News 2011
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December 2011 New publication about undergound life of plants
[img_assist|nid=160|title=I. Hiiesalu sampling|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=195]
Our PhD student Inga Hiiesalu and her supervisor Meelis Pärtel published an important and hopefully very influential study in Molecular Ecology about belowground plant species richness. So far our knowledge on plant diversity is based on studies that look aboveground shoots, and almost nothing is known about plant diversity belowground. Inga showed that on small scales the belowground richness can be up to twice as high as aboveground richness. In addition, the ecological patterns were shown to be contrastingly different above and belowground. While aboveground richness declined with increasing soil fertility, as also shown in many other studies, the belowground diversity surprisingly increased in more productive soils. Root diversity was described using pyrosequencing technique, which is more commonly used to describe microbial and fungal communities, but has now been shown to be useful tool for root identification also. The study was conducted in collaboration with members of the plant ecology lab in University of Tartu, Madis Metsis from the Tallinn Technical University and Scott D Wilson from the University of Regina in Canada. The article is available at Molecular Ecology. Also, read a UT Blog entry called 'Underground filled with life'.
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December 2011 Invasions: the trail behind, the path ahead, and a test of a disturbing idea
Aveliina Helm co-authored a paper on invasion ecology published in Centenary Special Feature of Journal of Ecology, launched to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of this distinguished journal. Leading author of the paper was Prof. Angela Moles from the University of New South Wales, who is renown for her global approaches on ecological questions. The paper consists of two parts – the review on the past, present and future of invasion ecology and the global test of an novel hypothesis that it is not the disturbance regime per se, but rather the change from historical disturbance regime that facilitates the invasions. Although the change in disturbance regime was a significantly better predictor than disturbance itself, the study also confirmed that any measure of disturbance is actually a poor predictor of invasions.
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December 2011 Dark diversity in Finnish polar night
Meelis Pärtel presented his thoughts on dark diversity as an invited speaker in the 15th Kaamos Symposium at the University Oulu, Finland. ‘Kaamos’ is the Finnish word for the polar night - the time when sun never rises. Kaamos Symposium is brought to life by biology graduate students from the University of Oulu to light up the dark times with exciting scientific presentations by the students themselves and by distinguished visitors.
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November-December 2011 Visit to Australia
PhD students Riin Tamme and Inga Hiiesalu, and researcher Jodi Price spent three weeks in Australia to attend a conference and conduct fieldwork. They presented their work at the annual meeting of Ecological Society of Australia in Hobart, Tasmania. Riin gave a speed talk on heterogeneity-diversity relationships, while Inga and Jodi presented in a symposium on functional and phylogenetic insights into community assembly. The symposium was organised by Jodi, with colleagues in Australia and highlighted recent methodological advances, and applied aspects in community assembly research. Inga and Riin also gave seminars at the Botany Department at La Trobe University in Melbourne. They also collected new data from species-rich grasslands in Tasmania. The PhD students were funded by ESF DoRa program activity 8 and FIBIR. See photos from the fieldwork.
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November 2011 Co-operation with Radboud University, the Netherlands
Meelis Pärtel, Pille Gerhold and Inga Hiiesalu visited the workgroup of Hans de Kroon at Radboud University, the Netherlands (http://www.ru.nl/plantecology/people/group/) with the aim of initiating collaborational projects. The workgroup is one of the world’s leading research group in root ecology and they manage an experimental phytotron (http://www.ru.nl/phytotron/) which enables detailed studies on belowground plant behaviour.
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November 2011 Macroecology workgroup seminar
[img_assist|nid=153|title=Macroecology workgroup 2011|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.botany.ut.ee/macroecology/en/node/3|align=right|width=260|height=173]
Autumn seminar of Macroecology workgroup was held on November 2-3 in Vehendi Motel (http://www.vehendi.ee/) near lake Võrtsjärv. We had two exciting days filled with scientific presentations and interesting discussions.
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October-November 2011 Liina Saar is visiting University of South Bohemia
Our PhD student Liina Saar spends few months in the Botanical Department of University of South Bohemia, which is located in České Budějovice (http://botanika.prf.jcu.cz/english/index.php). Research and teaching within the department covers various botanical disciplines from the taxonomic and eco-physiological aspects of plants, through plant populations and communities to the ecosystem and landscape levels. Prof. Jan Lepš is one of the highly referred and leading scientists in studying the functional diversity of plant communities. He has developed the clever indices for calculating the functional diversity of plant communities. The aim of the visit is to analyse data from Estonian grasslands and write an collaborative article with Prof. Jan Lepš and PhD Francesco de Bello. This visit is funded by ESF DoRa program activity 6.
