Kechang Niu, Nanjing University in China, discusses his article: Plant species loss reduces rare soil microbes through diversity effects amplified by multitrophic interactions Background A key reason for the flourishing of life on Earth is that diverse groups of organisms mutually thrive in changing environments. However, increasing evidence shows that we are suffering the sixth…
Anna Florianová (@IBOTCZ; @popecolIBOT), Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, describes her article: Climate-driven shifts in plant-soil feedback of a perennial grass species As the climate changes, scientists are becoming increasingly interested in how these shifts impact plant growth. Climate change does not only have direct effects on plants, but may also affect…
Andrew Eagar and Sara Moledor, from Michigan State University’s Department of Plant Biology, discuss their research group’s new review paper: Setting the Stage for Plant-Soil Feedback: Mycorrhizal Influences over Conspecific Recruitment, Plant and Fungal Communities, and Coevolution A holistic view of plant-soil feedback Research over the last 20 years on plant-soil interactions has greatly advanced…
Rachel Standish discusses her recent article: Mycorrhizal symbiosis and phosphorus supply determine interactions among plants with contrasting nutrient-acquisition strategies. Find out more about the importance of below-ground mechanisms for understanding factors determining community structure. The south-west region of Western Australia is a drawcard for plant nerds. Geographic isolation, a stable climate, and ‘quiet’ flat landscape…
Author Franciska de Vries gives her insight into newly published Journal of Ecology article: Glacier forelands reveal fundamental plant and microbial controls on short-term ecosystem nitrogen retention. Franciska and her co-authors investigated how ecosystem nitrogen retention changed with succession across glacier forelands, in a project that was funded by a British Ecological Society research grant.…
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…
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…
The Editor’s Choice for our February issue is “Spatial mapping of root systems reveals diverse strategies of soil exploration and resource contest in grassland plants“ by Lepik et al. This article combines fine‐scale measurements of plant root distributions with spatial statistics, yielding new insights into plant behavioural strategies. Here the handling Editor, JC Cahill, provides an overview…
This post is from Journal of Ecology Executive Editor Richard Bardgett. The UN FAO report on the “State of Knowledge on Soil Biodiversity: Status, Challenges, and Potentialities” was released today, the day before World Soil Day. The report represents a truly global effort by soil scientists and ecologists worldwide and presents the best available knowledge on…
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…
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