Ecology Podcast

Executive Editor, David Gibson, interviewed Carol Thornber at ESA 2015 about all things aquatic ecology.

Robbie Wilson talks to Amy Hahs about using urban ecosystems to expand fundamental ecological knowledge. Amy Hahs guest-edited our latest Special Feature: Ecology of Organisms in Urban Environments with Karl Evans. You can read the Special Feature here: http://www.functionalecology.org/view/0/specialfeatures.html#urbaneco

Droughts are predicted to become increasingly frequent and intense in Amazonia, and empirical evidence for the vulnerability of Amazonian trees to drought has grown over the past decade. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms or the diversity of drought tolerance in tropical trees and, it has been difficult to quantify drought tolerance in tropical trees, due to a lack of consensus on a relevant tree functional trait, practical to measure for the hundreds of tree species occurring in tropical forests.

In this study, Isabelle Marechaux and her co-authors looked at leaf water potential at wilting or turgor loss point (πtlp), which determines tolerance of leaves to drought stress. By using a new method based on a demonstrated association between πtlp and another trait, the leaf osmotic water potential at full hydration, they were able to estimate πtlp for 165 trees of 71 species, at three sites within forests in French Guiana. This dataset represents a significant increase in information for tropical tree species, revealing a wider range of drought tolerance than previously found in the literature and indicating a potential for highly diverse species responses to drought within forest communities. Given the weak correlations between πtlp and traditionally measured plant functional traits, vegetation models seeking to predict forest response to drought should integrate improved quantification of comparative drought tolerance among tree species.

Alan Knapp talks to Anita Narwani and Patrick Venail about their new Extended Spotlight: Community Phylogenetics and Ecosystem Functioning: http://j.mp/FE29I5

Duncan Irschick talks to Coleman M. Sheehy III about how arboreality and the associated gravitational stress on blood circulation have influenced the evolution of tail length in snakes. Since their evolutionary origins about 100 million years ago, snakes have diversified into a wide variety of aquatic, burrowing, terrestrial, and arboreal habitats where they experience various levels of gravitational stress on blood circulation. At the extremes, these stresses range from low to none in fully aquatic species living in essentially “weightless” environments, to relatively high in climbing species, especially arboreal forms specialized for climbing trees. As a result, arboreal snakes exhibit many adaptations for countering the effects of gravity on blood circulation, including relatively tight tissue compartments in the tail. However, patterns of tail length in relation to arboreal habitats and gravity have not been previously studied.

You can read the paper, "The evolution of tail length in snakes associated with different gravitational environments" here:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12472/abstract

In celebration of Fascination of Plants Day on 18 May 2015: Journal of Ecology's Executive Editor, David Gibson, has interviewed Anthony Davy about the Journal's Biological Flora of the British Isles series.

Alan Knapp talks to the 2014 Haldane Prizewinner Scott Ferrenberg about his paper, "Smooth bark surfaces can defend trees against insect attack: resurrecting a ‘slippery’ hypothesis". The concept of smooth bark on trees and shrubs acting as an anatomical defence against epiphytic vegetation and phytophagous insects has, for some time, fallen out of favour. Ferrenberg and Mitton, in a study of bark beetle attack on Pinus flexilis – a pine species that exhibits both smooth and rough bark surfaces – set out to test the role of bark defence against insects.

http://www.functionalecology.org/view/0/fecBESYoungInvestigator2014.html

The Editors of the Journal of Ecology are pleased to honour Professor Deborah Goldberg in our continuing Eminent Ecologist series. Deborah is the Elzada U. Clover Collegiate Professor and Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, USA. More than that, Deborah is a hugely influential community ecologist having published a large body of highly cited work investigating the processes underlying patterns in plant community dynamics. In recognition of her work we have selected 10 of her most influential papers published in the Journal of Ecology.

To provide some context, Deborah has written a fascinating post for the Journal of Ecology blog (https://jecologyblog.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/eminent-ecolog…borah-goldberg/). In addition, I was fortunate enough to interview Deborah in August 2014 during which we reflected over the insights, and controversies, arising from her work, as well as some of the non-ecological work that she has been involved with. This interview is available here as a podcast.

We trust that you will enjoy reading, or perhaps even rereading in some cases, the selection of Deborah’s papers in the Virtual Issue (http://www.journalofecology.org/view/0/VIdeborahgoldberg.html) that have been published within the Journal of Ecology.

David Gibson

Executive Editor, Journal of Ecology

Hal and Rob are two of the co-authors on "The COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database: an open online repository for plant demography" http://bit.ly/10M3OZG

Stephanie Green explains why generalist lionfish are really 'picky eaters' and how their feeding habits will affect invaded Caribbean fish communities. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.12250/abstract