Scholars@Duke
Justin Prouty Wright

Justin Prouty Wright

Professor of Biology
Biology
justin.wright@duke.edu
Box 90338, Durham, NC 27708-0338
258 Biological Sciences, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Form, physiology, and fire response explain key dimensions of litter flammability in fire-adapted longleaf pine savanna.

Journal Article The New phytologist · September 2025 With fire frequency predicted to increase globally, a more refined understanding of flammability, including the traits that drive its variation, will be critical to better predict postfire vegetation responses. Pausas, Keeley, & Schwilk recently proposed a ... Full text Cite

Effects of elevated nutrient supply on litter decomposition are robust to impacts of mammalian herbivores across diverse grasslands.

Journal Article Oecologia · September 2025 Litter decomposition is one of the largest carbon (C) fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems and links aboveground biomass to soil C pools. In grasslands, decomposition drivers have received substantial attention but the role of grassland herbivores in influenci ... Full text Cite

Short-term prescribed fire frequency manipulation alters community response to subsequent fires in a southeastern pine savanna

Journal Article Journal of Ecology · March 1, 2025 Disturbances can have enduring impacts on ecological communities due to ‘legacy effects’, which result in community structure that varies with the history of recent disturbance. Further, such legacy effects can influence community—and population-level resp ... Full text Cite

Leaf Physiological Responses and Early Senescence Are Linked to Reflectance Spectra in Salt-Sensitive Coastal Tree Species

Journal Article Forests · September 1, 2024 Salt-sensitive trees in coastal wetlands are dying as forests transition to marsh and open water at a rapid pace. Forested wetlands are experiencing repeated saltwater exposure due to the frequency and severity of climatic events, sea-level rise, and human ... Full text Cite

Saltwater intrusion and sea level rise threatens U.S. rural coastal landscapes and communities

Journal Article Anthropocene · March 1, 2024 The United States (U.S.) coastal plain is subject to rising sea levels, land subsidence, more severe coastal storms, and more intense droughts. These changes lead to inputs of marine salts into freshwater-dependent coastal systems, creating saltwater intru ... Full text Cite

Biogeochemical effects of a forest understory plant invasion depend more on dissimilar nutrient economies than invader biomass

Journal Article Elementa · December 14, 2023 There is increasing need to better understand how and why invasion impacts on biogeochemical cycling differ across heterogeneous landscapes. One hypothesis predicts invader impacts are greatest, where the invader is most abundant (the mass ratio hypothesis ... Full text Cite

Restored forested wetland surprisingly resistant to experimental salinization.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2023 Salinization of coastal freshwater wetlands is an increasingly common and widespread phenomenon resulting from climate change. The ecosystem consequences of added salinity are poorly constrained and highly variable across prior observational and experiment ... Full text Cite

The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset.

Journal Article Scientific data · December 2022 Here we provide the 'Global Spectrum of Plant Form and Function Dataset', containing species mean values for six vascular plant traits. Together, these traits -plant height, stem specific density, leaf area, leaf mass per area, leaf nitrogen content per dr ... Full text Cite

Nitrogen increases early‐stage and slows late‐stage decomposition across diverse grasslands

Journal Article Journal of Ecology. · June 2022 To evaluate how increased anthropogenic nutrient inputs alter carbon cycling in grasslands, we conducted a litter decomposition study across 20 temperate grasslands on three continents within the Nutrient Network, a globally distributed nutrient enrichment ... Full text Cite

Salinity thresholds for understory plants in coastal wetlands

Journal Article Plant Ecol. · March 2022 Featured Publication The effects of sea level rise and coastal saltwater intrusion on wetland plants can extend well above the high-tide line due to drought, hurricanes, and groundwater intrusion. Research has examined how coastal salt marsh plant communities respond to increa ... Full text Cite

Saltwater intrusion in context: soil factors regulate impacts of salinity on soil carbon cycling

Journal Article Biogeochemistry. · January 2022 Salinization of freshwater ecosystems impacts carbon cycling, a particular concern for coastal wetlands, which are important agents of carbon sequestration. Previous experimental work using salt additions as a proxy for sea level rise, reveals widely diver ... Full text Cite

Long Distance Seed Dispersal by Forest Elephants

Journal Article Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution · December 22, 2021 By dispersing seeds long distances, large, fruit-eating animals influence plant population spread and community dynamics. After fruit consumption, animal gut passage time and movement determine seed dispersal patterns and distances. These, in turn, are inf ... Full text Open Access Cite

Rapid deforestation of a coastal landscape driven by sea-level rise and extreme events.

