Josh Brian
@drjoshbrian.bsky.social
Post-doc at King's College London | Community ecology | Invasion biology | Symbiosis and Parasitism | Running | Views my own
Now online at PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
pnas.org
Nat Walker-Hale@phylonatworks.bsky.social · 8mo agoDelighted to share new work with a great bunch of collaborators using ancient DNA to study melon domestication www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Thrilled to see this out in Ecology Letters with @janecatford.bsky.social and others! We did (to our knowledge) the first experimental test of the Evolutionary Imbalance hypothesis, showing species from highly diverse home ranges are more likely to invade! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Plants That Evolved Under High Phylogenetic Diversity Have Higher Invasion Success, Particularly in Undisturbed Communities
We show that species from phylogenetically diverse home ranges can colonise even undisturbed sites, highlighting evolutionary imbalance as a potentially influential driver of asymmetric invasion patt...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Main use of AI = an easy way to quickly produce visual jokes
So pleased to see this out after a massive team effort! We did (to our knowledge) the first complete meta-analysis of biotic resistance since Levine et al. 2004, pairing this with models exploring the eco-evolutionary dynamics of biotic resistance! Dive in ⬇️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Dynamics of biotic resistance to plant invasions
Biotic resistance, the reduction in invasion success caused by native communities, plays an important role in the long-term dynamics of biological invasions. A large body of empirical research on bio...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
🧪🌍 🚨📄published *Interactive effects of plant-mediated controls and substrate quality on fungal necromass decay* 🍄 led by the amazing Katie Beidler, with many excellent scientist from University of Minnesota onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... ⬇️Short summary in thread below🧵⬇️
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
🧪🌾 New article in @aobp.bsky.social revealing that competitive environment, rather than herbivory, can drive short-term phytochemical responses in some plant species. Full #openaccess 👉 doi.org/qmwx @drjoshbrian.bsky.social @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social #PlantScience
Fueling my back to work 2026 with a balanced diet (lemongrass tea and Monster Munch)
Just in time for Xmas, great to have this out in AoB Plants! Short-term changes in phytochemistry are driven more by interspecific competitors than by consumers. The role of plant-plant competition may have been underestimated in studies of plant chemistry to date. academic.oup.com/aobpla/artic...
Plant neighbours, not consumers, drive intraspecific phytochemical changes of two grassland species in a field experiment
Plants use chemicals to respond to consumers, competitors, and the wider environment. Most work has focused on consumers in driving the diversity of these
academic.oup.com
V. pleased to have this out in Ecology @esajournals.bsky.social - evidence for limiting similarity vs. pre-adaptation (Darwin's naturalisation conundrum) vary across very fine spatial scales and when using phylogenetic vs. functional metrics! esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Evidence for environmental filtering and limiting similarity depends on spatial scale and dissimilarity metrics
Darwin's theory of natural selection provides two seemingly contradictory hypotheses for explaining the success of biological invasions: (1) the pre-adaptation hypothesis posits that introduced speci....
esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Such a cool network! Can't wait to see the empirical results start coming out 😍
BugNet@bugnet.bsky.social · last yr.Our first paper from the Bug-Network (BugNet) is out! 🎉 BugNet is a global network studying how invertebrate herbivores and fungal pathogens shape plant diversity & ecosystem functioning worldwide. The paper reports on the methods of the experimental part: 📄 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Really nice to have our recent article featured by @biogeographynews.bsky.social!
Biogeography.News@biogeographynews.bsky.social · last yr.🆕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...
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
🚨📃🧪 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
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
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
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...
science.org
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
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 · 2y agoWe'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:
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
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
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