PhD opportunity Back to the roots! Can plants avoid water stress by moving water uptake to deeper soil? Find out in this IMPRS PhD project, coop with @chriswernerlab.bsky.social, @bernhardschuldt.bsky.social and a whole consortium investigating plant hydraulics 👉 More info: shorturl.at/66nBa

This was a nice little Christmas present, with Boyd Wright and Rod Fensham. Vegetation flammability contributes to alternative stable states in arid Australia #flammability #Triodia connectsci.au/wf/article/d...

What a lovely job.

I love a normalized rumple index 👇

New article out in Ecology Letters! Developing a general math model, we show how cross-stage interactions modify the stability predicted by classic unstructured models. 📄 Population Structure Plays a Key Role in Community Stability. @ox.ac.uk @ifisc.uib-csic.es @ceabcsic.bsky.social @csic.es

🚨Join the International Dendrometer Network🚨 We're building a community of people using dendrometers to study tree growth, stress, resilience, phenology & more🌳🧪 Join our mailing list for updates, data calls & opportunities: forms.gle/SrdMLcg5BAN9... First meeting is Friday at 10:30CET - join us!

Fascinating new paper by @andrewabraham.bsky.social on how salt starvation shapes the abundance of large animals in Africa - the thread below explains the science … 🌐

Congratulations to the ESA Gold Medal Award winner Dr Suzanne Prober 👏 #ESA2025

🚨Paper alert🚨 Check out Beibei Zhang's latest work out today @royalsocietypublishing.org where we track the 3D structural recovery of Australia's Great Western Woodlands following wildfires over a chronosequence spanning half a millenia!🌳🛰️🔥🧪 royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

🆕 in "Ecological Monographs": Static models miss the mark—adding nonlinear, density-based facilitation helps predict coexistence, persistence, and realistic community dynamics 📄Neighbor density-dependent facilitation promotes coexistence and internal oscillation doi.org/10.1002/ecm....

Check this out: the global biomass of mammals since 1850 just out in @natcomms.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐

Yesterday we were treated to an inspirational seminar from Dr Laura Williams from @westsyduhie.bsky.social all about the importance of tree diversity, novel ways to quantify it and its consequences for how forests function. Good luck with the richly-deserved DECRA Laura!!! Ping @bmedlyn.bsky.social

🌳 New paper out in Ecology Letters! 🌱 Our latest study, led by Lukas Magee, shows that the “legacies” of trees continue to shape forests long after they die. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #Ecology #Forests #Biodiversity @umramap.bsky.social @ird-fr.bsky.social A thread: [1/3]

Compositional data needs models that respect its constraints. I show how Dirichlet regression with GPs captures nonlinear environmental effects on plant communities while respecting the dependence of the data #rstats #dataviz ecogambler.netlify.app/blog/plant-c...

#PhD opportunity with amazing supervisors at @westsyduhie.bsky.social and the Botanic Gardens Sydney, focusing on restoration success, genomic diversity and macroecology. Please share widely 🌿

Here goes a bit of shameless self-promotion: If you missed my National Science Week online webinar, it is now available via YouTube. Friends with benefits or frenemies: The role of soil biota in shaping plant responses. youtu.be/B_hnTfg10TM?...

Melbourne: ever helpful

Loyalty and nutrient trade… University of Western Australia researchers show how plants and fungi keep their partnerships alive—even in the face of cheating 🍃 ❤️ 🍄 #Mycorrhiza #Evolution

#openaccess New #LiDAR methods are revealing the influence of land use change and climate change on forest height, as Patrick Norman and colleagues write

We are searching for a Forest Ecophysiologist (tenure track Assistant or Associate Professor) to join the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry. Please share! Details are here: ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/ubcfacultyjobs

My day in photos (hours of driving excluded). Lots of talk about trees and lidar with @lilydun.bsky.social and the brilliant folks at ArborMeta. The access code to the cafe toilet was an unexpected challenge.

Diospyros yandina…mmmm

Ever wonder about what spatial scale of biodiversity #eDNA 🧬 samples capture? We did. So we used data from the 16-ha Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot 🇵🇷 to investigate the spatial scale of soil eDNA samples for tree🌴🌳 diversity. (Please share with #eDNA folks!) www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

We have a #Tansley review out today @newphyt.bsky.social led by Becky Banbury Morgan in which we put forward a new framework that aims to explain how and why edge effects on forest structure vary across ecosystems and through time 📜 doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Postdoctoral position in Forest Monitoring available. Know your way around spatial datasets? Join us to help monitor changes in Australia's precious forest estate! @westsyduhie.bsky.social jobs.smartrecruiters.com/WesternSydne...

Arthur Yambayamba's first PhD chapter is out today @biotropica.bsky.social 🍾 Using NFI data from Zambia we explore how climate and competition shape the crown allometries of Miombo woodlands 🌳📐 📜 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New research just dropped! Revisiting Paradigms Related to Root Hydraulic Limitation Under Drought is now available—challenging classic hydraulic-fuse models and outdated assumptions about root embolism, xylem safety-efficiency trade-offs, and ABA signalling. doi.org/10.1007/124_...

