Category: Plain language summary

Large boulders provide refuge for browse-sensitive species and reveal a legacy of overbrowsing and shifting baselines

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Prepared by Gillian G. Revenis, Ryan Utz, Rose-Marie Muzika, Thomas P. Diggins, and Walter P. Carson

Large boulder with nearby deer fence included in our sampling for our study in the Huron Mountains Club Forest, US. Photo credit: Gillian Revenis

Throughout the Eastern United States, white-tailed deer populations have risen far beyond historical sizes.…

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Floristic patterns in the Andes of northern Patagonia’s forests, Argentina: towards integrating ecological responses with expert-based and unsupervised classification methods

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Prepared by Natalia Zoe Joelson, Alois Simon, Friedemann von Lampe, Gabriel Ángel Loguercio, Stefan Zerbe, Christoph Leuschner, and Helge Walentowski

Different communities found in northern Patagonia, Argentina. Images show typical examples of: A) Broadleaved montane forest: Humid, evergreen forests found in wetter western areas, with dense tree coverage of Nothofagus dombeyi, B) Mixed montane forest: Mid-elevation evergreen forests adapted to moderate rainfall with a mix of broadleaved N.
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Advancing vegetation classification of grassland ecosystems across Asia: current status and way forward

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Prepared by Alireza Naqinezhad, Idoia Biurrun, Victor Chepinoga, Jürgen Dengler, and Arkadiusz Nowak

Examples of Asian grassland types. a) Acantholimono caryophyllacei-Stipetum holosericeae, Armenia; b) Alpine vegetation in Damavand Mts with Acantholimetum demawendici as the main vegetation at altitude 3,700 m a.s.l.;
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Measuring them all: Individual-based functional spatial patterns in mountain grasslands

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Prepared by Luciano L. M. De Benedictis, Stefano Chelli, Roberto Canullo, and Giandiego Campetella

One of the sampling quadrats, and its conversion into a point pattern, with different species in different colours and the size representing height. Height, leaf area, and specific leaf area were measured for each individual.
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How does fire exclusion affect the belowground biomass of tropical open ecosystems?

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Prepared by Juliana Teixeira, Lara Souza, Aline Bombo & Soizig Le Sradic

Post-fire differences at Cerrado open savanna in central Brazil. The left side of A and B represented the unburnt plot. The right side of A represents the immediate post-fire conditions; and the right side of B represents three months after the last fire.
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Multiple effects of capybaras on vegetation suggest impending impacts of jaguar reintroduction

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Prepared by Ana Belen Avila, María Jose Corriale, Debora Di Francescantonio, Pablo I. Picca, Emiliano Donadio, Mario S. Di Bitetti, Agustín Paviolo, and Carlos De Angelo

Vegetation surveys on one of the excluded plots on San Alonso Island, Iberá National Park (Esteros del Iberá, Corrientes) (28°18’23.2 “S, 57°27’15.9 “W).
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Response of subalpine plant vegetation to snow cover duration quantified by in situ repeat photography

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Prepared by Miroslav Zeidler, Jan Šipoš, Marek Banaš, and Tomáš Václavík

Plants beneath the snow enjoy natural protection from freezing temperatures, while plants outside the snowfields must endure harsh weather conditions and temperature fluctuations. The northeast slope of Petrovy kameny Mt.
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Rarity and sparseness in plant communities: impact of minor species removal on beta diversity and canonical ordination

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Prepared by François Gillet, Adeline Rouzet, Daniel Borcard and Pierre Legendre

Contrasting effects of the progressive removal of rare or sparse species on the biodiversity assessment of a vegetation dataset (dune meadows in The Netherlands). Credit to authors.

To disentangle the role of rarity (low regional frequency) and sparseness (low local abundance), we applied to six vegetation datasets a progressive removal of either the least frequent or the least locally abundant species.…

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Vegetation of the southern slopes of Mt. Damavand, Iran: a comprehensive phytosociological classification

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Prepared by Amir Talebi, Denys Vynokurov, Farideh Attar, Jürgen Dengler, and Alireza Naqinezhad

Thorn-cushion grasslands of Senecioni iranici-Astragaletum macrosemii Noroozi et al. ex Noroozi in Talebi et al. 2024. 3900 m a.s.l. Photo credit: Amir Talebi

The Alborz Mountains, home to Damavand Peak—the highest point in the Middle East—are a biodiversity hotspot in southwest Asia.…

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IranVeg – The Vegetation Database of Iran: Current status and the way forward

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Prepared by Soghra Ramzi, Jalil Noroozi, Hamid Gholizadeh, Behnam Hamzeh’ee, Younes Asri, Amir Talebi, Halime Moradi, Parastoo Mahdavi, Seyedeh Saeedeh Tamjidi Eramsadati, Somayeh Zarezadeh, Asghar Kamrani, Omid Esmailzadeh, Atefeh Ghorbanalizadeh, Maral Bashirzadeh, Adel Jalili, Jaber Sharifi, Aiuob Moradi, Mahmoud Bidarlord, Soudeh Siadati, Sajad Lotfi, Farideh Attar, Maedeh Mohammadpour Darzi, Zeynab Kazemi Gorji, Sharyan Ghasemi, Mehdi Dehghani, Soroor Rahmanian, Ali Esmailpoor, Anvar Sanaei, Sahar Ghafari, Parvaneh Ashouri, Arshad Ali, Abdolrahman Dehghani, Somayeh Hosseini, Hajar Hamedani, Samereh Tirgan, Mohaddeseh Maghsoudi, Aliakbar Daneshi, Javad Eshaghi Rad, Mohammadreza Eslami, Mahdis Ramezani, Zahra Mehrabi, Zahra Naqipour, Nadia Naseri, Hossein Bahari, Maryam Ashouri, Narges Vasefi, Seyed Abbas Seyedakhlaghi, Hamid Ejtehadi, Mohammad Farzam, Somayeh Mokhtari, Morteza Djamali, Elias Ramezani, Habib Zare, Nahid Masudian, Raheleh Alinejad, Mojdeh Kasiri, Mahboubeh Sadat Hosseini, Masoumeh Raeisi, Hooman Ravanbakhsh, Franz Essl, Hamid Jalilvand, Mehdi Abedi, Khadijeh Bahalkeh, and Alireza Naqinezhad

Spatial distribution of IranVeg plots across Iran.
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