November – December 2016

Congratulations to Margie and collaborator Daniel Stouffer for their joint successes with an ARC discovery grant and a Marsden grant this year. Their joint ARC grant (How do complex species interactions mediate plant community diversity?) is for empirical studies in Western Australia on how higher-order and facilitative interactions impact community diversity. Their Marsden grant (Quantifying the importance of non-additive competition in diverse natural plant communities) will use a variety of datasets to expand theory and quantitive tools for incorporating higher-order interactions into coexistence models.

Tim, Tori, and Maia had a great ESA Australia meeting. This year the meeting was held in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Timothy Staples completed a presentation of his research entitled ‘Diversity is not a strong driver of productivity in Australian forest plantings’ which examined the relationship between diversity and productivity, especially in woody systems.

Tori Reynolds presented findings from her research called ‘The distribution of pollinators across mosaic agricultural landscapes.’ Her project aim was to explore the role of wild pollinators to native plant communities in highly fragmented agricultural landscapes of South-West Western Australia.

Maia Raymundo did a poster presentation titled ‘Mechanisms limiting seed recruitment in a novel ecosystem.’ Maia’s study involves a two-part process: (i) identifying whether plant populations in novel annual plant communities of Western Australia’s York Gum woodlands are seed or microsite limited and (ii) determining the influence of biotic and abiotic factors in post-dispersal seed recruitment at the microsite scale. For her poster presentation, Maia won the Australian Flora foundations best poster award. A huge congratulations to you Maia for your award and to Tori and Tim for their outstanding presentations!

Lab Master’s alumnus Emma Ladouceur has just had her Master’s research accepted for publication at Restoration Ecology. Congratulations Emma!

Our most recent publication
Ladouceur, E. and Mayfield, M. M. In Press. Assessment of technical approaches for accelerating the recovery of Australia’s Central Highland endangered tussock grasslands. Restoration Ecology.

 

July – October 2016

Another successful Western Australian field season has now come to an end. Maia Raymundo, Stephanie Creer, Tori Reynolds and Trace Martyn all undertook independent research projects over the past three months within the York Gum – Jam woodlands located in the WA wheat belt. Congratulations to you all. A special thanks to Catherine Bowler must also be made for volunteering her time to assist with the field projects. For further information regarding the projects head over the current lab members page and check out a more detailed description of their areas of research.

A huge congratulations are in order for Margie Mayfield who has been awarded the inaugural Women in Research Citation Awards presented by Thomson Reuters IP & Science. The award recognises and celebrates the achievements of researchers from Australia across all fields of research in science, social science and humanities.

In addition, Margie has been recognised as one of a very limited number of ecologists included on the Thomson Reuters Web of Science global list of Highly Cited Researchers. The compendium of researchers identifies individuals that contributed markedly high numbers of top-cited papers within their respective fields and places her among the top 1% most cited researchers in the world.

Finally Margie has been awarded an ARC Discovery grant (with Daniel Stouffer) on the importance of higher-order species interactions for predicting local patterns of biological diversity. Great work Margie!

Our most recent publications
Mayfield, M. M. 2016. Restoration of tropical forests requires more than just planting trees, a lot more… Applied Vegetation Science 19: 553-554.

Kenyon, T., Mayfield, M. M., Monteith, G., and Menéndez, R. 2016. The effects of land use change on native dung beetle diversity and function in Australia’s wet tropics. Austral Ecology 41(7):797-808.
(Tanya Kenyon is a former honours student – now doing her PhD with Pete Mumby).

