News 2014
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December 2014 New paper about the dark diversity in dry calcareous grasslands
[img_assist|nid=358|title=Calcareous grassland in Estonia|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=260|height=174]
Kersti, Riin, Aveliina, Pille and Meelis together with Triin Reitalu (from Tallinn University of Technology) and colleagues from Sweden and Russia published a paper in Ecography that examines how many potentially suitable species may still be absent from highly species-rich dry calcareous grasslands in Northern Europe and which factors cause such absences. The findings revealed that even if a square meter of dry calcareous grassland supports 30-40 plant species, there are an even larger number of species suitable for these ecosystems in the region that are currently absent (i.e. belonging to dark diversity). The analyses showed that species in the dark diversity were characterized by a lower dispersal capacity and lower levels of stress-tolerance than the species represented in the observed diversity. The fact that small-scale community assemblage in these ecosystems is very much influenced by dispersal processes suggests that nature conservation activities should particularly promote species dispersal between the grassland patches, for example, with the help of grazing animals. See a short story about the paper in Ecography blog.
Riibak, K., Reitalu, T., Tamme, R., Helm, A., Gerhold, P., Znamenskiy, S., Bengtsson, K., Rosén, E., Prentice, H. C. and Pärtel, M. (2015) Dark diversity in dry calcareous grasslands is determined by dispersal ability and stress-tolerance. Ecography 38: 713-721.
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November 2014 New paper introduces novel metrics to quantify community condition
[img_assist|nid=357|title=Community biodiversity can be divided to characteristic and derived diversity|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=146]Aveliina, Meelis and Robert together with Martin Zobel from plant ecology lab and Angela Moles from New South Wales University published a paper that introduces cool new metrics to quantify the conservation condition of habitats. Currently used metrics, such as using total number of species or the ratio of native to alien species, fail to reflect human-induced invasion by species native to different community types in the region. Autors show that habitat conservation and research demand the recognition of ecologically relevant components of diversity: characteristic diversity, consisting of species belonging to historically developed habitat-specific species pool, and derived diversity, consisting of both non-native and native species that are untypical to a given community. Based on this concept, authors also introduce the Index of Favorable Conservation Status: log-ratio of characteristic/derived diversity that allows estimation of ongoing dynamics and habitat quality in relative terms and is comparable between habitats and organism groups. Paper also lists possible methods for determining habitat-specific species pool composition.
Helm, A., Zobel, M., Moles, A. T., Szava-Kovats, R. and Pärtel, M. (2015) Characteristic and derived diversity: implementing the species pool concept to quantify conservation condition of habitats. Diversity and Distributions 21: 711–721.
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November 2014 Autumn workgroup seminar
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Our macroecology workgroup autumn seminar took place on November 6-7 in Waide motel near Elva. Everybody presented their novel ideas and latest results, and got constructive feedback from others. In addition to scientific discussions, we also found time for short excursion in Elva, and as usual evening ended with sauna and beer.
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November 2014 Workshop in Czech Republic
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In the end of October, Meelis, Rob, Jon, Kersti, Argo, Liis travelled to České Budějovice, Czech Republic to join forces with several PhD's, Post Docs and senior scientist from the department of Botany, University of South Bohemia. The purpose being, to partake in a workgroup surrounding the use of the species pool and dark diversity concepts in conservation ecology. Participants shared ideas, thoughts and contributed to many interesting discussions surrounding the topic in question. The workgroup evolved from early ideas and discussions between Meelis Pärtel and Rob Lewis on ways dark diversity can be beneficial for biodiversity conservation. In collaboration with our close friend Francesco de Bello, this topic became the focus of the first Estonian/Czech research-led workshop organised by the Macroecology UT, and will be looked back on as a success, building new collaborations and exchange of ideas.
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October 2014 New paper about beta-diversity - an end to the debate?
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Robert and Meelis have published an article in PlosOne examining the mathematical relationship between additive and multiplicative expressions of beta-diversity. When transformed into unbounded indices, both expressions are equivalent. As a result, the relationship between beta-diversity and spatial or environmental gradients is not dependent on the choice of beta-diversity expression. Perhaps this article will serve to mediate the debate over the "correct" measure of beta-diversity.
Szava-Kovats, R., Pärtel, M. (2014) Biodiversity patterns along ecological gradients: unifying β-diversity indices. Plos ONE 9, e110485.
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October 2014 New paper about hybridization in Pulmonaria species
[img_assist|nid=353|title=|desc=Pulmonaria angustifolia|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=173]
Ene Kook and collaborators explored the evolutionary processes of a rare species in the Boraginacea family in a new paper published in Plant Systematics and Evolution. They studied intra-individual genetic polymorphism and hybridization in Pulmonaria angustifolia L. and Pulmonaria obscura Dumort by cloning nrDNA ITS markers. They found that P. angustifolia, extremely rare species in Estonia and Latvia, exhibited ITS sequences from both Pulmonaria species confirming the hybrid origin of P. angustifolia populations in Estonia and Latvia. Thus, outbreeding depression is likely one of the reasons why populations of the rare P. angustifolia are declining at the northern limit of the species distribution area. So far, there was only indirect evidence of intra-individual polymorphism in the Boraginaceae family, but now the new study confirms it with molecular methods.