Journal Article Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · July 2021 Featured Publication Climate change is driving ecological shifts in coastal regions of the world, where low topographic relief makes ecosystems particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, salinization, storm surge, and other effects of global climate change. The consequences of ... Full text Cite

Changes in Prescribed Fire Frequency Alter Ecosystem Carbon Dynamics

Journal Article Ecosystems. · April 2021 Featured Publication Changes in fire frequency from historical norms are becoming more frequent due to both changes in management and climate change factors. There is uncertainty about whether increasing fire frequency will lead to decreased carbon pools due to shorter inter-f ... Full text Cite

Intraspecific trait variability shapes leaf trait response to altered fire regimes.

Journal Article Annals of botany · March 2021 Featured Publication Background and aimsUnderstanding impacts of altered disturbance regimes on community structure and function is a key goal for community ecology. Functional traits link species composition to ecosystem functioning. Changes in the distribution of fu ... Full text Cite

Global root traits (GRooT) database

Journal Article Global Ecology and Biogeography · January 1, 2021 Motivation: Trait data are fundamental to the quantitative description of plant form and function. Although root traits capture key dimensions related to plant responses to changing environmental conditions and effects on ecosystem processes, they have rar ... Full text Cite

Salinity Thresholds for Understory Plants in Coastal Wetlands.

Journal Article · 2021 AbstractThe effects of sea level rise and coastal saltwater intrusion on wetland plants can extend well above the high-tide line due to drought, hurricanes, and groundwater intrusion. Research has examined how coastal salt marsh plant c ... Full text Cite

Impacts of female body size on cannibalism and juvenile abundance in a dominant arctic spider.

Journal Article The Journal of animal ecology · August 2020 Body size influences an individual's physiology and the nature of its intra- and interspecific interactions. Changes in this key functional trait can therefore have important implications for populations as well. For example, among invertebrates, there is ... Full text Cite

Functional trait similarity predicts survival in rare plant reintroductions.

Journal Article Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America · June 2020 Rare species reintroductions are an increasingly common conservation strategy, but often result in poor survival of reintroduced individuals. Reintroduction sites are chosen primarily based on historical occupancy and/or abiotic properties of the site, wit ... Full text Cite

Global gradients in intraspecific variation in vegetative and floral traits are partially associated with climate and species richness

Journal Article Global Ecology and Biogeography · June 1, 2020 Aim: Intraspecific trait variation (ITV) within natural plant communities can be large, influencing local ecological processes and dynamics. Here, we shed light on how ITV in vegetative and floral traits responds to large-scale abiotic and biotic gradients ... Full text Cite

Author Correction: Leaf nutrients, not specific leaf area, are consistent indicators of elevated nutrient inputs.

Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · June 2020 An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. ... Full text Cite

Rare microbial taxa emerge when communities collide: freshwater and marine microbiome responses to experimental mixing.

Journal Article Ecology · March 2020 Featured Publication Whole microbial communities regularly merge with one another, often in tandem with their environments, in a process called community coalescence. Such events impose substantial changes: abiotic perturbation from environmental blending and biotic perturbati ... Full text Cite

Succession, regression and loss: does evidence of saltwater exposure explain recent changes in the tree communities of North Carolina's Coastal Plain?

Journal Article Annals of botany · February 2020 Featured Publication Background and aimsCoastal plant communities globally are highly vulnerable to future sea-level rise and storm damage, but the extent to which these habitats are affected by the various environmental perturbations associated with chronic salinizat ... Full text Cite

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access.

