Hedgerows are a threatened component of agricultural landscapes that illustrate the relationships between biodiversity and farmland management. This study explores the effect of both the distance and management of hedgerows on ant communities, using taxonomic and functional diversities. We observed various links that allowed us to highlight the influence of hedgerows on ant communities and the agroecological services and disservices they could promote in farmlands.

Not all nutrients (C, N, P) are processed in the same way: some nutrient forms hold power dynamics over others for efficient assimilation in biological systems. Rings of Power connect the ecology and metabolism of aquatic ecosystems, providing means to control nutrient cycles in waters through higher trophic levels (aquatic consumers).

Urban soil bacteria are important for human health, plants, and the environment. We studied bacterial communities under city trees and found that, like in non-urban soils, bacterial diversity is affected by soil pH and water availability. However, bacterial communities in cities can show quite a lot of variation between locations, and we suspect that they are therefore far more affected by historic construction. Our findings highlight the importance of paying attention to soil bacteria for city planning.

Fungal ecology is often studied using short fragments of Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). These DNA fragments can approximate fungal species using different computational methods but the best choice is not clear. We analysed large, simulated fungal communities to overcome the limitations of experimental work and compare different analysis workflows. Our results identify the analysis choices which give the closest match to reality. This should help guide study design in fungal ecology.

In studies of the germination of species with indehiscent fruits containing a single seed, it is often assumed that all ripe fruits contain a seed capable of germinating. This is not always the case, and through experiments with Salvia rosmarinus, we demonstrate that using data from seeded fruits allows for more robust and reliable conclusions to be drawn about the factors affecting reproduction or germination than when data from all fruits are used.

Nearby plants are often genetically related, which can influence their reproductive success. We studied how neighbourhood affects reproduction in Moricandia moricandioides by measuring floral traits, and male and female reproductive success. Neighbouring plants influenced both female and male fitness components, although the direction and magnitude of these effects varied depending on floral display traits. These results reveal that genetic neighbourhoods can shape plant reproduction.

Flower morphology, playing a key role in determining which visitors are pollinators, is known to vary among species and cultivars within species. Blueberry flowers have morphology that limits access to rewards, constraining pollination to specific species. We identified the main pollinators of several blueberry cultivars, along with related visitors and visit rates to flower morphology. Our results indicate that cultivar flower morphology and pollinator proboscis size are important in blueberry pollination.