🚨 Postdoc opening 🚨
Join us at Forest Biology Center (Poznań, Poland) to study forest ecology under climate change.

2-year contract (extendable), start Jan 2026 (flexible). Apply by Sept 30, 2025.

🔗 forestbiologycenter.amu.edu.pl/our-team/joi...

Why the summer solstice is a ‘celestial starting gun’ for trees Research shows longest day is a cue for beeches to launch their growth strategies

Happy #solstice! Today, beech trees start to decide whether to produce bumper seed crops next year, or to skip reproduction next year. It is a marker for growth and phenology processes. @micbog.bsky.social talked to The Guardian about how it works:
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

1/3: New paper: how do masting plants optimise the delay in reproduction? Having gaps (years) between reproductive events starves seed predators, increasing fitness. But they are also missed opportunities for reproduction. How do plants fine-tune the length of the time gaps to maximise fitness?

Paper out!
@canelotara.bsky.social @micbog.bsky.social
@irnase.bsky.social

🔥🔥🔥

Phenology week is coming @usa-npn.bsky.social! March 18, I'll be talking about Quercus Quest campaign for eastern North American white oaks, w/ Kim Pegram on Desert Refuge: Monarchs and Milkweeds and Nicholas Dietschler on Pest Patrol.

Info and registration below:

www.usanpn.org/news/article...

Livestock as a biological pest control: Experimental validation for oak savannas We suggest intensifying livestock predation on prematurely dropped-infested acorns by allowing livestock foraging from October 1st onward. Pigs are usually released free range in early November, once...

New research in @jappliedecology.bsky.social!

We propose intensifying livestock predation on infested acorns by allowing earlier livestock foraging. This management strategy would increase the availability of acorns, boosting farm capacity.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Paleorecords Reveal Biological Mechanisms Crucial for Reliable Species Range Shift Projections Amid Rapid Climate Change Climate change has created an urgent need for reliable projections of species distributions. By hindcasting forest tree range shifts across Europe over the last 12,000 years, we show that process-exp...

Interesting work by van der Meersch et al. out in Ecology Letters, nicely illustrating that process-based models are more robust than correlative models for predicting species distributions under novel climatic conditions doi.org/10.1111/ele....

Praxis-Empfehlungen: Wie sammle ich Eicheln, damit die genetische Vielalt des Saatguts möglichst hoch ist? Resultate aus dem @wslresearch.bsky.social SeedOpt Projekt. Anwendbar auf viele andere Hauptbaumarten.

Jetzt auf @waldwissen.bsky.social

www.waldwissen.net/de/waldwirts...

Climate change outpaces forest change in the Western interior A study co-authored by ESPM professor Miranda Redmond found that forests are not regenerating fast enough to keep pace with climate change, wildfire, insects, and disease

Forests in the western interior of the U.S. are not regenerating fast enough to keep pace with climate change, wildfires, insects, and disease, according to a new @natclimchange.bsky.social study led by Colorado State and co-authored by ESPM professor Miranda Redmond. nature.berkeley.edu/...

Photo of beech seed casings on a background of beech leaves

Breeding populations were younger in years that followed a higher beech crop 🌳🌳 – fitting evidence that this increases juvenile survival - and the relationship between masting and age structure was stronger when only assessing populations local to beech data collection. 5/n

Comparing two ground-based seed count methods and their effect on masting metrics Masting, i.e. interannually variable and synchronized seed production, plays a crucial role in forest ecosystems, influencing wildlife dynamics, patho…

Check out the new paper in Forest Ecology and Management on seed production monitoring methods, led by stellar @foestjessie.bsky.social!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Branch of beech tree, Fagus sylvatica, with nuts and green leaves.

Warmer summers are causing European beeches to produce seed more often, depleting the trees’ stored resources—an indirect effect of climate change that is threatening the sustainability of Europe’s most widespread forest tree. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our paper that showed alternations in masting patterns are leading to growth decline in European beech is now in @PNASNews, as a part of highlighted content; check out that summary! :)

Funded by @NCN_PL

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Climate change aggravates bird mortality in pristine tropical forests Climate change threatens Amazon rainforest birds, with harsher dry seasons significantly affecting their survival over 27 years.

