John Dwyer

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/...

Schematic illustrating how species interactions can depend on neighborhood density and identity.

🆕 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....

The global biomass of mammals since 1850 - Nature Communications Here, the authors estimate mammalian biomass from the 1850’s to today, tracking an increase of over five-fold in human and domesticated mammal biomass and a two-fold decrease in wild mammal biomass. R...

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

Memories of Trees Past: Coexistence Implications of Legacy Conspecific Density Dependence Negative density dependence persisted for up to 5 years after tree death, but with interspecific variation. Although stabilising niche differences were large, fitness differences–at the seedling life...

🌳 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 🌿

YouTube video by University of Southern Queensland Friends with benefits or frenemies: The role of soil biota in shaping plant responses

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

A simple plant–mycorrhizal fungal resource trade co‐evolution model explains mutualism stability, extinction and transitory parasitism via fitness feedback The mutualism between mycorrhizal fungi and plants has persisted for over 400 million years, despite the mutualism paradox predicting that mutualisms should be evolutionarily unstable due to the fit.....

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

Landscape-wide modelling of canopy tree crowns and heights using LiDAR: a case study in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, Australia Context Understanding the extant structure of forests reveals important insights into their ecological condition, age, biodiversity and related ecosystem services. Advances in LiDAR and computational…

#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

It’s going off!!!

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.

Sophora fraseri…grrrrrrr

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....

Graphical illustration of the four key stages of edge evolution following edge creation.

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 Research Fellow in Forest Monitoring Company Description: Western Sydney University is a modern, forward-thinking, research-led institution at the heart of Australia’s fastest-growing and most economically significant region. With 11 cam...

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

Global distribution of forest landscapes covered by airborne LiDAR

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!

Trait‐based island biogeography as a tool for studying future ecological communities Understanding the future of ecological communities under global change is among the most pressing challenges in plant ecology. Islands, with their reduced species diversity and clear boundaries, have...

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/...

Real-world example of how airborne LiDAR data can be used to advance our understanding of forest edge effects.

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

🦗🦗🦗😭😭😭

Local Adaptation Drives Leaf Thermoregulation in Tropical Rainforest Trees We tested whether tropical rainforest trees adjust their leaf traits and resulting leaf temperatures across their distributions within the Australian Wet Tropics. Using field measurements from across...

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....