Journal Article Global change biology · January 2020 Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and ... Full text Cite

Belowground Biomass Response to Nutrient Enrichment Depends on Light Limitation Across Globally Distributed Grasslands

Journal Article Ecosystems · November 1, 2019 Anthropogenic activities are increasing nutrient inputs to ecosystems worldwide, with consequences for global carbon and nutrient cycles. Recent meta-analyses show that aboveground primary production is often co-limited by multiple nutrients; however, litt ... Full text Cite

In search of microbial indicator taxa: shifts in stream bacterial communities along an urbanization gradient.

Journal Article Environmental microbiology · October 2019 A majority of environmental studies describe microbiomes at coarse scales of taxonomic resolution (bacterial community, phylum), ignoring key ecological knowledge gained from finer-scales and microbial indicator taxa. Here, we characterized the distributio ... Full text Cite

Impacts of an invasive grass on soil organic matter pools vary across a tree-mycorrhizal gradient

Journal Article Biogeochemistry. · July 2019 Increases in carbon (C) inputs can augment soil organic matter (SOM), or reduce SOM by accelerating decomposition. Thus, there is a need to understand how and why ecosystems differ in their sensitivity to C inputs. Invasive plants that invade wide-ranging ... Full text Cite

Leaf nutrients, not specific leaf area, are consistent indicators of elevated nutrient inputs.

Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · March 2019 Leaf traits are frequently measured in ecology to provide a 'common currency' for predicting how anthropogenic pressures impact ecosystem function. Here, we test whether leaf traits consistently respond to experimental treatments across 27 globally distrib ... Full text Cite

Nitrogen uptake and biomass resprouting show contrasting relationships with resource acquisitive and conservative plant traits

Journal Article Journal of Vegetation Science. · January 2019 Featured Publication QUESTIONS: Disturbances can cause fluctuations in resource availability that influence plant performance. In systems with such dynamics, inter‐specific differences in resource capture may promote co‐existence by partitioning competition between periods of ... Full text Cite

Rare Microbial Taxa Emerge When Communities Collide: Freshwater and Marine Microbiome Responses to Experimental Seawater Intrusion

Journal Article · 2019 Whole microbial communities regularly merge with one another, often in tandem with their environments, in a process called community coalescence. Such events allow us to address a central question in ecology – what processes shape community assembly. We us ... Full text Cite

Estimation of gut passage time of wild, free roaming forest elephants

Journal Article Wildlife Biology · January 1, 2019 Seed gut passage times, the time from ingestion to defecation, and frugivore movement patterns determine patterns of seed deposition across the landscape and are thus crucial parameters to quantify in wild populations. Recent advancements in satellite and ... Full text Cite

Microbial nitrogen limitation in the mammalian large intestine.

Journal Article Nat Microbiol · December 2018 Resource limitation is a fundamental factor governing the composition and function of ecological communities. However, the role of resource supply in structuring the intestinal microbiome has not been established and represents a challenge for mammals that ... Full text Link to item Cite

Site conditions are more important than abundance for explaining plant invasion impacts on soil nitrogen cycling.

Journal Article Ecosphere (Washington, D.C) · October 2018 Invasive plant species can alter critical ecosystem processes including nitrogen transformations, but it is often difficult to anticipate where in an invaded landscape, these effects will occur. Our predictive ability lags because we lack a framework for u ... Full text Cite

Spatial heterogeneity in species composition constrains plant community responses to herbivory and fertilisation.

Journal Article Ecol Lett · September 2018 Environmental change can result in substantial shifts in community composition. The associated immigration and extinction events are likely constrained by the spatial distribution of species. Still, studies on environmental change typically quantify biotic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pulling apart the urbanization axis: patterns of physiochemical degradation and biological response across stream ecosystems

Journal Article Freshwater Science · September 1, 2018 Watershed urbanization introduces a variety of physical, chemical, and thermal stressors to receiving streams and leads to well-documented declines in the diversity of fish and macroinvertebrates. Far less knowledge is available about how these urban stres ... Full text Cite

Warming reverses top-down effects of predators on belowground ecosystem function in Arctic tundra.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · August 2018 Featured Publication Predators can disproportionately impact the structure and function of ecosystems relative to their biomass. These effects may be exacerbated under warming in ecosystems like the Arctic, where the number and diversity of predators are low and small shifts i ... Full text Cite

Antibiotic-induced changes in the microbiota disrupt redox dynamics in the gut.