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October 2011 Visit by Prof. Michael Manthey
As an invited guest during the German-Estonian academic week "Academica", Prof. Michael Manthey from the University of Greifswald visited our institute and macroecology workgroup from 25th to 28th of October. In Tartu, Prof. Manthey gave a lecture "How wide is the niche - A new approach to estimate realized niches of plants with co-occurrence data" and discussed the future cooperation.
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October 2011 New publication by Jodi
Jodi published a paper with Kadri Koorem (first author) and Mari Moora from Plant Ecology workgroup (http://www.botany.ut.ee/planteco). In this paper, the authors experimentally examined the effects of litter type and amount on seedling emergence and growth of forest understorey species.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026505
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October 2011 Visit by Prof. Ilkka Hanski
Professor Ilkka Hanski from University of Helsinki visited our workgroup and institute from 13th to 15th of October as a guest of Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity Research (FIBIR).
Prof. Ilkka Hanski is one of the most prominent ecologists in the world. With more than 200 influential papers and with several books, he has made a substantial and invaluable contribution to the field of ecology. Ilkka is perhaps most famous for his development of metapopulation theory and for his research on the biology and ecology of the Glanville fritillary butterfly inhabiting fragmented landscapes. His studies have formed the basis for management and conservation of fragmented habitats and their biodiversity throughout the world. In Helsinki, Ilkka leads the large and influential Metapopulation Research Group, which combines theoretical and experimental population biology (www.helsinki.fi/science/metapop).
In Tartu, Ilkka gave two seminars, both of them are recorded and available at the Television of Tartu University:
13.10.2011 Eco-evolutionary spatial dynamics in the Glanville fritillary butterfly
14.10.2011 Extinction threshold, extinction debt and a perspective on habitat conservation.
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September 2011 New publication on the local-regional species richness relationship
Members of the group are pleased to announce the publication in Oikos of their article: The local-regional species richness relationship: new perspectives on the null-hypothesis. This article presents a new model to calculate local-regional richness relationship one which overcomes the mathematical difficulties that confound previous methods. With the statistical difficulties alleviated, this new model offers researchers an improved method by which to determine a more accurate local-regional
relationship.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2011.19603.x/full
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September 2011 Area dependant non-clonal and short living species are gone from European forests and grasslands
In collaboration with Swedish, Finnish and German scientists during the EU project COCONUT, Meelis and Aveliina published an important paper in Ecography. Published datasets from all over Europe were combined to study the effect of grassland and forest habitat fragmentation and area loss on individual plant species. This compilation of individual datasets showed more general patterns of fragmentation effects in European forests and grasslands than revealed in individual studies so far. As a challenge to current paradigm, it was shown that slow growing and clonal species are most dependant on habitat area and connectivity. Long-lasting isolation and vast area loss in many European forests and grasslands has already resulted in loss of non-clonal and short-living area-dependant species.
Lindborg, R., Helm, A., Bommarco, R., Heikkinen, R., Kühn, I., Pykälä, J. & Pärtel, M. (2011) Effect of habitat area and isolation on plant trait distribution in European forests and grasslands. Ecography (in press): http://bit.ly/oLj5ti
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September 2011 Krista Takkis and Liina Saar participated in EEF congress
Our PhD students Krista Takkis and Liina Saar represented the workgroup with poster presentations in 12th European Ecological Federation (EEF) Congress, held during 25.09-30.09 in Ávila, Spain (http://www.eefcongress2011.eu/). The topic of Congress was “Responding to Rapid Environmental Change” and the number of participants was impressive: ~1000 scientists from approximately 20 countries gave altogether more than 500 poster or oral presentations. The participation of Liina and Krista was funded by DORA program and The Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology.
