🌿 Excited to share FAIRTraits! A data set with 189,452 records of 180 quantitative #traits from 240 Mediterranean plant species, fully FAIR-compliant & openly available 📊🌐 🔗🔓 doi.org/10.1002/ecy.... Started back in 2013 when I was a MSc student, now a huge team effort 💪 @esajournals.bsky.social

In our new article with Rui-Ling Liu and Wen-Yong Guo in J. Ecol., we quantified how plant strategy scores derived from leaf traits (Pierce method) correlate with other plant traits and plant environmental preferences. 🔗 Open-access article: doi.org/10.1111/1365... ‪@journalofecology.bsky.social‬

New Article: "Arbuscular mycorrhizal association regulates global root–seed coordination" rdcu.be/eBmpX Global positive correlation between root diameter and seed size, driven by dual roles of arbuscular mycorrhiza in phosphorus uptake and pathogen defence.

Last week’s campaign combined tech & teamwork! Multispectral drone flights by Leyre Pedrós Pla (PhD student of Francesco de Bello) + trait sampling across all Prachatice grassland sites = 710 leaf samples processed in 2 days. Big thanks to the whole team! @jsegrestin.bsky.social #RemoteSensing

Last week, we hosted Leyre (PhD w/ Francesco) who flew a drone equipped with a #multispectral camera over all our multi-site diversity plots 🚁 At the same time, we measured plant #traits across the entire gradient and… processed 710 leaf samples in just 2 days 😅 An intense but rewarding campaign 💪

🌿 Testing the ‘afterlife' effect 👻 within species 🌿 Do Carex populations from different environments decompose differently? 🍂 ✅ Yes – different populations had different decomposability 🤏 But species identity mattered much more ❗ And leaf #traits didn’t reliably predict decay rates

I am very happy to spend some weeks visiting the @plantecolcb.bsky.social group! After reading a lot of papers from this experiment I finally have the opportunity to visit the place and meet the people 😊

📰Published📰 Seedling fate in wet meadows: success fueled by mowing, not fertilizer 🌱 buff.ly/00VeEhU 🧪🌍

A 🆕 #OpenAccess Review in "Ecological Monographs": 8 key limitations in how we link species traits to ecosystem structure & function, and a to-do list to push the field forward 📄Raunkiæran shortfalls: Challenges and perspectives in trait-based ecology doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

🎤 Grateful for the opportunity to speak as a keynote at #PopBio2025 in beautiful Prague! 🇨🇿✨ It was a true pleasure to share my work and connect with such a thoughtful community 🌍 Huge thanks to the organizers for putting together such a fantastic event! 👏🏼🎉🌱 #Ecology #ScientificCommunity

A nice review to add to the next steps in #TraitBaesdEcology literature - "Raunkiæran shortfalls: Challenges and perspectives in trait‐based ecology" 🌐🧪🌾https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecm.70018

Group of "trait ecologists" published a large paper on the state of the art of the discipline in Ecological Monographs. doi.org/10.1002/ecm.... - There are four authors in the team from our group, including the leading author, Francesco de Bello.

Trait-based #ecology has flourished, but key limitations still hinder progress. We identify 8 major shortfalls, from trait definitions 📏 to ecosystem scaling 🔄🌐, and propose paths forward for a more robust and integrative trait-based framework. 📄🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecm.... @esajournals.bsky.social

New BEF research in "Ecology" - this time, examining carbon dynamics 👀

🌿Just published in Ecology @esajournals.bsky.social! 🎉 Using long-term removal experiments, we empirically tested how redundancy and complementarity among plant species shape seasonal #carbon dynamics in a natural grassland 🌐 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ecy.... #Biodiversity 🌿 #CarbonCycle 🔁 #Grasslands 🌾

🚨 PhD Opportunity 🚨 🌱🔥We're offering a funded PhD position at @inrae-paca.bsky.social to investigate how tree species functional strategies and fire recurrence shape the resilience of Mediterranean forests and their ecosystem services. 🌍 📩 To apply (in French) : jobs.inrae.fr/ot-25708

New global study of dark diversity by #DarkDivNet led by Meelis Pärtel, where Aleš, Maruška, and Eva are co-authors with the dataset from Novohradské Hory, is now out in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#conference | POPBIO 2025: 37th Conference of the Plant Population Biology Section of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) ❗ Deadline for abstracts: 31 Mar 2025 ➡️ popbio2025.ibot.cas.cz Org. by @popecolibot.bsky.social @ibotcz.bsky.social, @sciencecharles.bsky.social

🌱 I’m excited to announce that I’ll be presenting at PopBio 2025 in Prague! 🌍🌐 I’ll be discussing the drivers of stability in ecological communities and sharing new results from long-term biodiversity data. 🗓️ May 2025 | More info: popbio2025.ibot.cas.cz #PopBio2025 #Ecology #FunctionalEcology

New field season has been started! We removed the ingrowth cores placed to measure belowground biomass in permanent plots at Ohrazení.

A new article from Ohrazení is out! besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨 New paper from our group! 🚨 Using a realistic species loss scenario, we show only limited effects of #biodiversity loss on below-ground biomass & root #traits. 🌱 But short-term root production is strongly affected! 📄🔓 Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/1365... @journalofecology.bsky.social #Ecology 🌐

Interested in global ecology? Check out this starter pack: bsky.app/starter-pack... DM @global-ecology.bsky.social to join. We’re already 100, and there’s still room for more! 🌐🌈

What a great demonstration of the importance of permanent grasslands for soil carbon sequestration!

On the blog🔎 Clara Espinosa del Alba et al. investigate how microclimatic gradients modify #germination #phenology to predict the resilience of alpine #plant communities to climate change jecologyblog.com/2025/01/14/m...

📰Published📰 Variations in plant height and leaf structure among species result in differences in photosynthesis, water-use and leaf nitrogen https://buff.ly/3C28iU9 🧪🌍

New paper out! 🌳 🌲 (and this one is very special to me) ➡️ Diversity boosts forest productivity also (and especially?) through its effect on the number of trees within forests besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @journalofecology.bsky.social @cnrsoccitanieest.bsky.social More ⬇️ 1/7

🌼🌸Flowers, leaves, bulbs, and evolution: Researchers unite for a whole plant perspective Oxalis plants are charismatic, perfectly suited for science to meet arts Blog ▶️https://1url.cz/o1CjE #Oxalis #evolution #DNA #JAR #flowers #leaf #bulb #ecology #Africa #polyploidy #storage #GoBelowground

New to Bluesky? Interested in trait-based ecology? evolution?Want papers and discussions in one feed ? Good news! First, link your posts with the hashtag(s) #trait, #traits, #FunctionalTraits or the emojis for 'measure ' 🧮➕📏 ' Second, pin the feed to your account bsky.app/profile/did:... easy! 🌎🧪🌾

A new blog post features our recent paper on seed banks in Journal of Vegetation Science ☘️🌾 @iavs5.bsky.social vegsciblog.org/2024/11/22/d...