Treading through the literature - some highlights from 2018 thus far

In any scientific field, staying abreast of the scientific literature that is constantly emerging is a full-time job.  Not to mention, reading older, still-relevant work.  It can feel like one is treading water to simply stay afloat.  Here, I summarize some of the my recent favorites to emerge in the field of tropical forest ecology, thus far in 2018.  I categorize the papers into three groups related to my interests - roots, tropical forest dynamics & functional traits, and forest modeling, plus a fourth for miscellaneous cool stuff.  

Roots: 
Research on roots is rapidly gaining headway, which is encouraging, as I was bit hesitant to focusing my PhD below-ground initially. 

• Adriana Corrales, Terry Henkle and Matthew Smith had a nice Tansley Review in New Phytologist on the state of knowledge of ectomycorrhizal fungi as they relate to tropical ecosystems.  see article here.
• Interested more in arbuscular fungi and their symbiotic relationships with plants?  A very nice review of this evolutionary do-si-do emerged in separate Tansley Reveiw by British- and French- affiliated authors (led by Christine Strullu-Derrien).  check it out here.
• Amandine Erktan, Luke McCormack, and Catherine Roumet edited a special issue on roots in Plant & Soil, with many nice works.  See all the articles here.
• In March, roots took center stage in an article in led by Ziqing Ma and many other heavy-hitters from the root ecology world.  Ma et al. found that roots have evolved to become thinner over time, and that root evolution has radiated in the tropics to create the greatest degree of functional variation.  link to the article in Nature Letters here.
• Zhu Mao et al. had a nice study on root tensile strength, morphology and anatomy from 4 species of tropical trees at Xishangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in Annals of Botany here.
• Also appearing in the Annals of Botany, Marcin Zadworny et al. published a study linking root morphological traits of temperate trees to hydraulic strategies. check it out here 
• Additionally, the FRED (Oak Ridge National Lab's FINE ROOT ECOLOGICAL DATABASE) 2.0 is out.   via twitter: @Colleen_Iversen.  original publication here. 

Tropical Forest Dynamics & Functional Traits: 

• Top spot on the list goes to the special issue in Biotropica on the phenology of tropical trees / forests.  Edited by Katharine Abernethy, Irene Mendoza (her paper here), and Bryan Finegan. 
  • Emma Bush had a paper in there, as did Joe Wright (here), but I especially liked this paper by Colin A. Chapman et al. using long-term data from an African forest to illustrate how ENSO and solar radiation fail to completely predict patterns in fruiting and flowering, highlighting the need for further research into the phenology of tropical trees.    
• An instant favorite of mine was this recent work by Loorens Poorter.  It's sure to be a highly cited classic in no time.  
• Jie Yang et al. in Trends in Ecology & Evolution on trait-performance variability. study here. 
• Amy Zanne dissected some of the bio-geographic patterns in plant functional traits in this study. 
  • building on a favorite from late last year - Ian Wright Science - link here.
• At the beginning of the year, Bene Bachelot, had a nice study linking fungi to seedling dynamics in the Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot in Ecology.  link here.
• John B. Vincet et al. in JTE with a study on forest dynamics on unstable soil in a New Ginean forest dynamics plot link here.
• Rob Salaguro-Gomez and others produced a very nice cross-journal special issue on the application of functional traits to the population dynamics of various organisms.  link to BES special issue here.
  • I especially liked Ben Blonder's paper that measured many traits and environmental variables for an alpine plant community.  here.
• Hop on the con-specific negative density-dependence train:  several responses to Joseph LaManna's Science paper have emerged.  here & here, with respective responses, here & here.
  • also, Natalia Umaña and others had a paper on CNDD in Proceedings B. 
• Matteo Detto identifies changes in the abiotic environment that coincide with ENSO and increased phenological production at BCI, Panama. Nature Communications study here.  
• like Lianas?  Marco Visser had a very nice Journal of Ecology paper on liana-tree host-parasite dynamics. here.
• All the individual of a single species (Beilschmiedia roxburghiana)  in the Xishuanbanna 20-ha plot were genotyped confirming a genetic spatial structure consistent with density dependence and dispersal limitation.  study in Ecology Letters here.
• Cool study by Yi Jin on how the effects of topography and light can modulate to permit species co-existence in a Chinese forest.  Journal of Ecology article here. 

Modeling*: 

• check out Nate McDowell's Tansley Insight on tropical moist forest tree mortality.
  • don't want to read the paper? Check out Nate's talk at STRI Panama where he explains his paper.
• Sean Michealetz uses a Metabolic Theory framework to link photosyntheic prodution across scales in his Tansley Insight. 
• Integral projection models for tropical forest trees help forecast population dynamics out in this demonstrative study by Jessie Needham.  
• Tom Powell from the NGEE-Tropics team had this paper published on the Ecosystem Demography model. 

Miscellaneous cool stuff: ​

• Large Trees Rule!  A cross site comparative study from the CTFS ForestGEO plot newtwork (led by the Jim Lutz lab at Utah State University) illustrates just how imporant they are. link to Global Ecology and Biogeography.  
• Study confirms that Legumes dominate in dry and early-succesional forests.  check it out here.
• Study on rainfall interception by urban trees in the Jardin Botanico of San Juan, PR by Christopher Nytch.  here. 
• Two new ICTB (International Center for Tropical Botany) papers out on metabolomic approaches in tropical trees: 
  • One by Jason Vleminckx in Frontiers in Plant Science here.
  • and one by FIU's Diego Salazar in Nature Ecology & Evolution here.
• The effects of the 2016 El Niño drought on soil bio-geochemistry and gas flux at Luquillo were published in Nature Communications (Christine O'Connell et al.) here.
• PNAS meta-analysis led by Shihong Jia on herbivore exclusion experiments here.
• Y. MAHLI on the Anthropocene.  recommended read here. 
• The Shenzen Declaration on Plant Sciences (from December of last year, but still worthy of making the list).

*Admittedly, I am not a modeler, however I am gaining a deeper appreciation for that art.  

None of these lists are exhaustive, but rather a few of the papers which I have enjoyed reading over the last several months.  And, guaranteed there are more to come.  Please feel free to share some of your favorites in the comments.  
Happy reading! ♠️