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September 2011 Another publication by Jodi - grazing does not provide control of an invasive perennial forb Phyla canescens
Jodi published a paper with colleagues in Australia on lippia (Phyla canescens), an invasive floodplain species. In this study, stock grazing was manipulated in the field over 3 years to determine if periodic rest from grazing would favour native species over lippia. They found that this type of management provided no control over lippia and consistent with Jodi’s other studies, flooding was the only disturbance that reduced lippia dominance. http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/202/paper/RJ11009.htm
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September 2011 New publication by Jodi - Eucalypts are not that bad after all
Jodi published a paper with Megan Good (first author) and other colleagues in Australia that found dense recruitment of a Eucalypt species in a previously cleared landscape did not negatively impact on biodiversity compared to adjacent grasslands. In the state of New South Wales, Australia this species is listed as an ‘invasive native species’ due to an assumed negative impact on biodiversity, while mature woodlands dominated by this species are listed as an endangered ecological community. This study demonstrates that the assumed negative impacts on biodiversity are not supported by empirical evidence. Find the publication from: http://tinyurl.com/3aqtuhx
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September 2011 Frontiers in Historical Ecology Conference
Our PhD student Liina Saar represented the workgroup with a poster presentation in utterly interesting conference of historical ecology held during 30.08-02.09 in Zürich. Next time we hope to participate in larger numbers. Conference webpage: http://tinyurl.com/3w7wbcz
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August 2011 Prof Mark Vellend visited macroecology workgroup
As a guest of Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology, and Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity Research (FIBIR), prof Mark Vellend (Sherbrooke University, Canada) visited Tartu from 22 to 26 of August.
Mark Vellend is one of the renowned young-generation plant ecologists to date. With almost 50 studies in various topics, he currently belongs to the top 1% of the most cited ecologists. His scientific works focus on patterns of biodiversity at multiple levels (species and genetic), and on all of the processes that create these patterns, including human-induced landscape alterations. Publication list and more detailed description of his scientific interests from the webpage of his workgroup: http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/mvellend
In Tartu, Mark had discussions with members of macroecology workgroup and gave two seminars in Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences.
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August 2011 Expedition to Iceland!
Our PhD students Inga Hiiesalu, Riin Tamme and Liina Saar participate in extensive expedition to Iceland. During three weeks 15 PhD students of geology, geography, zoology, marine biology and botany gather various data from remote regions of Icelands. Expedition iss financed by Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology. Short introduction (in Estonian) - http://www.geoeco.ut.ee/et/971598
Update 01.09.2011: Expedition turned out to be a great success! Notorious Icelandic weather surpassed all our expectations and fieldwork was carried out according to most optimistic plans. Participants survived three weeks in tents, one storm and fermented shark meat. See photos from our expedition.
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August 2011 Fieldworks in alvars of Saaremaa and Western-Estonia
Our post-doc Antonio Gazol together with PhD students conducted fieldworks in Saaremaa. This year they focused on environmental conditions in small scale.
PhD students Liina Saar, Krista Takkis and Liis Kasari conducted fieldworks in Western-Estonia. They studied the processes in degraded and overgrown alvar grasslands.
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August 2011 We have new PhD students!
Our former master students Liis Kasari and Argo Ronk were successful in applying for PhD position (2011-2015). Liis will be supervised by Aveliina and her studies focus on processes and diversity patterns in degraded habitats. Argo will be supervised by Meelis and he takes a deeper look into dark diversity.
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May-July 2011 Krista Takkis visits Plant Ecology Laboratory in Belgium
Our PhD student Krista Takkis spent two months in Plant Ecology Laboratory (http://bio.kuleuven.be/pleco/) in K.U. Leuven, led by Prof. Olivier Honnay. Prof. Honnay is one of the leading scientists in studying the effects of habitat fragmentation on plant populations. During the visit, Krista made good friends with doctoral and post-doctoral students of the lab, was introduced to various research topics and methods and also visited the alvar-like calcareous grasslands and other habitat types in Belgium.
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June 2011 Scientific discussion over dark diversity
The publication about dark diversity (Pärtel et al. 2011) has gained lively attention. It was referred to in the portal Faculty of 1000 which summarizes important papers http://f1000.com. It has also been noted in research blogs:
and
http://ecodrift.blogspot.com/2011/02/dark-side-of-diversity.html.
In addition, Trends in Ecology and Evolution published two letters that tackled the idea of dark diversity and contributed new ideas to the concept. One was written by Caren E. Scott and co-authors:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000784
and other by Karel Mokany and Dean R. Paini
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000796.
These publications also got a response by Meelis Pärtel and co-authors, which you can read here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000826
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June and July 2011 New publications by Jodi
Jodi Price published a study in Biological Invasions that examines the role of vegetative reproduction in the invasion of Phyla canescens in floodplains in Australia. The dispersal of vegetative fragments with flooding contributes to species invasiveness, and the formation of monospecific stands.