Journal Article Elife · June 19, 2018 How host and microbial factors combine to structure gut microbial communities remains incompletely understood. Redox potential is an important environmental feature affected by both host and microbial actions. We assessed how antibiotics, which can impact ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Temperature accelerates the rate fields become forests.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · May 2018 Featured Publication Secondary succession, the postdisturbance transition of herbaceous to woody-dominated ecosystems, occurs faster at lower latitudes with important ramifications for ecosystem processes. This pattern could be driven by the direct effect of temperature on tre ... Full text Cite

Species' traits do not converge on optimum values in preferred habitats.

Journal Article Oecologia · March 2018 Plant trait expression is shaped by filters, which can alter trait means and variances, theoretically driving species toward an "optimum" trait value for a set of environmental conditions. Recent research has highlighted the ubiquity of intraspecific varia ... Full text Cite

Plant community and soil conditions individually affect soil microbial community assembly in experimental mesocosms.

Journal Article Ecol Evol · January 2018 Soils harbor large, diverse microbial communities critical for local and global ecosystem functioning that are controlled by multiple and poorly understood processes. In particular, while there is observational evidence of relationships between both biotic ... Full text Link to item Cite

Evaluating the effects of land-use change and future climate change on vulnerability of coastal landscapes to saltwater intrusion

Journal Article Elementa · January 1, 2018 The exposure of freshwater-dependent coastal ecosystems to saltwater is a present-day impact of climate and land-use changes in many coastal regions, with the potential to harm freshwater and terrestrial biota, alter biogeochemical cycles and reduce agricu ... Full text Cite

Increased grassland arthropod production with mammalian herbivory and eutrophication: a test of mediation pathways.

Journal Article Ecology · December 2017 Increases in nutrient availability and alterations to mammalian herbivore communities are a hallmark of the Anthropocene, with consequences for the primary producer communities in many ecosystems. While progress has advanced understanding of plant communit ... Full text Cite

Boom-bust dynamics in biological invasions: towards an improved application of the concept.

Journal Article Ecology letters · October 2017 Boom-bust dynamics - the rise of a population to outbreak levels, followed by a dramatic decline - have been associated with biological invasions and offered as a reason not to manage troublesome invaders. However, boom-bust dynamics rarely have been criti ... Full text Cite

Trait space of rare plants in a fire-dependent ecosystem.

Journal Article Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · August 2017 The causes of species rarity are of critical concern because of the high extinction risk associated with rarity. Studies examining individual rare species have limited generality, whereas trait-based approaches offer a means to identify functional causes o ... Full text Cite

Functional traits of the understory plant community of a pyrogenic longleaf pine forest across environmental gradients.

Journal Article Ecology · August 2017 Featured Publication Understanding and predicting the response of plant communities to environmental changes and disturbances such as fire requires an understanding of the functional traits present in the system, including within and across species variability, and their dynam ... Full text Cite

Intraspecific variability improves environmental matching, but does not increase ecological breadth along a wet-to-dry ecotone

Journal Article Oikos · July 1, 2017 Featured Publication It is widely assumed that higher levels of intraspecific variability in one or more traits should allow species to persist under a wider range of environmental conditions. However, few studies have examined whether species that exhibit high variability are ... Full text Cite

Revisiting the Holy Grail: using plant functional traits to understand ecological processes.

