(guest post by lead author Kenny Helsen) Invasive plant species are considered problematic in many parts of the world due to their impact on ecosystem composition and functioning. Invasion ecologists have tried to identify what characteristics make some species successful invaders, but others not. One theory that has emerged from this work states that invader…

Last week the new handbook of methods for climate change experiments came out. It’s a huge international effort led by Aud Halbritter and others to develop best-practice protocols for standardizing how scientists make measurements in terrestrial ecosystems. Sean Michaletz and I wrote the leaf temperature and leaf thermal trait sections. You can read the paper…

We have a new paper out in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change led by Tommaso Jucker. The paper focuses on understanding how land use change (e.g. selective logging) affects the microclimate of tropical forests. We focus on impacts on species distributions, species interactions, and (ecosystem functioning. It integrates viewpoints from several research groups and…

Summary The Macrosystems Ecology Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley is seeking an undergraduate student to carry out independent research in summer 2020 as part of an ecology project supported by the National Science Foundation. This Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) would support international tropical forest ecology fieldwork, based with our team in Ghana.…