Price, J.N., Macdonald, M.J., Gross, C.L., Whalley, R.D.B. and Simpson, I.H. (2011) Vegetative reproduction facilitates early expansion of Phyla canescens in a semi-arid floodplain. Biological Invasions 13, 285-289.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/g5961551520073q4/
Jodi and other collaborators in Australia published a study in Oecologia that examines the relative importance of competition and altered disturbance regimes on dominance of an invasive species. They found that invader dominance is governed by altered disturbance regimes which give the invader a competitive advantage over native species.
Price, J.N., Berney, P., Ryder, D., Whalley, R.D.B. and Gross, C.L. (2011) Disturbance governs dominance of an invasive forb in a temporary wetland. Oecologia DOI 10.1007/s00442-011-2027-8
http://www.springerlink.com/content/56q8u143321243l2/
Jodi also published a paper with Wal Whalley (first author) and other colleagues in Rangelands Journal on the impacts of weed invasion by Phyla canescens on the social-ecological systems of semi-arid wetlands in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia.
Whalley, R.D.B., Price, J.N. Macdonald, M.J. and Berney, P. (2011) Drivers of change in the Social-Ecological Systems of the Gwydir Wetlands and Macquarie Marshes in north western NSW. Rangelands Journal 33, 109-119.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?paper=RJ11002
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June 2011 Large attendance to IAVS Symposium in Lyon, France
Large part of our workgroup participated in 54th Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science from 20-24 June 2011 in Lyon. Altogether 7 workgroup members gave successful talks - Meelis Pärtel, Antonio Gazol, Jesse Kalwij, Jodi Price, Riin Tamme, Inga Hiiesalu and Pille Gerhold. Access their abstracts from conference abstract book: http://media.univ-lyon1.fr/iavs2011/abstract/IAVS-lyon2011-book_of_abstracts.pdf
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June 2011 Successful defence of master students
We proudly present that 100% of our master students defended their theses successfully - Liis Kasari, Ave Uustal (both supervised by Aveliina), Egle Järlov, Triin Sakermaa and Kaia Aher (all supervised by Pille) have now earned master's degree. Congratulations! And we are now officially out of master students - all freshmen are eagerly waited!
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April 2011 Macroecology workgroup spring meeting
Workgroup seminar was held on April 19-20 in Nina kordon (http://www.ninakordon.ee) near Peipsi lake. Photos.
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March 2011 New publication considering the formation of species pools
An international team of researches led by Prof. Martin Zobel published a paper in March issue of Global Ecology and Biogeography
From our workgroup Lauri Laanisto and Meelis Pärtel participated in this important study that is among the very first to directly support the species pool hypothesis. Study demonstrated that species pool sizes for particular habitats reflect the abundance of given habitat in evolutionary time. It also supports the theory that stressful conditions result in higher diversification rates. Authors conclude that much of the variation in biodiversity can be attributed to the differing sizes of species pools formed for particular habitat conditions, and that historic processes are more important to determine local diversity than usually suggested by ecological theory.
Zobel, M., Otto, R., Laanisto, L., Naranjo-Cigala, A., Pärtel, M. & Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (2011) The formation of species pools: historical habitat abundance affects current local diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20(2), 251-259.
February-March 2011 Aveliina visited Big Ecology lab in Australia
Aveliina visited the lab of a fabulous southern hemisphere scientist Angela Moles in University of New South Wales, Sydney (www.bigecology.net). Everything was just fantastic and a good start for fruitful future collaboration was made.
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January 2011 Dark diversity paper published
Our workgroups members Meelis Pärtel and Robert Szava-Kovats in cooperation with Martin Zobel published an important study in Trends in Ecology and Evolution that focuses on dark diversity. Dark diversity consists of species that are absent from an ecosystem but which belong to its species pool. Dark diversity in ecosystems is an analogy to dark matter in the Universe. Dark matter is invisible but it interacts with the visible matter. Similarly as dark matter is needed to understand the structure of galaxies, dark diversity is important to understand ecological communities. By comparing observed and dark diversity, one can compare biodiversity among regions, ecosystems and taxonomic groups. By knowing dark diversity we can estimate whether living communities are regulated mostly by local ecological or regional evolutionary processes. Large dark diversity can indicate impoverishment of local communities, but also the restoration potential of degraded ecosystem.
