IAVS Editors’ Awards for 2018
IAVS Editors’ Awards go to Yasuhiro Kubota for Journal of Vegetation Science and László Erdős for Applied Vegetation Science. Congratulations to the Award winners and their co-authors!
Yasuhiro Kubota receives the Award for the paper Kubota, Y., Kusumoto, B., Shiono, T., & Ulrich, W. (2018). Environmental filters shaping angiosperm tree assembly along climatic and geographic gradients. Journal of Vegetation Science, 29, 607–618. This study is an excellent example of using fine-scale plant community data from forest vegetation plots sampled on different continents to address macroecological questions about the evolution of the global phylogenetic diversity of angiosperm floras. Using a global dataset of forest plots, Kubota et al. convincingly demonstrated that phylogenetic clustering of angiosperm trees is stronger in those regions of the world that are currently drier and experienced a larger climatic change during the Quaternary. This study significantly contributes to our understanding of global diversity patterns, including the differences between tropical and extratropical diversity.
László Erdős receives the Award for the paper Erdős, L., Ambarlı, D., Anenkhonov, O. A., Bátori, Z., Cserhalmi, D., Kiss, M., Kröel-Dulay, G., Liu, H., Magnes, M., Molnár, Z., Naquinezhad, A., Semenishchenkov, Yu.A., Tölgyesi, C. & Török, P. (2018). The edge of two worlds: A new review and synthesis on Eurasian forest-steppes. Applied Vegetation Science, 21, 345–362. The authors provided an updated overview of forest-steppe ecosystems across Europe and Asia, by giving clear and useful information and providing a serious outlook on biodiversity conservation issues and a future prospect under predicted climate changes. This Synthesis paper was produced as a joint effort by researchers from six Eurasian countries where forest-steppes are a major component of existing ecosystems. The paper will certainly become an important reference for those interested in basic and applied studies of these habitat types. Problems such as those arising from future climate change or the conversion of natural vegetation for production purposes will affect the forest-steppe ecosystems in the future. This paper represents the perfect basis for developing new studies and planning conservation management.