📢🌿Available #traits #FunctionalTraits PhD position in my group @westsyduhie.bsky.social, closes 30th Oct. Topics: “Climate adaptations in Australian native grasses”; OR “Plant resource economics”. Apply via WSU Online Portal. Eligibility and other key info here: wrightlab.wordpress.com/news/

Just heading back from a quick couple of days in the scrub at Yarraman with a wonderful crew including Dr Bill McDonald.

This Turraea pubescens (Meliaceae) we planted 1.5 yrs ago is loving life. Covered in flower buds already #dryrainforest

Only a pre-print for now, but after 4 years of hard work I couldn't resist sharing this! The Global Canopy Atlas: analysis-ready maps of 3D structure for the world's woody ecosystems 📜: doi.org/10.1101/2025... Huge team effort led by the brilliant Fabian Fischer!

Thrilled to see my Tansley insight review published in @newphyt.bsky.social! I provide an overview of recent advances in integrating plant traits into island ecology and highlight key opportunities for future research in island systems. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Many thanks to @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding this work! Keep your eyes peeled for a quantitative test of some of these ideas usign airborne LiDAR, which is coming soon! @bristolbiosci.bsky.social @cabot-institute.bsky.social

Can tropical rainforest trees keep their cool? Now out in @globalchangebio.bsky.social we explored whether intraspecific variation in leaf energy balance was a result of adaptation to local climate. doi.org/10.1111/gcb....

Tuned in yesterday for an impassioned plea and delightful talk by @john-m-dwyer.bsky.social on how dry rainforest trees, including our beloved vine thickets, could be used to revegetate Brisbane's streets in the lead up to the 2032 Olympics. Lots of neat data on temp. niches!

Much of this work described by @john-m-dwyer.bsky.social is underpinned by the excellent PhD thesis by @jradford-smith.bsky.social. You can see some of his papers and his study area here. #urbantrees #heatwaves

In his excellent talk @john-m-dwyer.bsky.social explained that naming his preferred street tree is like choosing your favourite David Bowie album...impossible! However, here is his attempt at best trees for different circumstances. IMO the best tree is ooline, and Bowie song is Under Pressure.

The first chapter of my dissertation is out in Ecology Letters! We pooled data from forest sites across the globe to understand how forests differ in their carbon investment in reproduction (flowers, fruits, seeds). #ForestEcology #GlobalEcology onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A very cool story! Expelled by Antarctic Ice: Evolutionary History of the Cunonieae Tribe (Cunoniaceae). How an extraordinary group of trees emerging in Antarctica went on to tropical success, now dominating many high Andean forests in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. doi.org/10.1111/jse....

I'm so very proud of Niger Sultana and the first chapter of her PhD thesis!!! She had so many challenges and came through them all with flying colours. With @loraxcate.bsky.social @azhar06.bsky.social et al. in @botsocamerica.bsky.social bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Nice to wake up to some weird magnoliid action this morning. Here is a flowering Eupomatia bennettii (small bolwarra) in our dry rainforest garden.

#Tree stems accumulate biomass by adding volume of certain density. Which factor is more important? Using tropical #treering data we found: diameter increment explains biomass growth at short term; wood density at long term.🌎🌐🍁 #dendrochronology besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🌿 Trees in valleys grew faster & died more. 🌿 Some valley species thrived “at home,” but community-level support was mixed. 🌿 Even 22 m elevation differences = meaningful demographic shifts. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #proudPI

New 2yr postdoc position @ University of Queensland on coral distributions and Allee effects. Must have permission to work in Australia uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/uqcareers/jo...

It was super exciting to see the progress that @ecologyella.bsky.social has made in revealing the reproductive timing of Australian rainforest trees! Another beautiful and engaging presentation.

The hits keep coming #FootpathsOfStLucia

Dead leaf or BUTTERFLY!? 🤯🍂 Zaretis sp. from the Peruvian Amazon! 🦋 This one got very comfortable on our sweaty clothes and hands! 😅 So lucky!

🚨New paper out in PNAS🚨 Soil eDNA reflects regionally dominant species rather than local composition of tropical tree communities 🧬🌿🌳🌺🧬 We asked about the spatial scale of biodiversity captured by samples of DNA from tropical soils #Luquillo #eDNA. A short 🧵.... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Looking for a postdoc in #Ecophysiology, #ThermalEcology, #GlobalChange, or #ForestEcology,? Apply for a #Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship to work with my group at #UBC in beautiful #Vancouver! Proposals are due Oct 20 - get in touch if interested! www.postdocs.ubc.ca/award/killam...

As humans face record-breaking heatwaves, our new research led by Max Kotz shows intensified heat extremes caused a 25–38% decline in the level of abundance of tropical birds since 1950. These impacts often exceed those of average temperature rise and direct human pressures. rdcu.be/eAlQh