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Writing / Irene Vega
Rey Juan Carlos University researcher Angela Illuminati has received the Harper Award (John L. Harper Early Career Researcher Award). This award is given each year to the best article in the Journal of Ecology by an early career author at the beginning of his professional career. The researcher has received this award for her work CoordinationCoordination between the depth of water absorption and the economic spectrum of the leaf in a Mediterranean scrub.
Understanding the functional strategies of plants related to the use of water and nutrients is especially relevant in arid environments where the low availability of soil resources represents an important limiting factor for their survival and, therefore, is the main driver of competition. and the coexistence of species. The work carried out by the URJC researcher provides a new perspective on the functional strategies of plants related to the use of water and nutrients in arid environments.
“Our results suggest a possibly unavoidable coordination between the depth of soil water uptake and nutrient use strategies in arid environments. In particular, we found that a greater use of surface water, richer in nutrients, favors an acquisitive strategy of rapid use of nutrients. On the contrary, deeper water absorption, with low nutrient content, favors a more conservative strategy, that is, a slower use of nutrients, explains Angela Illuminati.
This article is part of his doctoral research. From this study, to obtain a more complete functional perspective on water and nutrient use strategies, they also measured root functional traits. “Finally, we analyze the role of these traits in plant-plant and plant-microbe interactions in the soil (articles in preparation), integrating that information with the results of the first chapter published from the thesis, where we identified patterns of underground diversity through new molecular techniques that allow us to identify plant species from mixtures of roots extracted from the soil”.
a promising career
Angela Illuminati grew up in the Apennines, in central Italy. During her first academic years at the university, her undergraduate thesis mentor encouraged her curiosity and she became passionate about plant ecology. She specialized in this field during her master's degree at the University of Bologna (Italy) and, after short stays in different research centers in Europe, she began her doctoral thesis in Spain at the Rey Juan Carlos University. During her PhD research, she investigated subterranean plant-plant and plant-soil interactions in semi-arid Mediterranean environments. She completed her doctorate with honors in September 2022 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Biodiversity and Conservation Area of the URJC.
Awarded by the BES, the oldest ecological society in the world
The BES awards are for the best article by an early career researcher in seven of its journals: Journal of Applied Ecology, Ecological Solutions and Evidence, functional ecology, People and Nature, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, Journal of Ecology y Journal of Animal Ecology.
Winning articles are selected by the journals' senior editors and prizes will be presented at the BES annual meeting in Belfast at the end of the year.
Awardees receive a £250 prize, BES membership, a one-year subscription to the respective magazine and free attendance at the BES Annual Meeting to present their work and receive their award from the society president.
This year's winning entries cover topics as diverse as mapping mosquito-borne diseases, the importance of threatened mosses in tropical montane cloud forests, and mapping areas sensitive to plant invasions.
La British Ecological Society, founded in 1913, is the oldest ecological society in the world. The BES promotes the study of ecology through a variety of scientific literature, funding and events, educational initiatives, and political work. The society has more than 7.000 members from almost 130 different countries.