On a more personal note, this was the last chapter of my PhD and also my first real experiment. I learned so much from collaborating with everyone at Princeton, UCLA and Sedgwick Reserve in CA.

For more detail, check out the preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Or check out @zachgold.bsky.social's upcoming ESA talk if you will be in Baltimore: events.rdmobile.com/Sessions/Det...

Overall, our results suggest that higher-order interactions can come about from the combination of spatial clustering and a competitive hierarchy. Because these two properties are prevalent in natural plant communities, higher-order interactions may be more common than previously thought.

We hypothesized that a competitive hierarchy might underlie these changes in fecundity. To test this, we came up with a metric that quantifies the difference in competitive effect for each background species. Background species that are more imbalanced produce larger higher-order interactions.

These observed higher-order interactions are correlated with changes in the traits of background competitors due to their spatial arrangement, suggesting a possible mechanistic underpinning for the shifts in interaction strength.

Differences in the fecundity of focal individuals therefore reveal the relative strength of intra to interspecific higher-order interactions.

Focal species fecundity changes as a result of the arrangement of competitors... in other words, we have found higher-order interactions!

In our experiment, we manipulated the spatial arrangement -- but not the number or identity -- of background species competing with focal individuals (see figure above). When competitors are clustered, they cannot engage in as many interspecific higher-order interactions as when they are mixed.

Happy to share a new preprint! W/ @zachgold.bsky.social, Haylee Oyler, Jonathan Levine and @nathanjbkraft.bsky.social. We use a spatially explicit experimental design to ask:

do higher-order interactions structure the dynamics of annual plant communities?

Link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵

Last year, I joined a brilliant group of researchers for a 3-week deep dive into host–microbe systems. Each week explored a different theme, led by inspiring lecturers.

I’m excited to share that videos of their talks — along with presentations by several team members — are now on YouTube:

Our article on the challenges and opportunities in studying host-microbe symbioses is now published in Cell Host & Microbe! @cp-cellhostmicrobe.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

URGENT! Contact your senators today to advocate to fund science agencies and programs!

The Senate Appropriations Committee & its subcommittees are writing appropriation bills for the federal FY26 budget now.

Here's how you can help: esa.org/esablog/2025...

New paper w/ Jonathan Levine and @exp-evoeco.bsky.social! We induced plastic responses in annual plants through early-life competition. These responses tended to make subsequent species interactions stronger and coexistence less likely.
Link: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

If you’re a prospective graduate student interested in quantitative or computational biology, consider applying to the QCB Scholars program at Princeton!

More info here: lsi.princeton.edu/education/qc...

Please share widely!