Kook, E., Vedler, E., Püssa, K., Kalamees, R., Reier, Ü., Pihu, S. (2015) Intra-individual ITS polymorphism and hybridization in Pulmonaria obscura Dumort. and Pulmonaria angustifolia L. (Boraginaceae). Plant Systematics and Evolution 301: 893-910.
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September 2014 IAVS conference in Australia
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On 1.-5. September Meelis, Pille, Rob, Riin, Kersti, Argo, Liina and Liis attended the annual symposium of the IAVS in Perth, Australia. Rob gave an oral presentation on accurate dark diversity and species pool estimates: An empirical assessment of two existing methods. Riin spoke about the relationship between environmental heterogeneity and plant species richness: the role of spatial scale and evolutionary history. Kersti´s talk was about a study where we found that dark diversity in dry calcareous grasslands is determined by dispersal ability and stress-tolerance. Argo spoke about our work of applying the dark diversity concept for plants at the European scale. Liina showed the results of a meta-analysis of plant extinctions and colonizations in European grasslands due to loss of habitat area and quality. Liis presented a study of an increase in species richness and functional diversity after habitat degradation and fragmentation.
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August 2014 Macroecology workgroup is on Twitter!
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Since June, our workgroup can be followed on Twitter for news, notifications about new papers and conferences, and discussions. Twitter users can follow us for updates but others can still read our tweets here.
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August 2014 Field work in Saaremaa for the 'LIFE to alvars' project
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This year the large-scale Estonian alvar grasslands restoration project 'LIFE to alvars' got financed by the European Commission and the Estonian Environmental Investment Centre. The project aims to restore 2500 ha of the most valuable, but currently overgrown alvar grasslands in western Estonia, and to provide local farmers with the knowledge and means to manage these areas after restoration. In the end of July Liis, Liina and Marge together with Thomas (visiting student from France) and Triin Reitalu (Tallinn University of Technology) carried out two weeks long biodiversity monitoring in these grasslands, following the methodology developed by Aveliina to assess the restoration success in the future.
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August 2014 Aveliina attended the Ecological Restoration conference in Oulu
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The 9th European Conference on Ecological Restoration was organised by the Society for Ecological Restoration, and took place on 3rd-8th August in Oulu, Finland. Our workgroup was represented by Aveliina Helm who gave an oral presentation about the ongoing alvar restoration project ('Large-scale calcareous grassland restoration in Estonia: the science behind and the work ahead').
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August 2014 Special Feature in Journal of Vegetation Science
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The September issue of the Journal of Vegetation Science is a Special Feature on Vegetation Patterns and their Underlying Processes edited by Aveliina Helm, Rein Kalamees and Martin Zobel. The Special Feature contains ten contributions from the 56th Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), which was held in Tartu, Estonia, 26–30 Jun 2013. One of the contributions is a paper by Meelis Pärtel about the community ecology of absent species.
Helm, A., Kalamees, R., Zobel, M. (2014) Vegetation patterns and their underlying processes: where are we now? Journal of Vegetation Science 25, 1113–1116.
Pärtel, M. (2014) Community ecology of absent species: hidden and dark diversity. Journal of Vegetation Science 25, 1154-1159.
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July 2014 Community completeness field work in abandoned agricultural fields
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The short summers in Estonia are filled with field works. During the months of June and July, Jon together with Kersti, Riin, Rob, Ülle and Ene were surveying abandoned agricultural fields in Southeastern Estonia as a part of Jon's post-doc project 'Community completeness and invasibility: Using phylogenetic and functional completeness to predict invasion across scales'. Tolerating temperatures ranging from 4 °C to 34 °C they estimated local species composition and measured plant traits and environmental conditions to test how community completeness affects invasion success. The large-scale sampling of the vegetation (conducted by Ülle and Ene) is still ongoing.
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July 2014 International ethnobiology course in Saaremaa
[img_assist|nid=348|title=Carrying out interview with local people to learn about historical land-use in the village. Photo Lukasz Luczaj|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=195]
Liina, Liis, Kersti and Aveliina participated on the international ethnobiology (scientific study about dynamic relationships between peoples, biota, and environment) course held in Saaremaa in the beginning of July. The main purpose of the course was to provide basic knowledge and skills in order to be able to design, conduct, and analyse an ethnobiological research. After lectures students gained also hands-on experience in conducting ethnography-centred fieldwork, visiting local people’s homes and making real interviews with them. Teachers were acknowledged scientists from six different countries: Spain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, England and Estonia. In the end of course became the understanding how important is sometimes to incorporate local people into our research and how valuable can be their traditional knowledge in nature conservation.
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July 2014 New publication on species invasion and phylogenetic diversity in Canadian grasslands
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In his new paper, Jon Bennett explores the relationship between Bromus inermis (smooth brome) invasion into native grassland and the phylogenetic diversity of that grassland. Brome invasion was unaffected by the phylogenetic diversity within the community; however, brome invasion had strong effects on phylogenetic diversity. This suggests that invasion may be more likely to be a driver of phylogenetic structure, rather than a passenger, and suggests caution in inferring mechanism behind observed relationships between phylogenetic structure and invasion without first testing that mechanism.
