Tag: plant ecology

Margaux Didion-Gency at the Lago di Nambino, Italy.
Behind the paper

Margaux Didion-Gency: Interactive effects of tree species mixture and climate on foliar and woody trait variation in a widely distributed deciduous tree.

Margaux Didion-Gency, Ph.D. at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) of Birmensdorf (Switzerland), presents her first published paper and discusses the importance of tree species interactions in the context of climate change. About the paper This study was motivated by previous research that reported the positive effect of species richness on grassland resistance to extreme events. However, we noticed that … Continue reading Margaux Didion-Gency: Interactive effects of tree species mixture and climate on foliar and woody trait variation in a widely distributed deciduous tree.

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Curtis Lubbe
Behind the paper

Curtis Lubbe: Right place, wrong time? Hide in the soil – avoidant strategies in plants

In this new post, Curtis Lubbe from the Institute of Botany (Czech Academy of Sciences) presents his latest work ‘Winter belowground: changing winters and the perennating organs of herbaceous plants’, discuss the importance of plant storage organs in perennial plants and surprise us with his drawing talent. About the paper This paper is a review of our current understanding of how the belowground storage organs … Continue reading Curtis Lubbe: Right place, wrong time? Hide in the soil – avoidant strategies in plants

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Author Hao Chen, School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, China
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Hao Chen: plants don’t store all trace elements equally

In his latest work, ‘Global resorption efficiencies of trace elements in leaves of terrestrial plants’, professor Hao Chen presents his findings on micronutrient resorption by plants, introduces his future plants in research and calls for collaborators in studying the role of plants in nutrient cycling.    What’s your paper about? This paper reports the global pattern of leaf resorption of trace elements. Specifically, we extracted data … Continue reading Hao Chen: plants don’t store all trace elements equally

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Ellen setting up a transect for the plots
Behind the paper

Ellen Welti: Better with a grain of salt. Sodium addition increases leaf herbivory and fungal damage in grasslands

Ellen Welti shares her experience doing her latest research ‘Sodium addition increases leaf herbivory and fungal damage across four grasslands’, the implications of Sodium fertilization for agriculture and her secret cat taming skills. About the paper In this paper, we test how elevated sodium in plants would affect how much herbivorous insects and leaf fungal pathogens consume. This study followed previous research from our group … Continue reading Ellen Welti: Better with a grain of salt. Sodium addition increases leaf herbivory and fungal damage in grasslands

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Jitka Klimesova sorting biomass in field
Behind the paper

Jitka Klimesova: why we should all care more about belowground plant organs

Jitka Klimesova serves as Senior Scientist at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Třeboň and as Professor at Charles University in Prague. Her main interest is in functional morphology of clonal and regenerative organs of herbs. She is the main author of the only existing database of clonal and bud bank traits for an entire flora (CLO-PLA; Czech Republic), organizes … Continue reading Jitka Klimesova: why we should all care more about belowground plant organs

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Monique Weemstra
Behind the paper

Monique Weemstra: how do trees modify their roots to adapt to their location?

We welcome 2021 with a new post by Monique Weemstra, a postdoc at the University of Michigan. Here she talks about her latest research looking at how trees can modulate their root traits to account for environmental gradients and the importance of working with people enjoying ecology as much as you do. About the paper This study is a part of the ECOPICS project: a … Continue reading Monique Weemstra: how do trees modify their roots to adapt to their location?

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Behind the paper

Ximeng Li: More than iso/anisohydry

In this Insight, Ximeng Li talks about his paper More than iso/anisohydry: Hydroscapes integrate plant water use and drought tolerance traits in 10 eucalypt species from contrasting climates, recently shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s Haldane Prize. Ximeng recently finished his PhD at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University and has now returned to China, where he hopes to continue his research.

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Behind the paper

Noémie Pichon: decomposition disentangled

2021 Update – The paper discussed in this blog by Noémie Pichon is shortlisted for the 2020 Haldane Prize. This blog is also available in French.

Noémie A. Pichon, a PhD student in the Allan Lab, talks about her recent paper Decomposition disentangled: a test of the multiple mechanisms by which nitrogen enrichment alters litter decomposition, the background behind this paper and the next steps in this field.

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Jenn Rudgers SEV3 - photo by Kate Cunningham
Behind the paper

Jennifer Rudgers: answers from long-term data in the drylands

In this post, Jennifer Rudgers, Professor of Biology at University of New Mexico and the current Director of the Sevilleta Long-Term Ecological Research Program in New Mexico, talks about her recent paper, Sensitivity of dryland plant allometry to climate, and the importance of long-term data.

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Anna Abrahao in the campos rupestres.
Behind the paper

Anna Abrahão: rocks, roots and resiliance

In this post, Anna Abrahão, of the Universität Hohenheim, Germany, talks about how plants – and people – set roots on rocky terrain. About the paper Our paper is about plants that grow on rock outcrops in a very nutrient-poor ecosystem in mountaintops of Brazil called campos rupestres. Theseplantshave incredible roots that allow them to dissolve rock and mine phosphorus. We called these roots vellozioid … Continue reading Anna Abrahão: rocks, roots and resiliance

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