Isaac Towers

UNSW Sydney | UNSW · School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES)

Future changes in climate, together with rising atmospheric , may reorganise the functional composition of ecosystems. Without long‐term historical data, predicting how traits will respond to environmental conditions—in particular, water availability—remains a challenge. While eco‐evolutionary optimality theory (EEO) can provide insight into how pl...

Climate change is expected to bring about changes in precipitation and temperature regimes that, together with rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, will likely reorganise the functional trait composition of ecosystems. Predicting plant trait responses to emerg- ing environmental conditions including, in particular, water availability, is a tremen...

Mean annual precipitation (MAP) plays an undisputed role in determining the spatial distribution of the vegetative ecosystems on Earth. Nevertheless, the relationship between MAP and plant functional traits remains unclear. Here, using AusTraits - the largest harmonised continent-specific collection of trait values globally, we test the relationshi...

Ecological restoration outcomes are highly variable, undermining efforts to recover biodiversity and ecosystem functions. One poorly understood source of variability is ‘year effects’—interannual variation in environmental conditions during the first year of restoration that alter successional trajectories of plant communities. There have been few...

It is well known that species interactions between exotic and native species are important for determining the success of biological invasions and how influential exotic species become in invaded communities. The strength and type of interactions between species can substantially vary, however, from negative and detrimental to minimal or even posit...

Natural systems contain more complexity than is accounted for in models of modern coexistence theory. Coexistence modelling often disregards variation arising from stochasticity in biological processes, heterogeneity among individuals and plasticity in trait values. However, these unaccounted‐for sources of uncertainty are likely to be ecologically...

Environmentally cued germination may play an important role in promoting coexistence in Mediterranean annual plant systems if it causes niche differentiation across heterogeneous microsite conditions. In this study, we tested how microsite conditions experienced by seeds in the field and light conditions in the laboratory influenced germination in...

Environmentally-cued germination may play an important role in promoting coexistence in Mediterranean annual plant systems if it causes niche differentiation across heterogenous microsite conditions. In this study, we tested how microsite conditions experienced by seeds in the field and light conditions in the laboratory influenced germination in t...

1. Passively regenerating native vegetation presents a cost‐effective opportunity to sequester carbon and reinstate habitat in heavily cleared agricultural landscapes. 2. However, in some cases a few woody species recolonize in dense, low‐diversity stands that are slow to self‐thin. 3. Restoration thinning of over‐dominant species has been proposed...

Coexistence in spatially varying environments is theorized to be promoted by a variety of mechanisms including the spatial storage effect. The spatial storage effect promotes coexistence when (1) species have unique vital rate responses to their spatial environment and, when abundant, (2) experience stronger competition in the environmental patches...

Native and exotic species richness is expected to be negatively related at small spatial scales where individuals interact, and positive at larger spatial scales as a greater variety of habitats are sampled. However, a range of native-exotic richness relationships (NERRs) have been reported, including positive at small scales and negative at larger...