Shada Mountains in Saudi Arabia, separated by Maleel Wadi into twin mountains (i.e., Shada Alalah and Shada Asfal), are rich in biodiversity. We investigated the diversity of endemics and endangered species of the mountains based on the data collected from 38 stands falling in 8 elevational zones...

Invasive plants have wide-ranging impacts on native systems including reducing native plant richness and altering soil chemistry, microbes, and nutrient cycling. Increasingly, these effects are found to linger long after removal of the invader. We examined how soil chemistry, bacterial communities, ...

In tropical forests, climbing vines are known to affect forest structure, composition, and processes, but the role of climbing vines in temperate forests is less well understood. In the tropics, climbing vine abundance appears to be increasing in most forest ecosystems, and a key driver of this...

Climate change scientists predict an increased intensity of storms (cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons) in the future. Intense storms facilitate plant invasion by increasing resource availability, reducing competition and increasing opportunities for propagule dispersal. We document here the state...

Invader traits (including plant growth form) may play an important, and perhaps overlooked, role in determining macroscale patterns of biological invasions and therefore warrant greater consideration in future investigations aimed at understanding these patterns. To assess this need, we used...

Spontaneous vegetation established on the city wall constitutes a characteristic greenspace within the urban matrix. Nanjing city wall of the Ming Dynasty (NJCW), as an extraordinary huge defensive masonry project, was built in 1393, the extant, basically intact ancient city wall is 25.09 km long,...

In many forest ecosystems, fire is critical in maintaining indigenous plant communities, but can either promote or arrest the spread of invasive species depending on their regeneration niche and resprouting ability. We examined the effects of cutting and burning treatments on the vegetative...

This paper documents the colonization of the roots of Celastrus orbiculatus by endomycorrhizal fungi in field-collected specimens in New England. The presence of endomycorrhizal fungi in the roots of C. orbiculatus in its introduced range may assist this species in its successful colonization of...

Although impacts generated by gaps can affect vegetation, few studies have addressed these impacts in the Atlantic Forest. Our aim was to investigate the effects of pathways of varying widths on vegetation structure and composition, considering dispersal syndromes, diversity, life forms,...

Question: Lianas depend on support to reach optimal growing conditions. They can infest trees unevenly, and host selection may depend on functional characteristics of the potential hosts, such as growth rate, bark type or tree architecture. In this context we hypothesized that (1) simple proximity...