Charles, L., Dwyer, J. M., and Mayfield, M. M.  In Press (accepted July 18, 2016). Rainforest seed rain into abandoned tropical Australian pasture is dependent on adjacent rainforest structure and extent. Austral Ecology doi:10.1111/aec.12426

Wainwright, C. E., Dwyer, J. M., Hobbs, R. J. Mayfield, M. M. In Press (Accepted 20/09/2016). Diverse outcomes of species interactions in an invaded annual plant community. Journal of Plant Ecology

Wainwright, C. E., Dwyer, J. M. and Mayfield, M. M. In Press (Accepted 25/10/2016). Effects of exotic annual grass litter and local environmental gradients on annual plant community structure. Biological Invasions

 

April – June 2016

It is with bittersweet sentiments that the Mayfield lab bid farewell to Claire Wainwright and Loy Xingwen. Claire recently relocated to the University of Washington to work with collaborator Dr Janneke HilleRisLambers on the Western Australian annual plant coexistence project. She is also going to start a postdoctoral position there in the Terrestrial Restoration Ecology Lab with Dr Jon Bakker investigating sagebrush community dynamics.

Our previous lab manager, Loy Xingwen has been offered a PhD position with Emory University, USA, under the supervision of Ass. Prof. Berry Brosi. We all thank them both for the invaluable contributions they made to the Mayfield Lab and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.

The lab manager position has now been placed in very capable hands of Lachlan Charles. Lachlan recently represented the Mayfield lab at the 53^rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC 2016) held in Le Corum, Montpellier, France. Lachlan presented his research evaluating the factors affecting seed rain under remnant pasture trees within tropical regions. Great work Lachlan!

A collaborative research paper including members of the Mayfield lab has been recently published in Oikos and is an exceptional first publication for lead author Timothy Staples. Based on research he conducted during his Honours, the paper identifies and evaluates the potential mechanisms of coexistence in two closely related annual forbs found within the diverse annual plant communities located in the Western Australian Wheat Belt.

Congratulations are in order for Maia Raymundo and Tori Reynolds who have both recently completed their PhD confirmations.

In other news, Margie Mayfield and Trace Martyn had the opportunity to join the annual lab retreat with Daniel Stouffer and his lab members from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The opportunity provided Margie and Trace to exchange ideas and inspiration with our colleagues across the pond.

In June, Margie attended the 2^nd iDiv working group meeting entitled “Expanding Neo-Chessonian coexistence theory towards a stochastic theory for species rich communities” in Leipzig, Germany.

Finally, many of the members of the Mayfield Lab are gearing up to head out for another field season amongst the incredible York Gum – Jam Woodlands scattered throughout the wheat belt in Western Australia. To keep updated with the projects being undertaken, the locations visited and the plants and animals encountered follow us on the Mayfield Lab news page or check out the Mayfield Lab twitter account (@MayfieldLabUQ).

Our most recent publication
Staples, T.L., Dwyer, J.M., Loy, X. and Mayfield, M.M. 2016. Potential mechanisms of coexistence in closely related forbs. Oikos.

 

January – March 2016

We welcome four new members to the Mayfield lab this year! Stephanie Creer (PhD candidate) will examine the ecology of exotic bromus grass and how this species impacts diversity in annual wildflower communities in Western Australia. Working on the same system, Trace Martyn (PhD candidate) will look at higher order interactions among co-occuring annual species, using both field studies and ecological modelling to determine how they influence community assembly. Chrissy Elmer (Honours) will be growing Tasmanian Eucalyptus species in glasshouse experiments, and is interested to see whether there is a trade-off between drought tolerance and competitive ability. Catherine Bowler will work on a third-year undergrad project looking at how differences in root traits affect competition among exotic and native annual plants.

In other news, Margie Mayfield recently presented at Species on the Move Conference (SOTM2016) in Hobart, Tasmania. There, she met up with American collaborators Janneke Hille Ris Lambers and Leander Anderegg. Leander then stayed in Tasmania for another three weeks for a bit of fieldwork. This is for a study on Eucalyptus trees, examining how within and among species trait variation may be used to explain species distributions in current and future climate scenarios. Leander’s Tasmania field crew included Mayfield lab members Chrissy Elmer and Loy Xingwen. The crew was graciously hosted by collaborator Mark Hovenden and his lab at the University of Tasmania.