Pärtel, M., Szava-Kovats, R. & Zobel, M. 2011. Dark diversity: shedding light on absent species. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 26: 124-128.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534710002922
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December 2011 New publication about undergound life of plants
[img_assist|nid=160|title=I. Hiiesalu sampling|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=195]
Our PhD student Inga Hiiesalu and her supervisor Meelis Pärtel published an important and hopefully very influential study in Molecular Ecology about belowground plant species richness. So far our knowledge on plant diversity is based on studies that look aboveground shoots, and almost nothing is known about plant diversity belowground. Inga showed that on small scales the belowground richness can be up to twice as high as aboveground richness. In addition, the ecological patterns were shown to be contrastingly different above and belowground. While aboveground richness declined with increasing soil fertility, as also shown in many other studies, the belowground diversity surprisingly increased in more productive soils. Root diversity was described using pyrosequencing technique, which is more commonly used to describe microbial and fungal communities, but has now been shown to be useful tool for root identification also. The study was conducted in collaboration with members of the plant ecology lab in University of Tartu, Madis Metsis from the Tallinn Technical University and Scott D Wilson from the University of Regina in Canada. The article is available at Molecular Ecology. Also, read a UT Blog entry called 'Underground filled with life'.
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December 2011 Invasions: the trail behind, the path ahead, and a test of a disturbing idea
Aveliina Helm co-authored a paper on invasion ecology published in Centenary Special Feature of Journal of Ecology, launched to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of this distinguished journal. Leading author of the paper was Prof. Angela Moles from the University of New South Wales, who is renown for her global approaches on ecological questions. The paper consists of two parts – the review on the past, present and future of invasion ecology and the global test of an novel hypothesis that it is not the disturbance regime per se, but rather the change from historical disturbance regime that facilitates the invasions. Although the change in disturbance regime was a significantly better predictor than disturbance itself, the study also confirmed that any measure of disturbance is actually a poor predictor of invasions.
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December 2011 Dark diversity in Finnish polar night
Meelis Pärtel presented his thoughts on dark diversity as an invited speaker in the 15th Kaamos Symposium at the University Oulu, Finland. ‘Kaamos’ is the Finnish word for the polar night - the time when sun never rises. Kaamos Symposium is brought to life by biology graduate students from the University of Oulu to light up the dark times with exciting scientific presentations by the students themselves and by distinguished visitors.
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November-December 2011 Visit to Australia
PhD students Riin Tamme and Inga Hiiesalu, and researcher Jodi Price spent three weeks in Australia to attend a conference and conduct fieldwork. They presented their work at the annual meeting of Ecological Society of Australia in Hobart, Tasmania. Riin gave a speed talk on heterogeneity-diversity relationships, while Inga and Jodi presented in a symposium on functional and phylogenetic insights into community assembly. The symposium was organised by Jodi, with colleagues in Australia and highlighted recent methodological advances, and applied aspects in community assembly research. Inga and Riin also gave seminars at the Botany Department at La Trobe University in Melbourne. They also collected new data from species-rich grasslands in Tasmania. The PhD students were funded by ESF DoRa program activity 8 and FIBIR. See photos from the fieldwork.
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November 2011 Co-operation with Radboud University, the Netherlands
Meelis Pärtel, Pille Gerhold and Inga Hiiesalu visited the workgroup of Hans de Kroon at Radboud University, the Netherlands (http://www.ru.nl/plantecology/people/group/) with the aim of initiating collaborational projects. The workgroup is one of the world’s leading research group in root ecology and they manage an experimental phytotron (http://www.ru.nl/phytotron/) which enables detailed studies on belowground plant behaviour.
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November 2011 Macroecology workgroup seminar
[img_assist|nid=153|title=Macroecology workgroup 2011|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.botany.ut.ee/macroecology/en/node/3|align=right|width=260|height=173]
Autumn seminar of Macroecology workgroup was held on November 2-3 in Vehendi Motel (http://www.vehendi.ee/) near lake Võrtsjärv. We had two exciting days filled with scientific presentations and interesting discussions.
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October-November 2011 Liina Saar is visiting University of South Bohemia
Our PhD student Liina Saar spends few months in the Botanical Department of University of South Bohemia, which is located in České Budějovice (http://botanika.prf.jcu.cz/english/index.php). Research and teaching within the department covers various botanical disciplines from the taxonomic and eco-physiological aspects of plants, through plant populations and communities to the ecosystem and landscape levels. Prof. Jan Lepš is one of the highly referred and leading scientists in studying the functional diversity of plant communities. He has developed the clever indices for calculating the functional diversity of plant communities. The aim of the visit is to analyse data from Estonian grasslands and write an collaborative article with Prof. Jan Lepš and PhD Francesco de Bello. This visit is funded by ESF DoRa program activity 6.