Journal Article Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · May 2017 One of ecology's grand challenges is developing general rules to explain and predict highly complex systems. Understanding and predicting ecological processes from species' traits has been considered a 'Holy Grail' in ecology. Plant functional traits are i ... Full text Cite

Contributions of microbial activity and ash deposition to post-fire nitrogen availability in a pine savanna

Journal Article Biogeosciences · January 17, 2017 Many ecosystems experience drastic changes to soil nutrient availability associated with fire, but the magnitude and duration of these changes are highly variable among vegetation and fire types. In pyrogenic pine savannas across the southeastern United St ... Full text Cite

Invasive species' leaf traits and dissimilarity from natives shape their impact on nitrogen cycling: a meta-analysis.

Journal Article The New phytologist · January 2017 Featured Publication Many exotic species have little apparent impact on ecosystem processes, whereas others have dramatic consequences for human and ecosystem health. There is growing evidence that invasions foster eutrophication. We need to identify species that are harmful a ... Full text Cite

Effects of fire frequency on litter decomposition as mediated by changes to litter chemistry and soil environmental conditions.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2017 Litter quality and soil environmental conditions are well-studied drivers influencing decomposition rates, but the role played by disturbance legacy, such as fire history, in mediating these drivers is not well understood. Fire history may impact decomposi ... Full text Cite

Joint effects of nutrient addition and enemy exclusion on exotic plant success.

Journal Article Ecology · December 2016 Worldwide, ecosystems are increasingly dominated by exotic plant species, a shift hypothesized to result from numerous ecological factors. Two of these, increased resource availability and enemy release, may act in concert to increase exotic success in pla ... Full text Cite

Plant-soil feedbacks: a comparative study on the relative importance of soil feedbacks in the greenhouse versus the field.

Journal Article Oecologia · June 2016 Interactions between plants and soil microorganisms influence individual plant performance and thus plant-community composition. Most studies on such plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) have been performed under controlled greenhouse conditions, whereas no study h ... Full text Cite

Multiple environmental drivers structure plant traits at the community level in a pyrogenic ecosystem

Journal Article Functional Ecology · May 1, 2016 Featured Publication Trait-based approaches offer a way to predict changes in community structure along environmental gradients using measurable properties of individuals. Promoted as being generalizable across systems, trait-based approaches benefit from information about the ... Full text Cite

The more things change, the more they stay the same? When is trait variability important for stability of ecosystem function in a changing environment.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · May 2016 Featured Publication The importance of intraspecific trait variability for community dynamics and ecosystem functioning has been underappreciated. There are theoretical reasons for predicting that species that differ in intraspecific trait variability will also differ in their ... Full text Cite

Variation in Plant Response to Herbivory Underscored by Functional Traits.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2016 The effects of herbivory can shape plant communities and evolution. However, the many forms of herbivory costs and the wide variation in herbivory pressure, including across latitudinal gradients, can make predicting the effects of herbivory on different p ... Full text Open Access Cite

Plant species' origin predicts dominance and response to nutrient enrichment and herbivores in global grasslands.

Journal Article Nature communications · July 2015 Exotic species dominate many communities; however the functional significance of species' biogeographic origin remains highly contentious. This debate is fuelled in part by the lack of globally replicated, systematic data assessing the relationship between ... Full text Open Access Cite

Annual growth in longleaf (Pinus palustris) and pond pine (P. serotina) in the Sandhills of North Carolina is driven by interactions between fire and climate

Journal Article Forest Ecology and Management · March 5, 2015 Understory fires are important for the maintenance of pine savanna ecosystems of the southeastern U.S., which contain high biodiversity and numerous federally endangered species. Prescribed burns are administered to maintain the open structure of pine sava ... Full text Cite

Herbivores and nutrients control grassland plant diversity via light limitation.

Journal Article Nature · April 2014 Human alterations to nutrient cycles and herbivore communities are affecting global biodiversity dramatically. Ecological theory predicts these changes should be strongly counteractive: nutrient addition drives plant species loss through intensified compet ... Full text Cite

Predicting invasion in grassland ecosystems: is exotic dominance the real embarrassment of richness?