Bennett, J.A., Stotz, G.C., Cahill, J.F. (2014) Patterns of phylogenetic diversity are linked to invasion impacts, not invasion resistance, in a native grassland. Journal of Vegetation Science 25: 1315–1326.
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June 2014 Publication about species richness records selected for F1000Prime
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In 2012, Meelis Pärtel together with J. Bastow Wilson (New Zealand), Robert K. Peet (USA) and Jürgen Dengler (Germany) published the first list of vascular plant species richness records from different sampling scales. The paper was recently evaluated by Dr Ryan Chisholm and recommended by F1000Prime portal as being of special significance in the field of biology. F1000 Prime selects and highlights important articles based on the ratings given by renowned scientists.
Wilson, J.B. Peet, R. Dengler, J. Pärtel, M. (2012) Plant species richness: the world records. Journal of Vegetation Science 23, 796–802.
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June 2014 New publication about using biotic indicators for biodiversity monitoring
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A new paper by Rob Lewis and collaborators addresses problems associated with large-scale temporal biodiversity monitoring for informing conservation management. In this latest article, published in Biological Conservation, Rob demonstrates the utility of compositional indices and simple plant functional characteristics as environmental surrogates, linking land-use change impacts in time to compositional shifts in semi-natural grassland vegetation. The work takes Scotland’s Machair vegetation as a case study, highlighting regions where changes in biodiversity through time can be linked with changes in grazing intensity and land-use intensification.
Lewis, R.J., Pakeman, R.J., Angus, S., Marrs, R.H. (2014) Using compositional and functional indicators for biodiversity conservation monitoring of semi-natural grasslands in Scotland. Biological Conservation 175, 82-93.
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May 2014 Riin attended the Plant Population Biology Conference
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During 28th-31st May, Riin participated in the Plant Population Biology Conference organized by the University of Konstanz. The conference had both, a friendly atmosphere and interesting talks ranging on topics from epigenetics to species distribution modelling. Riin gave a presentation about the effect of spatial scale on heterogeneity-diversity relationship.
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May 2014 Rob participated in the Digital Conservation Conference
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Rob attended the very first interdisciplinary conference on digital conservation hosted at the University of Aberdeen (UK) in partnership with dot.rural from the 21st to 23rd May. Although small, the conference was of very high quality, discussing broad aspects of digital technology for use in science and nature conservation, among academics, practitioners and policy makers. The final day included demonstrations of digital conservation in action. Take a look of the short video demonstrating how digital conservation translates to real-world applications, and read the thoughts and discussions as tweeted live by participants.
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May 2014 Meelis acted as the opponent for Bryndís Marteinsdóttir's Ph.D defence in Sweden
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In the beginning of May, Meelis Pärtel visited the University of Stockholm, where he was the official opponent for the Ph.D defence of Bryndís Marteinsdóttir (supervisor: professor Ove Eriksson). The thesis 'Plant community assembly in grazed grasslands' investigated how species are filtered from a regional species pool into local plant communities using grazed grasslands as model system. The results demonstrated that regional processes (dispersal limitation) are more important than local factors (species interactions, local environmental conditions, stochastic events) in determining plant community assembly.
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May 2014 Krista Takkis defended her PhD thesis![img_assist|nid=271|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=260|height=194]
On 12th of May, Krista Takkis successfully defended her thesis "Changes in plant species richness and population performance in response to habitat loss and fragmentation" and was awarded with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Botany and Mycology. Krista was supervised by Aveliina and Meelis, and the official opponent during the defence was professor Markus Fischer from te University of Bern in Switzerland. Krista will continue her scientific work in University of Aegean in Greece, in the lab of Biogeography and Ecology.
Congratulations, Dr. Takkis!
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April 2014 Argo Ronk visited the University of South Bohemia in Czech Republic
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PhD student Argo spent three months (January-March) in České Budějovice working with Francesco de Bello. Francesco has been our long term collaborator and he's an expert in functional diversity and community assembly. During his stay, Argo learned new methods for estimating species pools and uncovering dark diversity at the regional scale. He was also amazed by the price of water in Czech (more expensive than beer). Argo's visit was funded by ESF DoRa program activity 6.
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April 2014 Macroecology workgroup meeting
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Our macroecology workgroup spring seminar took place on April 28-29 in Tori. In the seminar everybody presented their novel ideas and fresh results to get constructive feedback. Our long-term collaborators Francesco de Bello from the University of South Bohemia in Czech Republic, Sergey R. Znamenskiy from Karelian Research Center in Russia and Inga Hiiesalu (our former PhD student) joined the meeting and enlivened the scientific discussion. See photos from the seminar and from the short stop at Soomaa.
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April 2014 New paper about bee foraging
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Jon Bennett and collaborators recently published a paper examining which characteristics of the local habitat determine where bees choose to forage in temperate savannah in Alberta, Canada. By monitoring bee visitation and characterizing both the local plant community and habitat configuration, Jon showed that the proximity and extent of tree cover were equally as important as the characteristics of the flower patch in determining bee patch use.
Bennett, J.A., Gensler, G.C., Cahill, J.F. (2014) Small-scale bee patch use is affected equally by flower availability and local habitat configuration. Basic and Applied Ecology.