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October 2011 Visit by Prof. Michael Manthey
As an invited guest during the German-Estonian academic week "Academica", Prof. Michael Manthey from the University of Greifswald visited our institute and macroecology workgroup from 25th to 28th of October. In Tartu, Prof. Manthey gave a lecture "How wide is the niche - A new approach to estimate realized niches of plants with co-occurrence data" and discussed the future cooperation.
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October 2011 New publication by Jodi
Jodi published a paper with Kadri Koorem (first author) and Mari Moora from Plant Ecology workgroup (http://www.botany.ut.ee/planteco). In this paper, the authors experimentally examined the effects of litter type and amount on seedling emergence and growth of forest understorey species.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026505
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October 2011 Visit by Prof. Ilkka Hanski
Professor Ilkka Hanski from University of Helsinki visited our workgroup and institute from 13th to 15th of October as a guest of Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity Research (FIBIR).
Prof. Ilkka Hanski is one of the most prominent ecologists in the world. With more than 200 influential papers and with several books, he has made a substantial and invaluable contribution to the field of ecology. Ilkka is perhaps most famous for his development of metapopulation theory and for his research on the biology and ecology of the Glanville fritillary butterfly inhabiting fragmented landscapes. His studies have formed the basis for management and conservation of fragmented habitats and their biodiversity throughout the world. In Helsinki, Ilkka leads the large and influential Metapopulation Research Group, which combines theoretical and experimental population biology (www.helsinki.fi/science/metapop).
In Tartu, Ilkka gave two seminars, both of them are recorded and available at the Television of Tartu University:
13.10.2011 Eco-evolutionary spatial dynamics in the Glanville fritillary butterfly
14.10.2011 Extinction threshold, extinction debt and a perspective on habitat conservation.
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September 2011 New publication on the local-regional species richness relationship
Members of the group are pleased to announce the publication in Oikos of their article: The local-regional species richness relationship: new perspectives on the null-hypothesis. This article presents a new model to calculate local-regional richness relationship one which overcomes the mathematical difficulties that confound previous methods. With the statistical difficulties alleviated, this new model offers researchers an improved method by which to determine a more accurate local-regional
relationship.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0706.2011.19603.x/full
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 2011 Area dependant non-clonal and short living species are gone from European forests and grasslands
In collaboration with Swedish, Finnish and German scientists during the EU project COCONUT, Meelis and Aveliina published an important paper in Ecography. Published datasets from all over Europe were combined to study the effect of grassland and forest habitat fragmentation and area loss on individual plant species. This compilation of individual datasets showed more general patterns of fragmentation effects in European forests and grasslands than revealed in individual studies so far. As a challenge to current paradigm, it was shown that slow growing and clonal species are most dependant on habitat area and connectivity. Long-lasting isolation and vast area loss in many European forests and grasslands has already resulted in loss of non-clonal and short-living area-dependant species.
Lindborg, R., Helm, A., Bommarco, R., Heikkinen, R., Kühn, I., Pykälä, J. & Pärtel, M. (2011) Effect of habitat area and isolation on plant trait distribution in European forests and grasslands. Ecography (in press): http://bit.ly/oLj5ti
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September 2011 Krista Takkis and Liina Saar participated in EEF congress
Our PhD students Krista Takkis and Liina Saar represented the workgroup with poster presentations in 12th European Ecological Federation (EEF) Congress, held during 25.09-30.09 in Ávila, Spain (http://www.eefcongress2011.eu/). The topic of Congress was “Responding to Rapid Environmental Change” and the number of participants was impressive: ~1000 scientists from approximately 20 countries gave altogether more than 500 poster or oral presentations. The participation of Liina and Krista was funded by DORA program and The Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology.
