Jane Goodall with monarch butterfly scarf
“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”
― Jane Goodall
💙 RIP to a real one. My childhood hero
Ayer estuvimos en la #Gnight de Vigo con nuestro taller del proyecto #LivingSoiLL 🌱 donde hablamos sobre la salud del suelo y cómo el vermicompost puede ser una solución natural para mejorarla.
@uvigo.bsky.social @gciencia.bsky.social
👨🔬O vindeiro 26 de setembro, Galicia converterase nun laboratorio a ceo aberto coa celebración da G-Night, a Noite Europea das Persoas Investigadoras.
Máis de 200 actividades gratuítas en A Coruña, Santiago, Ferrol, Lugo, Ourense, Pontevedra e Vigo achegarán a ciencia á cidadanía.
Este viernes 26/09 en la #GnightVigo os esperamos en el taller:
“LivingSoiLL: De restos a recursos, reavivando o solo con miñocas” 🪱
Descubre cómo transformar lo que sobra en vida 🌱
➡️ gnight.gal/cidades/vigo/
@uvigo.bsky.social @gciencia.bsky.social
Did you miss the #LivingSoiLL poster at the @sibecol-aeet-25.bsky.social?
Don't worry, there are 2 days left to check it out!
I'll be around if you want to discuss.
Let's talk about soil health!
Nos vemos! 🌱
🔗 livingsoill.eu
🐝VII Ciclo de Seminarios #EcoEvo🐝
🚨Hoy tendrá lugar el seminario titulado "Hablemos de abejas, una aproximación a su fascinante mundo"
👨🔬Impartido por el investigador Guillermo Cabezas
📆14 mayo
⏰12:00
📍Aula 002, Aulario II, Campus de Móstoles #URJC
⚠️¡No te lo pierdas!⚠️
www.leuphana.de/en/
Come work in our unique long-term grassland priority effect experiment, POEM, in the beautiful Lüneburg Heathland. PhD position available in my lab to start ASAP to see if sowing forbs or legumes early continues to affect root distribution.
Alonso-Crespo et al. explore priority and year effects on plant diversity, productivity and vertical root 𖣂 distribution. Read about their insights from a grassland field experiment.🌿
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
No, sociability wasn’t considered. Plant species were chosen based on morphological and functional traits and grouped into three plant funcional groups.
This work has been possible thanks to @dfg.de funding, @leuphana.bsky.social open access, and the work of many students and colleagues who have worked on the POEM experiment over these years.
Many thanks to @7toucans.bsky.social and @benjamindelory.bsky.social for their support and guidance throughout the establishment and monitoring of the POEM experiment. Four years of hard work finally published! 😊
In summary:
Time and initial weather conditions influence grassland composition and productivity more than order of arrival. But altering the order of species arrival can help promote more deeply rooted communities, which could be key in ecological restoration 🌼 🌾☘️
Time and weather are key factors:
Although the order of arrival influences root distribution, factors such as year of experiment initiation and time since establishment have a greater impact on aboveground community structure and functioning, including biomass production. ⏳🌦️
Why is it important?
Manipulating the order of arrival may be a strategy to encourage deeper root patterns in dry grasslands 🌱➡️💧 which may have important implications for community resilience to extreme weather conditions such as drought.
Sowing forbs or legumes first led to deeper-rooted plant communities. The raster image in each panel shows predictions from a first generalised additive model of the planar root length density (pRLD) as a function of time (100-800 days) and soil depth (1.4-49.5 cm). Results are plotted separately for each PFG order of arrival scenario. On top of each raster, white dots and error bars indicate the mean values and 95% confidence intervals (non-parametric bootstrap) of the mean rooting depth (MRD) estimated from planar root length density data between days 100 and 800, respectively. Continuous lines are predicted MRD values from a second generalised additive model.
🌾 When grasses arrived first, communities rooted shallowly.
🌼☘️ When forbs or legumes arrived first, communities rooted more deeply.
What about the roots? 🌱👇
Roots were monitored with a minirhizotron system over a period of 800 days. Although sowing order did not affect root productivity, it did change their vertical distribution ⬇️
Key results:
✅ Time since establishment shaped the plant communities more than order of arrival or year effects.
✅ Priority effects on biodiversity changed over time, depending on year of initiation.
✅ Aboveground productivity was more affected by the year of initiation than by order of arrrival.
The POEM experiment - Lüneburg Heath - Niederhaverbeck, Germany
The POEM experiment - Lüneburg Heath - Niederhaverbeck, Germany
To explore this, we set up a field experiment (the POEM exp.) in a dry grassland in Germany, manipulating the order of arrival of plant functional groups by introducing grasses, legumes or herbs before the others, and conducted the experiment in two different years with different weather conditions.
Overview of the POEM experiment. Panel A shows the experimental design for the first two sub-experiments (POEM2020 and POEM2021). Each sub-experiment was set up in a different year and consists of 25 mixture plots (3×3 m²) and 14 monoculture plots (2×2 m²). Plot ID numbers are shown inside the plots. Each PFG order of arrival scenario is represented by 5 replicates. Ac, Agrostis capillaris; Ao, Anthoxanthum odoratum; Bh, Bromus hordeaceus; Dd, Dianthus deltoides; Fo, Festuca ovina; Jm, Jasione montana; Lp, Lathyrus pratensis; Lc, Lotus corniculatus; Po, Pilosella officinarum; Ps, Pimpinella saxifraga; Pa, Potentilla argentea; Sv, Silene vulgaris; Ta, Trifolium arvense, Tc, Trifolium campestre. Panel B shows the PFG order of arrival scenarios tested in each sub-experiment. We tested five PFG order of arrival scenarios: (1) simultaneous sowing of forbs, grasses and legumes at the first sowing event (synchronous, S), (2) forbs sown six weeks before grasses and legumes (F), (3) grasses sown six weeks before forbs and legumes (G), (4) legumes sown six weeks before forbs and grasses (L), and (5) no sowing of additional species (free succession, B).
Our study looks at how the priority and year effects affect the structure and function of dry acidic grasslands. Priority effects occur when the order of arrival of species changes their interactions and community composition. But what happens when we add climate variability to the equation? 🌦️🤔
Does the order in which plants arrive in an community matter? YES! but weather also plays a key role! The second chapter of my thesis is finally out!
If you want to know all the details, here is the full article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
I tell you about it below ⬇️
LAST DAYS, HURRY UP!!!
The call for abstracts for the III SIBECOL & XVII AEET meeting #AEETSIBECOL2025 is still open.
Full submission guidelines and instructions can be found here:
sibecol-aeet-meeting2025.org/Index/11/Cal...
Looking forward to seeing you all in Pontevedra in June 2025