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March 2014 New paper disentangles relationships between mycorrhizal fungi, plant species richness, and community biomass
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Inga Hiiesalu, Meelis Pärtel and Pille Gerhold together with collaborators recently published a paper about the species richness patterns of plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in a natural grassland community. Using 454-sequencing to determine AMF and belowground plant species richness, they examined the relationships among AMF richness, plant richness and biomass, both above- and belowground. They found that AMF and plant richness belowground are more strongly related to each other and community biomass than traditionally measured aboveground plant richness.
Hiiesalu, I., Pärtel, M., Davison, J., Gerhold, P., Metsis, M., Moora, M., Öpik, M., Vasar, M., Zobel, M., Wilson, S.D. (2014) Species richness of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: associations with grassland plant richness and biomass. New Phytologist.
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March 2014 Tanja visited Brazil and Argentina
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Senior researcher Tatjana Oja spent the month of February in Brazil (University of Santa Catarina) and Argentina (University of Lujan) visiting study sites connected with the project STRAVAL. She visited coastal dunes of the South Atlantic Ocean in Brazil and Carlos Keen village, which is an important rural tourism attraction in Argentina.
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February 2014 Krista visited the Laboratory of Biogeography and Ecology in Greece
[img_assist|nid=265|desc=Rosmarinus officinalis in a climate chamber|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=182]
PhD student Krista Takkis spent three weeks at the Laboratory of Biogeography and Ecology at the University of the Aegean, led by Prof. Theodora Petanidou. Prof. Petanidou is a leading pollination ecologist, whose workgroup has extensively studied the interactions between pollinators and plants as well as the different factors influencing this relationship. The aim of Krista’s visit was to set up a long-term experiment in order to investigate the effect of climate change on nectar production.
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February 2014 New paper about the community ecology of absent species
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Meelis Pärtel recently published a conceptual paper about the community ecology of absent species. Meelis suggests that we could understand ecological patterns and their underlying processes better if we examine not only observed but also absent species. There are various types of species absences: hidden diversity comprises species that are absent from our sight (because of dormancy or rareness), and dark diversity comprises the species belonging to the habitat-specific species pool, but missing from the community.
Pärtel, M. (2014) Community ecology of absent species: hidden and dark diversity. Journal of Vegetation Science.
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February 2014 Liis visited the University of South-Bohemia in Czech Republic
[img_assist|nid=263|desc=Musical events took place almost every week|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=195]
PhD student Liis Kasari spent four months (October 2013 - February 2014) in České Budějovice, attending the Quantitative ecology module. The module incorporates courses on ecological theories and statistical analyses using modern computational approaches (CANOCO, R). Liis enjoyed all the informative courses, meeting master and doctoral students as well as researchers from around the world, and the world-famous beer that was cheaper than water! The module will be open again for the winter term of 2015! Liis was financed by the Archimedes Foundation (Kristjan Jaak Scholarship).
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February 2014 Nordic Oikos Meeting
Robert spent the first week of February in Stockholm attending the Nordic Oikos 2014 conference. In addition to hearing many interesting talks and inspecting many posters, Robert gave a presentation on the local-regional richness relationship, in which he demonstrated that species saturation is much more common than previously thought.
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February 2014 Visiting MSc student from France
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Thomas Galland from the University of Toulouse will spend a semester (February-August) in our working group. He will be working together with Avellina on an alvar restoration project.
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February 2014 Visit by Jens-Christian Svenning
Professor Jens-Christian Svenning from University of Aarhus in Denmark visited our workgroup in the beginning of February. He gave an invited lecture on a vegetation-climate disequilibrium topic ('Persistent diversity-climate disequilibria due to paleoclimatic changes') and had several scientific meetings with people from our department.
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January 2014 Macroecology workgroup on a global map
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We started marking our presence on a global map. Now it is possible to have a look at where our working group members have been or are going for conferences and field work.
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January 2014 New paper about honeybee supply and demand in Europe
Meelis Pärtel, as well as Martin Zobel from the Plant Ecology Lab co-authored a recently published paper in PLoS One that takes a look at the pollination services in Europe. The study revealed that the agricultural and biofuel policies in EU have encouraged substantial growth in the cultivated area of insect pollinated crops across the continent, but the existing honeybee stocks are too limited to provide optimal pollination on fields.
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January 2014 We are now part of the TRY network
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We recently contributed plant trait data from Estonian alvars to the global TRY database and Meelis Pärtel is now also part of this network. TRY database contains trait data from different databases e.g LEDA, GlopNet, BiolFlor, SID, EcoFlora and many others and has information on about 750 traits and 69000 plant species.
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January 2014 Jon Bennett received a postdoctoral research grant
We are very happy to announce that Jon Bennett's project "Community completeness and invasibility: Using phylogenetic and functional completeness to predict invasion across scales" received a postdoctoral research grant from Estonian Research Council. Jon finished his PhD in May 2013 in the University of Alberta (Canada) and will now focus on the concept of community completeness and how this enables to pinpoint areas most threatened by alien species.
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January 2014 Macroecology workgroup received an Institutional research grant
Estonian Research Council decided to finance the research topic "Dark diversity: taxonomic, phylogenetic, functional and genetic diversity in dynamic plant communities" led by Meelis Pärtel. This grant enables us to continue research on the characteristics, causes and consequences of missing species from plant communities. We will also welcome several new members to our working group - taxonomy and genetics researchers and PhD students.