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September 2011 Another publication by Jodi - grazing does not provide control of an invasive perennial forb Phyla canescens
Jodi published a paper with colleagues in Australia on lippia (Phyla canescens), an invasive floodplain species. In this study, stock grazing was manipulated in the field over 3 years to determine if periodic rest from grazing would favour native species over lippia. They found that this type of management provided no control over lippia and consistent with Jodi’s other studies, flooding was the only disturbance that reduced lippia dominance. http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/202/paper/RJ11009.htm
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September 2011 New publication by Jodi - Eucalypts are not that bad after all
Jodi published a paper with Megan Good (first author) and other colleagues in Australia that found dense recruitment of a Eucalypt species in a previously cleared landscape did not negatively impact on biodiversity compared to adjacent grasslands. In the state of New South Wales, Australia this species is listed as an ‘invasive native species’ due to an assumed negative impact on biodiversity, while mature woodlands dominated by this species are listed as an endangered ecological community. This study demonstrates that the assumed negative impacts on biodiversity are not supported by empirical evidence. Find the publication from: http://tinyurl.com/3aqtuhx
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September 2011 Frontiers in Historical Ecology Conference
Our PhD student Liina Saar represented the workgroup with a poster presentation in utterly interesting conference of historical ecology held during 30.08-02.09 in Zürich. Next time we hope to participate in larger numbers. Conference webpage: http://tinyurl.com/3w7wbcz
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August 2011 Prof Mark Vellend visited macroecology workgroup
As a guest of Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology, and Centre of Excellence in Biodiversity Research (FIBIR), prof Mark Vellend (Sherbrooke University, Canada) visited Tartu from 22 to 26 of August.
Mark Vellend is one of the renowned young-generation plant ecologists to date. With almost 50 studies in various topics, he currently belongs to the top 1% of the most cited ecologists. His scientific works focus on patterns of biodiversity at multiple levels (species and genetic), and on all of the processes that create these patterns, including human-induced landscape alterations. Publication list and more detailed description of his scientific interests from the webpage of his workgroup: http://pages.usherbrooke.ca/mvellend
In Tartu, Mark had discussions with members of macroecology workgroup and gave two seminars in Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences.
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August 2011 Expedition to Iceland!
Our PhD students Inga Hiiesalu, Riin Tamme and Liina Saar participate in extensive expedition to Iceland. During three weeks 15 PhD students of geology, geography, zoology, marine biology and botany gather various data from remote regions of Icelands. Expedition iss financed by Doctoral School of Earth Sciences and Ecology. Short introduction (in Estonian) - http://www.geoeco.ut.ee/et/971598
Update 01.09.2011: Expedition turned out to be a great success! Notorious Icelandic weather surpassed all our expectations and fieldwork was carried out according to most optimistic plans. Participants survived three weeks in tents, one storm and fermented shark meat. See photos from our expedition.
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August 2011 Fieldworks in alvars of Saaremaa and Western-Estonia
Our post-doc Antonio Gazol together with PhD students conducted fieldworks in Saaremaa. This year they focused on environmental conditions in small scale.
PhD students Liina Saar, Krista Takkis and Liis Kasari conducted fieldworks in Western-Estonia. They studied the processes in degraded and overgrown alvar grasslands.
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August 2011 We have new PhD students!
Our former master students Liis Kasari and Argo Ronk were successful in applying for PhD position (2011-2015). Liis will be supervised by Aveliina and her studies focus on processes and diversity patterns in degraded habitats. Argo will be supervised by Meelis and he takes a deeper look into dark diversity.
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May-July 2011 Krista Takkis visits Plant Ecology Laboratory in Belgium
Our PhD student Krista Takkis spent two months in Plant Ecology Laboratory (http://bio.kuleuven.be/pleco/) in K.U. Leuven, led by Prof. Olivier Honnay. Prof. Honnay is one of the leading scientists in studying the effects of habitat fragmentation on plant populations. During the visit, Krista made good friends with doctoral and post-doctoral students of the lab, was introduced to various research topics and methods and also visited the alvar-like calcareous grasslands and other habitat types in Belgium.
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June 2011 Scientific discussion over dark diversity
The publication about dark diversity (Pärtel et al. 2011) has gained lively attention. It was referred to in the portal Faculty of 1000 which summarizes important papers http://f1000.com. It has also been noted in research blogs:
and
http://ecodrift.blogspot.com/2011/02/dark-side-of-diversity.html.
In addition, Trends in Ecology and Evolution published two letters that tackled the idea of dark diversity and contributed new ideas to the concept. One was written by Caren E. Scott and co-authors:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000784
and other by Karel Mokany and Dean R. Paini
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000796.
These publications also got a response by Meelis Pärtel and co-authors, which you can read here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711000826
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June and July 2011 New publications by Jodi
Jodi Price published a study in Biological Invasions that examines the role of vegetative reproduction in the invasion of Phyla canescens in floodplains in Australia. The dispersal of vegetative fragments with flooding contributes to species invasiveness, and the formation of monospecific stands.