Journal Article Global change biology · December 2013 Invasions have increased the size of regional species pools, but are typically assumed to reduce native diversity. However, global-scale tests of this assumption have been elusive because of the focus on exotic species richness, rather than relative abunda ... Full text Cite

Urban stream denitrifier communities are linked to lower functional resistance to multiple stressors associated with urbanization

Journal Article Hydrobiologia · 2013 The microbial communities in urban stream ecosystems are subject to complex combinations of stressors. These same microbial communities perform the critical ecosystem service of removing excess reactive nitrogen. We asked whether the denitrifying microbial ... Full text Cite

Low concentrations of silver nanoparticles in biosolids cause adverse ecosystem responses under realistic field scenario.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2013 A large fraction of engineered nanomaterials in consumer and commercial products will reach natural ecosystems. To date, research on the biological impacts of environmental nanomaterial exposures has largely focused on high-concentration exposures in mecha ... Full text Open Access Cite

Drivers of secondary succession rates across temperate latitudes of the Eastern USA: climate, soils, and species pools.

Journal Article Oecologia · April 2012 Climate change is widely expected to induce large shifts in the geographic distribution of plant communities, but early successional ecosystems may be less sensitive to broad-scale climatic trends because they are driven by interactions between species tha ... Full text Cite

Effects of Silver Nanoparticle Exposure on Germination and Early Growth of Eleven Wetland Plants

Journal Article PLOS One · 2012 The increasing commercial production of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) has led to concerns over the potential adverse impacts of these ENPs on biota in natural environments. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are one of the most widely used ENPs and are expecte ... Cite

Investigation of the bioaccumulation of silver nanoparticles

Conference ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY · March 27, 2011 Link to item Cite

Environmental conditions influence the plant functional diversity effect on potential denitrification.

Journal Article PloS one · February 2011 Global biodiversity loss has prompted research on the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem functioning. Few studies have examined how plant diversity impacts belowground processes; even fewer have examined how varying resource levels can in ... Full text Open Access Cite

Watershed urbanization alters the composition and function of stream bacterial communities.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2011 Watershed urbanization leads to dramatic changes in draining streams, with urban streams receiving a high frequency of scouring flows, together with the nutrient, contaminant, and thermal pollution associated with urbanization. These changes are known to c ... Full text Cite

Plant trait diversity buffers variability in denitrification potential over changes in season and soil conditions.

Journal Article PloS one · July 2010 BackgroundDenitrification is an important ecosystem service that removes nitrogen (N) from N-polluted watersheds, buffering soil, stream, and river water quality from excess N by returning N to the atmosphere before it reaches lakes or oceans and ... Full text Open Access Cite

Ecosystem engineers maintain a rare species of butterfly and increase plant diversity

Journal Article Oikos · May 1, 2010 We evaluated whether ecosystem engineers can accomplish two conservation goals simultaneously: (1) indirectly maintain populations of an endangered animal through habitat modification and (2) increase riparian plant diversity. We tested for effects of a pr ... Full text Cite

Dynamic Interactions of Life and its Landscape: a new paradigm to advance contemporary issues

Journal Article Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences · 2010 Cite

Plant trait diversity buffers variability in denitrification potential over changes in season and soil conditions

Journal Article PLoS ONE · 2010 Background: Denitrification is an important ecosystem service that removes nitrogen (N) from N-polluted watersheds, buffering soil, stream, and river water quality from excess N by returning N to the atmosphere before it reaches lakes or oceans and leads t ... Full text Cite

Dynamic interactions of life and its landscape: Feedbacks at the interface of geomorphology and ecology

Journal Article Earth Surface Processes and Landforms · January 1, 2010 There appears to be no single axis of causality between life and its landscape, but rather, each exerts a simultaneous influence on the other over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. These influences occur through feedbacks of differing strength a ... Full text Cite

Linking populations to landscapes: richness scenarios resulting from changes in the dynamics of an ecosystem engineer.

Journal Article Ecology · December 2009 Predicting the effects of the loss of individual species on diversity represents one of the primary challenges facing community ecology. One pathway by which organisms of one species affect the distribution of species is ecosystem engineering. Changes in t ... Full text Cite

Restoring biodiversity and ecosystem function: Will an integrated approach improve results?