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December 2014 New paper about the dark diversity in dry calcareous grasslands
[img_assist|nid=358|title=Calcareous grassland in Estonia|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=260|height=174]
Kersti, Riin, Aveliina, Pille and Meelis together with Triin Reitalu (from Tallinn University of Technology) and colleagues from Sweden and Russia published a paper in Ecography that examines how many potentially suitable species may still be absent from highly species-rich dry calcareous grasslands in Northern Europe and which factors cause such absences. The findings revealed that even if a square meter of dry calcareous grassland supports 30-40 plant species, there are an even larger number of species suitable for these ecosystems in the region that are currently absent (i.e. belonging to dark diversity). The analyses showed that species in the dark diversity were characterized by a lower dispersal capacity and lower levels of stress-tolerance than the species represented in the observed diversity. The fact that small-scale community assemblage in these ecosystems is very much influenced by dispersal processes suggests that nature conservation activities should particularly promote species dispersal between the grassland patches, for example, with the help of grazing animals. See a short story about the paper in Ecography blog.
Riibak, K., Reitalu, T., Tamme, R., Helm, A., Gerhold, P., Znamenskiy, S., Bengtsson, K., Rosén, E., Prentice, H. C. and Pärtel, M. (2015) Dark diversity in dry calcareous grasslands is determined by dispersal ability and stress-tolerance. Ecography 38: 713-721.
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November 2014 New paper introduces novel metrics to quantify community condition
[img_assist|nid=357|title=Community biodiversity can be divided to characteristic and derived diversity|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=146]Aveliina, Meelis and Robert together with Martin Zobel from plant ecology lab and Angela Moles from New South Wales University published a paper that introduces cool new metrics to quantify the conservation condition of habitats. Currently used metrics, such as using total number of species or the ratio of native to alien species, fail to reflect human-induced invasion by species native to different community types in the region. Autors show that habitat conservation and research demand the recognition of ecologically relevant components of diversity: characteristic diversity, consisting of species belonging to historically developed habitat-specific species pool, and derived diversity, consisting of both non-native and native species that are untypical to a given community. Based on this concept, authors also introduce the Index of Favorable Conservation Status: log-ratio of characteristic/derived diversity that allows estimation of ongoing dynamics and habitat quality in relative terms and is comparable between habitats and organism groups. Paper also lists possible methods for determining habitat-specific species pool composition.
Helm, A., Zobel, M., Moles, A. T., Szava-Kovats, R. and Pärtel, M. (2015) Characteristic and derived diversity: implementing the species pool concept to quantify conservation condition of habitats. Diversity and Distributions 21: 711–721.
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November 2014 Autumn workgroup seminar
[img_assist|nid=356|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=260|height=146]
Our macroecology workgroup autumn seminar took place on November 6-7 in Waide motel near Elva. Everybody presented their novel ideas and latest results, and got constructive feedback from others. In addition to scientific discussions, we also found time for short excursion in Elva, and as usual evening ended with sauna and beer.
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November 2014 Workshop in Czech Republic
[img_assist|nid=355|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=146]
In the end of October, Meelis, Rob, Jon, Kersti, Argo, Liis travelled to České Budějovice, Czech Republic to join forces with several PhD's, Post Docs and senior scientist from the department of Botany, University of South Bohemia. The purpose being, to partake in a workgroup surrounding the use of the species pool and dark diversity concepts in conservation ecology. Participants shared ideas, thoughts and contributed to many interesting discussions surrounding the topic in question. The workgroup evolved from early ideas and discussions between Meelis Pärtel and Rob Lewis on ways dark diversity can be beneficial for biodiversity conservation. In collaboration with our close friend Francesco de Bello, this topic became the focus of the first Estonian/Czech research-led workshop organised by the Macroecology UT, and will be looked back on as a success, building new collaborations and exchange of ideas.
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October 2014 New paper about beta-diversity - an end to the debate?
[img_assist|nid=354|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=170|height=112]
Robert and Meelis have published an article in PlosOne examining the mathematical relationship between additive and multiplicative expressions of beta-diversity. When transformed into unbounded indices, both expressions are equivalent. As a result, the relationship between beta-diversity and spatial or environmental gradients is not dependent on the choice of beta-diversity expression. Perhaps this article will serve to mediate the debate over the "correct" measure of beta-diversity.
Szava-Kovats, R., Pärtel, M. (2014) Biodiversity patterns along ecological gradients: unifying β-diversity indices. Plos ONE 9, e110485.
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October 2014 New paper about hybridization in Pulmonaria species
[img_assist|nid=353|title=|desc=Pulmonaria angustifolia|link=popup|align=left|width=260|height=173]
Ene Kook and collaborators explored the evolutionary processes of a rare species in the Boraginacea family in a new paper published in Plant Systematics and Evolution. They studied intra-individual genetic polymorphism and hybridization in Pulmonaria angustifolia L. and Pulmonaria obscura Dumort by cloning nrDNA ITS markers. They found that P. angustifolia, extremely rare species in Estonia and Latvia, exhibited ITS sequences from both Pulmonaria species confirming the hybrid origin of P. angustifolia populations in Estonia and Latvia. Thus, outbreeding depression is likely one of the reasons why populations of the rare P. angustifolia are declining at the northern limit of the species distribution area. So far, there was only indirect evidence of intra-individual polymorphism in the Boraginaceae family, but now the new study confirms it with molecular methods.