Price, J.N., Macdonald, M.J., Gross, C.L., Whalley, R.D.B. and Simpson, I.H. (2011) Vegetative reproduction facilitates early expansion of Phyla canescens in a semi-arid floodplain. Biological Invasions 13, 285-289.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/g5961551520073q4/
Jodi and other collaborators in Australia published a study in Oecologia that examines the relative importance of competition and altered disturbance regimes on dominance of an invasive species. They found that invader dominance is governed by altered disturbance regimes which give the invader a competitive advantage over native species.
Price, J.N., Berney, P., Ryder, D., Whalley, R.D.B. and Gross, C.L. (2011) Disturbance governs dominance of an invasive forb in a temporary wetland. Oecologia DOI 10.1007/s00442-011-2027-8
http://www.springerlink.com/content/56q8u143321243l2/
Jodi also published a paper with Wal Whalley (first author) and other colleagues in Rangelands Journal on the impacts of weed invasion by Phyla canescens on the social-ecological systems of semi-arid wetlands in the Murray Darling Basin, Australia.
Whalley, R.D.B., Price, J.N. Macdonald, M.J. and Berney, P. (2011) Drivers of change in the Social-Ecological Systems of the Gwydir Wetlands and Macquarie Marshes in north western NSW. Rangelands Journal 33, 109-119.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/?paper=RJ11002
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June 2011 Large attendance to IAVS Symposium in Lyon, France
Large part of our workgroup participated in 54th Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science from 20-24 June 2011 in Lyon. Altogether 7 workgroup members gave successful talks - Meelis Pärtel, Antonio Gazol, Jesse Kalwij, Jodi Price, Riin Tamme, Inga Hiiesalu and Pille Gerhold. Access their abstracts from conference abstract book: http://media.univ-lyon1.fr/iavs2011/abstract/IAVS-lyon2011-book_of_abstracts.pdf
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June 2011 Successful defence of master students
We proudly present that 100% of our master students defended their theses successfully - Liis Kasari, Ave Uustal (both supervised by Aveliina), Egle Järlov, Triin Sakermaa and Kaia Aher (all supervised by Pille) have now earned master's degree. Congratulations! And we are now officially out of master students - all freshmen are eagerly waited!
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April 2011 Macroecology workgroup spring meeting
Workgroup seminar was held on April 19-20 in Nina kordon (http://www.ninakordon.ee) near Peipsi lake. Photos.
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March 2011 New publication considering the formation of species pools
An international team of researches led by Prof. Martin Zobel published a paper in March issue of Global Ecology and Biogeography
From our workgroup Lauri Laanisto and Meelis Pärtel participated in this important study that is among the very first to directly support the species pool hypothesis. Study demonstrated that species pool sizes for particular habitats reflect the abundance of given habitat in evolutionary time. It also supports the theory that stressful conditions result in higher diversification rates. Authors conclude that much of the variation in biodiversity can be attributed to the differing sizes of species pools formed for particular habitat conditions, and that historic processes are more important to determine local diversity than usually suggested by ecological theory.
Zobel, M., Otto, R., Laanisto, L., Naranjo-Cigala, A., Pärtel, M. & Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (2011) The formation of species pools: historical habitat abundance affects current local diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20(2), 251-259.
February-March 2011 Aveliina visited Big Ecology lab in Australia
Aveliina visited the lab of a fabulous southern hemisphere scientist Angela Moles in University of New South Wales, Sydney (www.bigecology.net). Everything was just fantastic and a good start for fruitful future collaboration was made.
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January 2011 Dark diversity paper published
Our workgroups members Meelis Pärtel and Robert Szava-Kovats in cooperation with Martin Zobel published an important study in Trends in Ecology and Evolution that focuses on dark diversity. Dark diversity consists of species that are absent from an ecosystem but which belong to its species pool. Dark diversity in ecosystems is an analogy to dark matter in the Universe. Dark matter is invisible but it interacts with the visible matter. Similarly as dark matter is needed to understand the structure of galaxies, dark diversity is important to understand ecological communities. By comparing observed and dark diversity, one can compare biodiversity among regions, ecosystems and taxonomic groups. By knowing dark diversity we can estimate whether living communities are regulated mostly by local ecological or regional evolutionary processes. Large dark diversity can indicate impoverishment of local communities, but also the restoration potential of degraded ecosystem.
Pärtel, M., Szava-Kovats, R. & Zobel, M. 2011. Dark diversity: shedding light on absent species. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 26: 124-128.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534710002922
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