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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Sep 5

Really nice to have our recent article featured by @biogeographynews.bsky.social!

Biogeography.News @biogeographynews.bsky.social · Sep 3

🆕ECR feature: @drjoshbrian.bsky.social, postdoc researcher at King's College, London, reviewed the use of scale terms in plant biology🌱- highly relevant for biogeographical studies! Read about the interesting results Josh and his colleagues found: biogeographynews.org/2025/09/03/e...

ECR feature: Josh Brian

Josh is a Postdoc researcher at King’s College London. He is a community ecologist with special focus on plant invasions. Here, Josh shares his recent work which reviews the use of scale terms in p…

biogeographynews.org

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Aug 26

Great to see this out in Limnology&Oceanography @aslo.org - we provide the first global meta-analysis of ecosystem services provided by freshwater bivalves! One key message is that native species much better at providing services than invaders!

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A global meta‐analysis of ecological functions and regulating ecosystem services of freshwater bivalves

Freshwater bivalves are globally distributed, diverse, and common in benthic communities. Many taxa, particularly in the most species-rich order, Unionida, are declining due to anthropogenic stressor...

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Josh Brian

Seraina Cappelli @serainacappelli.bsky.social · Jun 30

🚨📃🧪 New paper out: "Impacts of diverse undersown cover crops on seasonal soil microbial properties". Rashmi Shrestha used the #TWINWIN experiment to show that undersowing crops with diverse plant mixtures, particularly including legumes has beneficial effects on soil microbial life and function 1/6

Aerial view on the 60 plots of the TWINWIN experiment surrounded by grass and agricultural fields. The plots vary in color that represent the different undersown treatments. In the background is a road, buildings and forests. The sky is blue with some white clouds.

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · May 12

Expertly led by a v. talented undergrad and funded by a
@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social undergrad research fellowship. So grateful to work in an institution providing funding for these sorts of projects!

Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · May 12

We actually found that the areas referred to by single scale terms varied by an average of 4.7 orders of magnitude across the plant ecology literature!! This has huge implications for comparing between studies based on their scale terms, and for understanding scale dependence.

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · May 12

Thrilled to see this out @jvegsci.bsky.social! We looked at spatial scale terms in plant community ecology - terms like 'local' or 'regional'. The implication is that these terms convey ecological info and so be fairly consistent across studies. But are they?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Lost in Space: When Spatial Scale Terms Blur Actual Study Size in Plant Community Ecology

Scale terms, which include both ecological (e.g., ‘local’, ‘regional’) and methodological (e.g., ‘plot’, ‘quadrat’) characteristics are frequently used in plant community ecology. We show that the ar...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Josh Brian

Nat Walker-Hale @phylonatworks.bsky.social · May 6

Excited to share a new paper with Sandra Guerrero-Rubio and @docbroc.bsky.social on the convergent evolution of betalains, now published in @newphyt.bsky.social! nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/.... A 🧵

Multiple transitions to high l‐DOPA 4,5‐dioxygenase activity reveal molecular pathways to convergent betalain pigmentation in Caryophyllales

Many specialized metabolic pathways have evolved convergently in plants, but distinguishing multiple origins from alternative evolutionary scenarios can be difficult. Here, we explore the evolution .....

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Apr 25

Stuff like this is why I love ecology - one of the coolest natural history papers I have read in years...

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hawaiian caterpillar patrols spiderwebs camouflaged in insect prey’s body parts

Lepidoptera is the most herbivorous of all the insect orders, with predatory caterpillars globally comprising less than 0.13% of the nearly 200,000 moth and butterfly species. Here, we report a specie...

www.science.org

Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Apr 4

The blog about our Harper Prize-shortlisted paper is now up @journalofecology.bsky.social! Read on for a summary of what we found, and what got me into (and keeps me in) ecology!

jecologyblog.com/2025/03/26/j...

Joshua Brian: Release from aboveground enemies increases seedling survival in grasslands

2024 HARPER PRIZE SHORTLIST: For the next two weeks, we are featuring the articles shortlisted for the 2024 Harper Prize. The Harper Prize is an annual award for the best early …

jecologyblog.com

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Mar 20

So excited to see my paper on the shortlist for the Harper Prize, amongst some amazing work!! (Definitely lots to add to my reading list!)

(You can find my paper here: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....)

Journal of Ecology @journalofecology.bsky.social · Mar 20

We're pleased to announce the shortlist for this year's Harper Prize. 🏆

Each year, we award the Harper Prize to the best paper in the journal by an early career author.

See the full list here:

2024 Harper Prize Shortlist: Early Career Research Award

The Harper Prize is awarded annually by the British Ecological Society for the best paper in Journal of Ecology by an early career author. We are pleased to present th…

buff.ly

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Mar 19

Pleased that my 2023 paper on enemy release was one of the top-10 cited articles in Ecology Letters from that year! If you missed it, check it out again here:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A mechanistic framework of enemy release

The enemy release hypothesis as an explanation for (a) increased exotic performance is the product of (b) three factors, which are modulated by (c) seven contexts. Three factors: 1) the difference in...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Feb 26

V. pleased to see this published! Priority effects are important in determining host-parasite dynamics. Here, I show there are different types of priority effect, and they have very different consequences for host populations...

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Pre‐ and postinfection priority effects have contrasting outcomes for parasite prevalence in host populations

Parasite species frequently co-occur more or less than expected by chance. These nonrandom co-occurrence patterns can be driven by pre- or postinfection priority effects: parasites are more or less l...

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Josh Brian @drjoshbrian.bsky.social · Feb 10

Very pleased to have played a small part in this recent paper about sampling mass mortality events now out in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social
(using freshwater mussels as an example) - something regrettably gaining more and more relevance!

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Sampling mass mortality events to enable diagnoses: A protocol using freshwater mussels

Many taxa around the globe are threatened by often unexplained mass mortality events (MMEs), which can decimate populations and compromise key ecosystem functions. One example of a highly threaten...

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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