Kook, E., Vedler, E., Püssa, K., Kalamees, R., Reier, Ü., Pihu, S. (2015) Intra-individual ITS polymorphism and hybridization in Pulmonaria obscura Dumort. and Pulmonaria angustifolia L. (Boraginaceae). Plant Systematics and Evolution 301: 893-910.
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September 2014 IAVS conference in Australia
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On 1.-5. September Meelis, Pille, Rob, Riin, Kersti, Argo, Liina and Liis attended the annual symposium of the IAVS in Perth, Australia. Rob gave an oral presentation on accurate dark diversity and species pool estimates: An empirical assessment of two existing methods. Riin spoke about the relationship between environmental heterogeneity and plant species richness: the role of spatial scale and evolutionary history. Kersti´s talk was about a study where we found that dark diversity in dry calcareous grasslands is determined by dispersal ability and stress-tolerance. Argo spoke about our work of applying the dark diversity concept for plants at the European scale. Liina showed the results of a meta-analysis of plant extinctions and colonizations in European grasslands due to loss of habitat area and quality. Liis presented a study of an increase in species richness and functional diversity after habitat degradation and fragmentation.
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August 2014 Macroecology workgroup is on Twitter!
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Since June, our workgroup can be followed on Twitter for news, notifications about new papers and conferences, and discussions. Twitter users can follow us for updates but others can still read our tweets here.
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August 2014 Field work in Saaremaa for the 'LIFE to alvars' project
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This year the large-scale Estonian alvar grasslands restoration project 'LIFE to alvars' got financed by the European Commission and the Estonian Environmental Investment Centre. The project aims to restore 2500 ha of the most valuable, but currently overgrown alvar grasslands in western Estonia, and to provide local farmers with the knowledge and means to manage these areas after restoration. In the end of July Liis, Liina and Marge together with Thomas (visiting student from France) and Triin Reitalu (Tallinn University of Technology) carried out two weeks long biodiversity monitoring in these grasslands, following the methodology developed by Aveliina to assess the restoration success in the future.
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August 2014 Aveliina attended the Ecological Restoration conference in Oulu
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The 9th European Conference on Ecological Restoration was organised by the Society for Ecological Restoration, and took place on 3rd-8th August in Oulu, Finland. Our workgroup was represented by Aveliina Helm who gave an oral presentation about the ongoing alvar restoration project ('Large-scale calcareous grassland restoration in Estonia: the science behind and the work ahead').
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August 2014 Special Feature in Journal of Vegetation Science
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The September issue of the Journal of Vegetation Science is a Special Feature on Vegetation Patterns and their Underlying Processes edited by Aveliina Helm, Rein Kalamees and Martin Zobel. The Special Feature contains ten contributions from the 56th Symposium of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), which was held in Tartu, Estonia, 26–30 Jun 2013. One of the contributions is a paper by Meelis Pärtel about the community ecology of absent species.
Helm, A., Kalamees, R., Zobel, M. (2014) Vegetation patterns and their underlying processes: where are we now? Journal of Vegetation Science 25, 1113–1116.
Pärtel, M. (2014) Community ecology of absent species: hidden and dark diversity. Journal of Vegetation Science 25, 1154-1159.
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July 2014 Community completeness field work in abandoned agricultural fields
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The short summers in Estonia are filled with field works. During the months of June and July, Jon together with Kersti, Riin, Rob, Ülle and Ene were surveying abandoned agricultural fields in Southeastern Estonia as a part of Jon's post-doc project 'Community completeness and invasibility: Using phylogenetic and functional completeness to predict invasion across scales'. Tolerating temperatures ranging from 4 °C to 34 °C they estimated local species composition and measured plant traits and environmental conditions to test how community completeness affects invasion success. The large-scale sampling of the vegetation (conducted by Ülle and Ene) is still ongoing.
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July 2014 International ethnobiology course in Saaremaa
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Liina, Liis, Kersti and Aveliina participated on the international ethnobiology (scientific study about dynamic relationships between peoples, biota, and environment) course held in Saaremaa in the beginning of July. The main purpose of the course was to provide basic knowledge and skills in order to be able to design, conduct, and analyse an ethnobiological research. After lectures students gained also hands-on experience in conducting ethnography-centred fieldwork, visiting local people’s homes and making real interviews with them. Teachers were acknowledged scientists from six different countries: Spain, Italy, Hungary, Poland, England and Estonia. In the end of course became the understanding how important is sometimes to incorporate local people into our research and how valuable can be their traditional knowledge in nature conservation.
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July 2014 New publication on species invasion and phylogenetic diversity in Canadian grasslands
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In his new paper, Jon Bennett explores the relationship between Bromus inermis (smooth brome) invasion into native grassland and the phylogenetic diversity of that grassland. Brome invasion was unaffected by the phylogenetic diversity within the community; however, brome invasion had strong effects on phylogenetic diversity. This suggests that invasion may be more likely to be a driver of phylogenetic structure, rather than a passenger, and suggests caution in inferring mechanism behind observed relationships between phylogenetic structure and invasion without first testing that mechanism.
