Category: Behind the paper

Of Brooms and Boundaries: That Day I Met David Hume

Posted on October 8, 2026October 9, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Riccardo Guarino

Allan Ramsay, portrait of David Hume (1766); Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, UK. Photo credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This post refers to the article Broom-dominated shrublands of Sicily: revisiting the syntaxonomy of the Cytisetea scopario-striati at the south-eastern margin of their range, by Riccardo Guarino, Orazio Caldarella, Alessandro Silvestre Gristina, Corrado Marcenò, and Lorenzo Gianguzzi, published in Vegetation Classification and Survey (https://doi.org/10.3897/VCS.183815…

Translation of the Braun-Blanquet scale to percent in TURBOVEG can bias diversity metrics

Posted on August 19, 2026August 24, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post was provided by Jürgen Dengler, Iwona Dembicz & Łukasz Kozub

Visualisation of different ways of back-transforming 7-step Braun-Blanquet scales to percent for numerical analyses. It is evident that for cover values below 3% (0.5 on the log10 scale), the back-translation of TURBOVEG (yellow) yields systematically too high values, while the two mid-point translations partly over- and partly underestimate the true values (Image taken from Dengler et al.

The Hidden Regulators of the Forest: How Soil Fungi Shape Tree Life and Death

Posted on March 31, 2026March 31, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Wanwan Yu and Yu Liu

The Tiantong 20-ha Forest Dynamics Plot, located in eastern China. Credit by Hengyi Zhu

This post refers to the article Tree Demography Exhibits a Strong Association with Soil Fungal Pathogens and Stability of Soil Fungal Community in a Subtropical Forest by Rouf et al, published in the Journal of Vegetation Science (https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.70131…

Beyond the paper: lessons learned from managing invasions in extreme ecosystems

Posted on January 28, 2026January 30, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Eduardo Fuentes-Lillo, Rafael Garcia, Jonas Lembrechts, and Anibal Pauchard

Invasion of *Pinus contorta* across the Patagonian steppe, southern Chile, showing a clear invasion gradient radiating from a propagule source. Dense pine stands in the background progressively transition into scattered individuals and isolated recruits within the native treeless steppe vegetation.

Why study succession? It is permanently challenging, especially now under global change

Posted on January 15, 2026January 15, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Karel Prach, with a contribution by Tomáš Herben

Two-year-old abandoned field with dominant *Papaver rhoeas*, and other weedy archeophytes. Photo credit: K. Prach

This post refers to the article Species occurrence in successional series as field-based indicators of their disturbance niche by Tomáš Herben and Karel Prach, published in the Journal of Vegetation Science (https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.70104…

From field trip to first paper: the colorful arable fields of Lemnos, Greece

Posted on January 13, 2026January 14, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Lina Rinne

Left: Stefan Meyer and Erwin Bergmeier discussing arable plant species on a windy day on Lesvos, April 2025 (photo credit: Lina Rinne). Right: Lina Rinne photographing arable plants on Lemnos, May 2025 (photo credit: Ute Bergmeier)

This post refers to the article Soil and season shape less intensively managed agro-ecosystems of a Mediterranean island—Insights from Lemnos (Greece) by Lina Rinne, Stefan Meyer, and Erwin Bergmeier, published in Vegetation Classification and Survey (https://doi.org/10.3897/VCS.164437…

An island, a classification, and a handful of botanists

Posted on January 13, 2026January 13, 2026 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Riccardo Guarino, Thomas Becker, Iwona Dembicz & Jürgen Dengler

Dry grasslands on coastal dunes in southern Sicily. Photo credit: Jürgen Dengler, 2012

This post refers to the article Dry grasslands of Sicily: Multi-taxon diversity and classification challenges by Guarino et al.,…

Twelve years with DiffVal and TDV: the making of a method

Posted on July 26, 2025July 27, 2025 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Tiago Monteiro-Henriques

Hay meadows and woodlands in Campo Benfeito in the spring of 2016. Photo credit: Tiago Monteiro-Henriques.

This post refers to the article TDV-optimization: A novel numerical method for phytosociological tabulation by Tiago Monteiro-Henriques published in Vegetation Classification and Survey (https://doi.org/10.3897/VCS.140466…

From picking wild asparaguses to studying vegetation responses to fire regimes

Posted on July 25, 2025July 25, 2025 by David Zeleny

The post provided by Sabina Burrascano

Sampling of vegetation in recently burnt areas. Photo credit: Lorenzo Caucci

This post refers to the article “Transiently richer but profoundly changed: fire regime triggers physiognomic changes in sub-Mediterranean vegetation” by Lorenzo Caucci, Francesca Napoleone and colleagues, published in the Journal of Vegetation Science (https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.70047…