Papers like this really underscore the importance of long term monitoring datasets for understanding climate change impacts on biodiversity... And highlight the dire consequences of even modest temperature increases. 🧪🌍🦤🦜

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Global decline in net primary production underestimated by climate models - Communications Earth & Environment Earth system models underestimate the decline in net primary productivity associated with ocean warming, meaning future net primary productivity decline is more likely than currently estimated, accord...

Very pleased that my latest paper with @altagliabue.bsky.social and Sandy Thomalla in @commsearth.bsky.social is published. You can check it out here: bit.ly/3EjYYvG

Coring a big beech tree

🌳🌳🌳 We have a new paper in @pnas.org showing climate warming leads to growth decline in beech because it drives trees to reproduce more frequently. Climate change can cause growth decline even when drought isn’t increasing by shifting where trees allocate resources doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423181122

Our new @pnas.org paper shows a previously unrecognized mechanism by which climate warming reduces beech growth: more frequent seed production depletes tree resources, causing a 28% decline in radial growth.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Funded by @ncngovpl.bsky.social

Michał Tomza: Paper mills to psucie nauki na poziomie systemowym - Forum Akademickie Najbardziej smuci mnie fakt, że to sami badacze pozwalają sobie na nieetyczne zachowania. Jak na dłoni widać, że nie wszyscy, którzy mienią się naukowcami,

#Papermills to psucie nauki na poziomie systemowym. Jeśli większość naukowców nie będzie dążyć do wyższych standardów etycznych, wyższej jakości i rzetelności badań, to stoimy na przegranej pozycji – mówi w wywiadzie dla FA @michaltomza.bsky.social

A group of longhorn crazy ants (top) and a group of people (bottom) tackling scaled versions of the same geometrical maneuvering puzzle. CREDIT: Ofer Feinerman

Researchers challenged longhorn crazy ants and humans with the same task: maneuvering a T-shaped object through two consecutive open doorways. Single humans always outperformed single ants, but ant groups could beat human groups. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A remark from a referee ~40 yr back prompted this study. I launched it under the (later seen) wrong premise that it would last ~15 yr. But my marked plants lived much longer than anticipated, and it took me 38 yr to complete it. Here are the results. I defeated my plants in the race for survival.

@andrewhacket-pain.bsky.social talking about how warming affects masting and how that cascades to growth in European beech.

@britishecolsoc.bsky.social

5 people at a table, smiling at the camera.

Let the informal #BES2024 meet-ups begin! Here with some #MastSeeding folks, @andrewhacket-pain.bsky.social @micbog.bsky.social, also Jakub Szymkowiak & Eléonore Perret. 🌲 🌳

Wraz z Januszem Bujnickim @jmbujnicki.bsky.social z IIMCB, Rafałem Kucharskim z UJ, oraz innymi zdobywcami grantów ERC dziękujemy Ministrowi Nauki @dariuszwieczorek.bsky.social za zaproszenie na rozmowę o propozycjach zwiększenia wykorzystania przez PL unijnych środków na programy B+R 🇵🇱 🇪🇺

Image of the first page and abstract of the paper "The ecology of plant extinctions Author links open overlay panel Richard T. Corlett 1 2 Show more Add to Mendeley Share Cite https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2024.11.007 Get rights and content Highlights The fossil record suggests that climate change was the major driver of plant extinctions and regional extirpations from the Pliocene until recently, when anthropogenic habitat loss became dominant. Known recent plant extinctions are disproportionately few in comparison with well-studied animal taxa, but many more species are probably committed to inevitable extinction unless given targeted support. Recent warm-edge extirpations demonstrate the growing impact of anthropogenic climate change and show that predictions of massive climate-driven extinctions later this century are plausible. The proximate causes for population extirpations are still rarely known but are likely to be highly varied and both species and location specific."

An important review - The ecology of plant extinctions - "Recent warm-edge extirpations demonstrate the growing impact of anthropogenic climate change & show that predictions of massive climate-driven extinctions later this century are plausible" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🌾🌎🧪🌐

Hello!

I will on BES in Liverpool next week. If there is anyone out there who would wish to talk about plant and forest ecology, please get in touch!

@britishecolsoc.bsky.social