Bennett, J.A., Stotz, G.C., Cahill, J.F. (2014) Patterns of phylogenetic diversity are linked to invasion impacts, not invasion resistance, in a native grassland. Journal of Vegetation Science 25: 1315–1326.
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June 2014 Publication about species richness records selected for F1000Prime
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In 2012, Meelis Pärtel together with J. Bastow Wilson (New Zealand), Robert K. Peet (USA) and Jürgen Dengler (Germany) published the first list of vascular plant species richness records from different sampling scales. The paper was recently evaluated by Dr Ryan Chisholm and recommended by F1000Prime portal as being of special significance in the field of biology. F1000 Prime selects and highlights important articles based on the ratings given by renowned scientists.
Wilson, J.B. Peet, R. Dengler, J. Pärtel, M. (2012) Plant species richness: the world records. Journal of Vegetation Science 23, 796–802.
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June 2014 New publication about using biotic indicators for biodiversity monitoring
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A new paper by Rob Lewis and collaborators addresses problems associated with large-scale temporal biodiversity monitoring for informing conservation management. In this latest article, published in Biological Conservation, Rob demonstrates the utility of compositional indices and simple plant functional characteristics as environmental surrogates, linking land-use change impacts in time to compositional shifts in semi-natural grassland vegetation. The work takes Scotland’s Machair vegetation as a case study, highlighting regions where changes in biodiversity through time can be linked with changes in grazing intensity and land-use intensification.
Lewis, R.J., Pakeman, R.J., Angus, S., Marrs, R.H. (2014) Using compositional and functional indicators for biodiversity conservation monitoring of semi-natural grasslands in Scotland. Biological Conservation 175, 82-93.
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May 2014 Riin attended the Plant Population Biology Conference
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During 28th-31st May, Riin participated in the Plant Population Biology Conference organized by the University of Konstanz. The conference had both, a friendly atmosphere and interesting talks ranging on topics from epigenetics to species distribution modelling. Riin gave a presentation about the effect of spatial scale on heterogeneity-diversity relationship.
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May 2014 Rob participated in the Digital Conservation Conference
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Rob attended the very first interdisciplinary conference on digital conservation hosted at the University of Aberdeen (UK) in partnership with dot.rural from the 21st to 23rd May. Although small, the conference was of very high quality, discussing broad aspects of digital technology for use in science and nature conservation, among academics, practitioners and policy makers. The final day included demonstrations of digital conservation in action. Take a look of the short video demonstrating how digital conservation translates to real-world applications, and read the thoughts and discussions as tweeted live by participants.
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May 2014 Meelis acted as the opponent for Bryndís Marteinsdóttir's Ph.D defence in Sweden
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In the beginning of May, Meelis Pärtel visited the University of Stockholm, where he was the official opponent for the Ph.D defence of Bryndís Marteinsdóttir (supervisor: professor Ove Eriksson). The thesis 'Plant community assembly in grazed grasslands' investigated how species are filtered from a regional species pool into local plant communities using grazed grasslands as model system. The results demonstrated that regional processes (dispersal limitation) are more important than local factors (species interactions, local environmental conditions, stochastic events) in determining plant community assembly.
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May 2014 Krista Takkis defended her PhD thesis![img_assist|nid=271|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=right|width=260|height=194]
On 12th of May, Krista Takkis successfully defended her thesis "Changes in plant species richness and population performance in response to habitat loss and fragmentation" and was awarded with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Botany and Mycology. Krista was supervised by Aveliina and Meelis, and the official opponent during the defence was professor Markus Fischer from te University of Bern in Switzerland. Krista will continue her scientific work in University of Aegean in Greece, in the lab of Biogeography and Ecology.
Congratulations, Dr. Takkis!
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April 2014 Argo Ronk visited the University of South Bohemia in Czech Republic
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PhD student Argo spent three months (January-March) in České Budějovice working with Francesco de Bello. Francesco has been our long term collaborator and he's an expert in functional diversity and community assembly. During his stay, Argo learned new methods for estimating species pools and uncovering dark diversity at the regional scale. He was also amazed by the price of water in Czech (more expensive than beer). Argo's visit was funded by ESF DoRa program activity 6.
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April 2014 Macroecology workgroup meeting
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Our macroecology workgroup spring seminar took place on April 28-29 in Tori. In the seminar everybody presented their novel ideas and fresh results to get constructive feedback. Our long-term collaborators Francesco de Bello from the University of South Bohemia in Czech Republic, Sergey R. Znamenskiy from Karelian Research Center in Russia and Inga Hiiesalu (our former PhD student) joined the meeting and enlivened the scientific discussion. See photos from the seminar and from the short stop at Soomaa.
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April 2014 New paper about bee foraging
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Jon Bennett and collaborators recently published a paper examining which characteristics of the local habitat determine where bees choose to forage in temperate savannah in Alberta, Canada. By monitoring bee visitation and characterizing both the local plant community and habitat configuration, Jon showed that the proximity and extent of tree cover were equally as important as the characteristics of the flower patch in determining bee patch use.
Bennett, J.A., Gensler, G.C., Cahill, J.F. (2014) Small-scale bee patch use is affected equally by flower availability and local habitat configuration. Basic and Applied Ecology.
