Preparations are underway for field season 2024, promising to be the biggest one yet in the project!
Both Harry and Josh will be spending 3 months over the summer at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve conducting plant surveys, plant trait measurements along with a whole host of other sampling to undertake.
Josh will be largely be focusing on his mechanistic enemy release or “MechER” experiment, which is in its final year. The experiment examines the role of plant pathogens in regulating plant populations and whether release from these pathogens can explain the success of non-native species. The first year of results from this experiment were excitingly published in Journal of Ecology last month.
Harry will be largely focusing on a monoculture experiment set-up two years ago on the grounds of the big biodiversity experiment. In this experiment, we have planted a range of commonly found species at the field site in single-species plots that we will now use to measure a whole host of different aboveground and belowground traits. This data will be essential as we look to further develop models that can predict the impact of non-native species on native biodiversity.
Alongside these experiments, we also have our sights set on some additional data ‘goodies’, including measures of soil functioning and fungal communities across the different experiments. There will also be a resurvey of E275, an experiment set up by Jane in 2012 to explore the drivers of plant colonisation, the first results of which were published last year.
All in all it promises to be a busy but exciting summer of fieldwork!
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