All Outputs (67)

The status and future of essential geodiversity variables (2024)
Journal Article

Rapid environmental change, natural resource overconsumption and increasing concerns about ecological sustainability have led to the development of 'Essential Variables' (EVs). EVs are harmonized data products to inform policy and to enable effective... Read More about The status and future of essential geodiversity variables.

Diurnal temperature range as a key predictor of plants’ elevation ranges globally (2023)
Journal Article

A prominent hypothesis in ecology is that larger species ranges are found in more variable climates because species develop broader environmental tolerances, predicting a positive range size-temperature variability relationship. However, this overloo... Read More about Diurnal temperature range as a key predictor of plants’ elevation ranges globally.

Rooting depth and xylem vulnerability are independent woody plant traits jointly selected by aridity, seasonality, and water table depth (2023)
Journal Article

Evolutionary radiations of woody taxa within arid environments were made possible by multiple trait innovations including deep roots and embolism-resistant xylem, but little is known about how these traits have coevolved across the phylogeny of woody... Read More about Rooting depth and xylem vulnerability are independent woody plant traits jointly selected by aridity, seasonality, and water table depth.

Widespread shifts in body size within populations and assemblages (2023)
Journal Article

Biotic responses to global change include directional shifts in organismal traits. Body size, an integrative trait that determines demographic rates and ecosystem functions, is thought to be shrinking in the Anthropocene. Here, we assessed the preval... Read More about Widespread shifts in body size within populations and assemblages.

Volcanic ash deposition as a selection mechanism towards woodiness (2023)
Journal Article

The high proportion of woody plant species on oceanic islands has hitherto been explained mainly by gradual adaptation to climatic conditions. Here, we present a novel hypothesis that such woodiness is adaptative to volcanic ash (tephra) deposition.... Read More about Volcanic ash deposition as a selection mechanism towards woodiness.

Analysing the distribution of strictly protected areas toward the EU2030 target (2023)
Journal Article

Protecting global biodiversity is one of the most urgent tasks for the coming decades. Area-based conservation is a pillar for preserving ecosystems and species. Strictly protected areas specifically preserve biodiversity and ecosystem processes. The... Read More about Analysing the distribution of strictly protected areas toward the EU2030 target.

Effects of climate change on the distribution of plant species and plant functional strategies on the Canary Islands (2023)
Journal Article

Aim: Oceanic islands possess unique floras with high proportions of endemic species. Island floras are expected to be severely affected by changing climatic conditions as species on islands have limited distribution ranges and small population sizes... Read More about Effects of climate change on the distribution of plant species and plant functional strategies on the Canary Islands.

The role of refuges in biological invasions: A systematic review (2023)
Journal Article

Aim Ecological refuges buffer organisms against stressors and mediate a range of species interactions. However, their role in the context of biological invasions has yet to be synthesized, despite the increasing prevalence and impact of non-native s... Read More about The role of refuges in biological invasions: A systematic review.

Effect of Canal Bank Engineering Disturbance on Plant Communities: Analysis of Taxonomic and Functional Beta Diversity (2023)
Journal Article

We aimed to determine how patterns of functional and taxonomic dissimilarities and their components differ between disturbed and undisturbed plant communities. Taxonomic (species) and functional (trait) diversity are key aspects of biodiversity, and... Read More about Effect of Canal Bank Engineering Disturbance on Plant Communities: Analysis of Taxonomic and Functional Beta Diversity.

Understanding trait diversity: the role of geodiversity (2023)
Journal Article

Geodiversity – the abiotic heterogeneity of Earth's (sub)surface – is gaining recognition for its ecological links to biodiversity. However, theoretical and conceptual knowledge of geodiversity–trait diversity relationships is currently lacking and c... Read More about Understanding trait diversity: the role of geodiversity.

Traits of dominant plant species drive normalized difference vegetation index in grasslands globally (2023)
Journal Article

Aim: Theoretical, experimental and observational studies have shown that biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships are influenced by functional community structure through two mutually non-exclusive mechanisms: (1) the dominance effect (... Read More about Traits of dominant plant species drive normalized difference vegetation index in grasslands globally.

Links to rare climates do not translate into distinct traits for island endemics (2023)
Journal Article

Current models of island biogeography treat endemic and non-endemic species as if they were functionally equivalent, focussing primarily on species richness. Thus, the functional composition of island biotas in relation to island biogeographical vari... Read More about Links to rare climates do not translate into distinct traits for island endemics.

Ecosystem Restoration: What, Why, How, and Where? (2022)
Journal Article

Our world contains many ecosystems, from tropical forests to coral reefs to urban parks. Ecosystems help us in important ways, including cleaning our air and water, storing carbon, and producing food. People have been shaping most ecosystems for at l... Read More about Ecosystem Restoration: What, Why, How, and Where?.

Landscape-scale drivers of liana load across a Southeast Asian forest canopy differ to the Neotropics (2022)
Journal Article

Lianas (woody vines) are a key component of tropical forests, known to reduce forest carbon storage and sequestration and to be increasing in abundance. Analysing how and why lianas are distributed in forest canopies at landscape scales will help us... Read More about Landscape-scale drivers of liana load across a Southeast Asian forest canopy differ to the Neotropics.

Global patterns of vascular plant alpha diversity (2022)
Journal Article

Global patterns of regional (gamma) plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether these patterns hold for local communities, and the dependence on spatial grain, remain controversial. Using data on 170,272 georeferenced local plant assemblag... Read More about Global patterns of vascular plant alpha diversity.

A possible role for river restoration enhancing biodiversity through interaction with wildfire (2022)
Journal Article

Background: Historically, wildfire regimes produced important landscape-scale disturbances in many regions globally. The “pyrodiversity begets biodiversity” hypothesis suggests that wildfires that generate temporally and spatially heterogeneous mosai... Read More about A possible role for river restoration enhancing biodiversity through interaction with wildfire.

Biodiversity: The role of interaction diversity (2022)
Journal Article

Links between the diversity of ecological interactions and community structure have long been recognised but remain broadly understudied. A new study concludes that vertebrate trophic interaction diversity is nearly uncorrelated with either phylogene... Read More about Biodiversity: The role of interaction diversity.

Climatic and biogeographical drivers of functional diversity in the flora of the Canary Islands (2022)
Journal Article

Aim: Functional traits can help us to elucidate biogeographical and ecological processes driving assemblage structure. We analysed the functional diversity of plant species of different evolutionary origins across an island archipelago, along environ... Read More about Climatic and biogeographical drivers of functional diversity in the flora of the Canary Islands.

Geodiversity and biodiversity on a volcanic island: The role of scattered phonolites for plant diversity and performance (2022)
Journal Article

Oceanic islands are cradles of endemism, contributing substantially to global biodiversity. A similarity in magmatic origin translates into high global comparability of substrates of volcanic islands on the oceanic crust with, however, slightly chemi... Read More about Geodiversity and biodiversity on a volcanic island: The role of scattered phonolites for plant diversity and performance.

Making (remote) sense of lianas (2022)
Journal Article

Lianas (woody vines) are abundant and diverse, particularly in tropical ecosystems. Lianas use trees for structural support to reach the forest canopy, often putting leaves above their host tree. Thus they are major parts of many forest canopies. Yet... Read More about Making (remote) sense of lianas.