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We struck out in the field today. That happens. Long story short: site still under about two feet of snow. Flat tire. Broken lug nut. But, the view was still beautiful. And note the "watermelon" snow, which is caused by an algae.  Josefine defended her cool thesis on the effects of temperature and dominant plant species on plant community structure in the Alps. Not surprisingly, she did a wonderful job.  It's been a while since I've posted here because life has intervened. We've now (mostly) relocated to the University of Vermont. It's taken time to get settled, but things are great. Especially now that I've been skiing a few times.  Niklas presented and defended his thesis on urban ant macroecology this morning. It's a unique dataset that's going to lead to a really cool paper very soon, we promise!  We're wrapping up an incredible field season in the Rockies. We worked on WARM. We flew drones. We worked on SALT with Mike Kaspari. We worked on ants. We worked on plants, microbes, traits, fungi, flies, rodents (maybe), hoppers, deer, etc. etc. One more week, then back to Copenhagen for writing, thinking, teaching, collaborating, and getting hygge. I'm happy to announce that the Carlsberg Foundation has just awarded us funding for our ongoing project looking at the effects of warming and dominant plant species in montane plant communities around the world. We'll be searching for a postdoc position in the very near future, so stay tuned.  Both Tad Fukami and Amy Zanne arrived to start sabbaticals at CMEC. It's going to be a lot of fun having both of them on the hallway.
Emilie Elten presented and defended her MSc thesis, and did an outstanding job. Now, we turn it into a manuscript! More soon on climate, invasions, and global patterns of ant diversity.  A new paper, led by the wonderful Anibal Pauchard and c0-authored with a stellar team is just out in Biological Invasions. Give it a read, if you want to know more about the susceptibility of mountains to invasions and ongoing global change.  The Warm Ants team has a new paper out in BMC Genomics, led by John Stanton-Geddes.  Noelia Barrios and Mariano Rodriguez-Cabal now have a new WARM site up and running in Patagonia. Can't wait to go visit again and to see the data. Along with David Nogues, Dan Simberloff, and Carsten Rahbek, Nate has written an essay about rewilding in the current issue of Current Biology. It urges some caution and careful thinking. You can read it here. And read about here, and here. Or you can watch this cool video with David Nogues-Bravo.
Lab alumn Katie Stuble has accepted a position as an amazing research scientist at Holden Arboretum, recent PhD Lacy Chick is now doing a postdoc with super Sarah Diamond, and postdoc Israel Del Toro has accepted an Assistant Professor position at lovely Lawrence University. Well done, all! And here's to a productive and happy 2016 .
We have a new paper in New Phytologist, led by the amazing Sara Kuebbing. The paper examines the above- and below-ground effects of plant diversity, but some plants are native and some aren't. It's pretty cool. Read it!
Nate is back in Tennessee, for Lacy's PhD defense. It's great being back and seeing old friends and old favorite haunts.
Emily Meineke from NCSU is visiting this week. She's talking about her cool work linking urban ecology, climate change, plant-insect interactions, and citizen science today at 11.00.  Check out this new paper in Journal of Biogeography led by Xiaoting Xu. The key result is that the influence of climate (and perhaps climate change) on oak diversity varies geographically.
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