Our research focuses on the population dynamics of plants and how they are influenced by impacts of natural disturbances and global environmental change. We are particularly interested in the interactive effects of fire, grazing and drought in grasslands and woodlands in southern Australia, and how climate change, fragmentation and shrub encroachment affect ecosystems.

Sunday, 4 March 2012

Recent papers in the Lab - 2011

Our Lab primarily studies aspects of plant conservation ecology. Most of our work occurs in south-eastern Australia where there are many challenges to the conservation of biota: habitat fragmentation, changing climate, invasion by non-native species and altered disturbance regimes. Currently, I have students working on a variety of themes including multi-decadal vegetation dynamics, the role of endogenous and exogenous disturbance on species diversity, theories that underpin species coexistence and community assembly and plant invasions.

We've had a moderately productive 2011, as evidenced by the publications that have come out of the Lab. I thought I'd put links to them here to make them more accessible. Click on the link and that should take you to the journal website where you'll hopefully be able to download the PDF.


  1. Adler et al.. 2011. Productivity is a poor predictor of plant species richness. Science 333: 1750-1753.
  2. Briggs, A.L. & Morgan, J.W. 2011. Seed characteristics and soil surface patch type interact to affect germination of semi-arid woodland species. Plant Ecology 212: 91-103.
  3. Firn et al. 2011. Abundance of introduced species at home predicts abundance away in herbaceous communities. Ecology Letters 14: 274-281.
  4. Geddes, L.S., Lunt, I.D., Smallbone, L.T. & Morgan, J.W. 2011. Old-field colonization by trees and shrubs following land-use change: could this be Victoria’s largest example of landscape recovery? Ecological Management and Restoration 12: 31-36.
  5. Morgan, J.W., Cutler, S.C. & Wong, N.K. 2011. Life-form species-area curves in temperate eucalypt woodlands. Plant Ecology 212: 1047-1055.
  6. Schultz, N.L., Morgan, J.W. & Lunt, I.D. 2011. Effects of grazing exclusion on plant species richness and phytomass accumulation vary across a regional productivity gradient. Journal of Vegetation Science 22: 130-142.
  7. Venn, S.E., Green, K., Pickering, C.M. & Morgan, J.W. 2011. Using plant functional traits to explain community composition across a strong environmental filter in Australian alpine snowpatches. Plant Ecology 212: 1491-1499.
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