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March 2014 New paper disentangles relationships between mycorrhizal fungi, plant species richness, and community biomass
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Inga Hiiesalu, Meelis Pärtel and Pille Gerhold together with collaborators recently published a paper about the species richness patterns of plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in a natural grassland community. Using 454-sequencing to determine AMF and belowground plant species richness, they examined the relationships among AMF richness, plant richness and biomass, both above- and belowground. They found that AMF and plant richness belowground are more strongly related to each other and community biomass than traditionally measured aboveground plant richness.
Hiiesalu, I., Pärtel, M., Davison, J., Gerhold, P., Metsis, M., Moora, M., Öpik, M., Vasar, M., Zobel, M., Wilson, S.D. (2014) Species richness of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: associations with grassland plant richness and biomass. New Phytologist.
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March 2014 Tanja visited Brazil and Argentina
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Senior researcher Tatjana Oja spent the month of February in Brazil (University of Santa Catarina) and Argentina (University of Lujan) visiting study sites connected with the project STRAVAL. She visited coastal dunes of the South Atlantic Ocean in Brazil and Carlos Keen village, which is an important rural tourism attraction in Argentina.
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February 2014 Krista visited the Laboratory of Biogeography and Ecology in Greece
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PhD student Krista Takkis spent three weeks at the Laboratory of Biogeography and Ecology at the University of the Aegean, led by Prof. Theodora Petanidou. Prof. Petanidou is a leading pollination ecologist, whose workgroup has extensively studied the interactions between pollinators and plants as well as the different factors influencing this relationship. The aim of Krista’s visit was to set up a long-term experiment in order to investigate the effect of climate change on nectar production.
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February 2014 New paper about the community ecology of absent species
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Meelis Pärtel recently published a conceptual paper about the community ecology of absent species. Meelis suggests that we could understand ecological patterns and their underlying processes better if we examine not only observed but also absent species. There are various types of species absences: hidden diversity comprises species that are absent from our sight (because of dormancy or rareness), and dark diversity comprises the species belonging to the habitat-specific species pool, but missing from the community.
Pärtel, M. (2014) Community ecology of absent species: hidden and dark diversity. Journal of Vegetation Science.
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February 2014 Liis visited the University of South-Bohemia in Czech Republic
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PhD student Liis Kasari spent four months (October 2013 - February 2014) in České Budějovice, attending the Quantitative ecology module. The module incorporates courses on ecological theories and statistical analyses using modern computational approaches (CANOCO, R). Liis enjoyed all the informative courses, meeting master and doctoral students as well as researchers from around the world, and the world-famous beer that was cheaper than water! The module will be open again for the winter term of 2015! Liis was financed by the Archimedes Foundation (Kristjan Jaak Scholarship).
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February 2014 Nordic Oikos Meeting
Robert spent the first week of February in Stockholm attending the Nordic Oikos 2014 conference. In addition to hearing many interesting talks and inspecting many posters, Robert gave a presentation on the local-regional richness relationship, in which he demonstrated that species saturation is much more common than previously thought.
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February 2014 Visiting MSc student from France
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Thomas Galland from the University of Toulouse will spend a semester (February-August) in our working group. He will be working together with Avellina on an alvar restoration project.
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February 2014 Visit by Jens-Christian Svenning
Professor Jens-Christian Svenning from University of Aarhus in Denmark visited our workgroup in the beginning of February. He gave an invited lecture on a vegetation-climate disequilibrium topic ('Persistent diversity-climate disequilibria due to paleoclimatic changes') and had several scientific meetings with people from our department.
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January 2014 Macroecology workgroup on a global map
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We started marking our presence on a global map. Now it is possible to have a look at where our working group members have been or are going for conferences and field work.
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January 2014 New paper about honeybee supply and demand in Europe
Meelis Pärtel, as well as Martin Zobel from the Plant Ecology Lab co-authored a recently published paper in PLoS One that takes a look at the pollination services in Europe. The study revealed that the agricultural and biofuel policies in EU have encouraged substantial growth in the cultivated area of insect pollinated crops across the continent, but the existing honeybee stocks are too limited to provide optimal pollination on fields.
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January 2014 We are now part of the TRY network
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We recently contributed plant trait data from Estonian alvars to the global TRY database and Meelis Pärtel is now also part of this network. TRY database contains trait data from different databases e.g LEDA, GlopNet, BiolFlor, SID, EcoFlora and many others and has information on about 750 traits and 69000 plant species.
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January 2014 Jon Bennett received a postdoctoral research grant
We are very happy to announce that Jon Bennett's project "Community completeness and invasibility: Using phylogenetic and functional completeness to predict invasion across scales" received a postdoctoral research grant from Estonian Research Council. Jon finished his PhD in May 2013 in the University of Alberta (Canada) and will now focus on the concept of community completeness and how this enables to pinpoint areas most threatened by alien species.
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January 2014 Macroecology workgroup received an Institutional research grant
Estonian Research Council decided to finance the research topic "Dark diversity: taxonomic, phylogenetic, functional and genetic diversity in dynamic plant communities" led by Meelis Pärtel. This grant enables us to continue research on the characteristics, causes and consequences of missing species from plant communities. We will also welcome several new members to our working group - taxonomy and genetics researchers and PhD students.
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