volume 109 Issue 8

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…