Journal Article · July 30, 2009 Ecological restorations often focus on restoring communities while ignoring ecosystem functioning, or on ecosystem functioning without regard to communities. This chapter argues that the biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) perspective provides an opportu ... Full text Cite

Managed ecosystems: Biodiversity and ecosystem functions in landscapes modified by human use

Journal Article · July 30, 2009 This chapter examines the effects of management and intensification processes on biodiversity in agricultural landscapes. It begins with a metaanalysis of studies conducted along landscape gradients, then reviews relationships between biodiversity and ecos ... Full text Cite

Diversity has stronger top-down than bottom-up effects on decomposition.

Journal Article Ecology · April 2009 The flow of energy and nutrients between trophic levels is affected by both the trophic structure of food webs and the diversity of species within trophic levels. However, the combined effects of trophic structure and diversity on trophic transfer remain l ... Full text Cite

Impacts of plant diversity on biomass production increase through time because of species complementarity

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2007 Cite

Assessing impacts of ecosystem engineers on community organization: A general approach illustrated by effects of a high-Andean cushion plant

Journal Article Oikos · November 1, 2006 Comparative and integrative tools are of fundamental value in ecology for understanding outcomes of biological processes, and making generalizations and predictions. Although ecosystem engineering has been shown to play a fundamental role in community orga ... Full text Cite

Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of trophic groups and ecosystems.

Journal Article Nature · October 2006 Over the past decade, accelerating rates of species extinction have prompted an increasing number of studies to reduce species diversity experimentally and examine how this alters the efficiency by which communities capture resources and convert those into ... Full text Cite

Conventional functional classification schemes underestimate the relationship with ecosystem functioning.

Journal Article Ecology letters · February 2006 Studies linking the functional diversity of a biota to ecosystem functioning typically employ a priori classifications of species into hypothetically complementary groups. However, multiple alternate classifications exist in which the number of functional ... Full text Cite

Patch dynamics in a landscape modified by ecosystem engineers

Journal Article Oikos · May 1, 2004 Ecosystem engineers, organisms that modify the environment, have the potential to dramatically alter ecosystem structure and function at large spatial scales. The degree to which ecosystem engineering produces large-scale effects is, in part, dependent on ... Full text Cite

Patch dynamics in an engineered landscape

Journal Article Oikos · 2004 Cite

Predicting effects of ecosystem engineers on patch-scale species richness from primary productivity

Journal Article Ecology · January 1, 2004 Ecosystem engineering - the physical modification of habitats by organisms - can create patches with altered species richness relative to adjacent, unmodified patches. The effect of ecosystem engineering on patch-scale species richness is likely to be diff ... Full text Cite

Deforesting the riverscape: The effects of wood on fish diversity in a Venezuelan piedmont stream

Journal Article Biological Conservation · January 1, 2004 While deforestation of tropical ecosystems has been shown to have significant impacts on terrestrial habitats, its effects on aquatic habitats are poorly studied. Deforestation dramatically reduces the input of woody debris to streams, and given the import ... Full text Cite

Disentangling biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning: Deriving solutions to a seemingly insurmountable problem

Journal Article Ecology Letters · June 1, 2003 Experimental investigations of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) directly manipulate diversity then monitor ecosystem response to the manipulation. While these studies have generally confirmed the importance of biodivers ... Full text Cite

Local vs. landscape controls on plant species richness in beaver meadows

Journal Article Ecology · January 1, 2003 There is considerable interest in determining whether the species richness of communities is determined by forces controlling dispersal into patches that operate at the landscape scale, or forces controlling persistence that act at the local scale. Underst ... Full text Cite

An ecosystem engineer, the beaver, increases species richness at the landscape scale.

Journal Article Oecologia · June 2002 Ecosystem engineering - the physical modification of habitats by organisms - has been proposed as an important mechanism for maintaining high species richness at the landscape scale by increasing habitat heterogeneity. Dams built by beaver (Castor canadens ... Full text Cite