Julian Donald

Natural England

Biomonitoring of plant communities is essential when evaluating outcomes of ecological restoration, but morphology‐based inventories can impede consistency across spatial and temporal scales. The Eden Project botanic garden (Cornwall, UK) offers an opportunity to test whether soil eDNA reflects plant species richness, community composition and dive...

Tropical forests are biodiversity hotspots, but it is not well understood how this diversity is structured and maintained. One hypothesis rests on the generation of a range of metabolic niches, with varied composition, supporting a high species diversity. Characterizing soil metabolomes can reveal fine-scale differences in composition and potential...

Urban expansion and associated habitat transformation drives shifts in biodiversity, with declines in taxonomic and functional diversity. Forests fragments within urban landscapes offer a number of ecosystem services, and help to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Here, we focus on a tropical forest environment, and on the soil biota. U...

DNA metabarcoding is becoming the tool of choice for biodiversity assessment across taxa and environments. Yet, the artefacts present in metabarcoding datasets often preclude a proper interpretation of ecological patterns. Bioinformatic pipelines to remove experimental noise exist. However, these often only partially target produced artefacts, or a...

DNA metabarcoding is becoming the tool of choice for biodiversity studies across taxa and large-scale environmental gradients. Yet, the artefacts present in metabarcoding datasets often preclude a proper interpretation of ecological patterns. Bioinformatic pipelines removing experimental noise have been designed to address this issue. However, thes...

Microbial organisms support the high species diversity associated with tropical forests, and likely drive functional processes, but microorganisms found in rainforest canopies are not well understood. We quantified the microbial diversity of suspended soils from two classical epiphytic model systems (bromeliads & bird's nest ferns) across two local...

The rainforests of the Neotropics shelter a vast diversity of plant, animal and microscopic species that provide critical ecosystem goods and services for both local and worldwide populations. These environments face a major crisis due to increased deforestation, pollution, and climate change, emphasizing the need for more effective conservation ef...

The rainforests of the Neotropics shelter a vast diversity of plant, animal and microscopic species that provide critical ecosystem goods and services for both local and worldwide populations. These environments face a major crisis due to increased deforestation, pollution, and climate change, emphasizing the need for more effective conservation ef...

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is a fundamental part of nitrogen cycling in tropical forests, yet little is known about the contribution made by free-living nitrogen fixers inhabiting the often-extensive forest canopy. We used the acetylene reduction assay, calibrated with ¹⁵N2, to measure free-living BNF on forest canopy leaves, vascular epiph...

Community assembly theory assumes that ecological communities are spatially delimited into patches. Within these patches, coexistence results from environmental filtering, competition and immigration. Truly delineated communities exist in laboratory studies of microbial cultures in Petri dishes, yet empirical tests conducted in continuous environme...

Leaf-inhabiting fungal and bacterial endophytes are at their most diverse in tropical rainforest plant hosts, with some influencing host plant fitness as either symbionts or pathogens. Endophyte activity and community composition is thought to depend on competition amongst co-occurring species for resources. Here, we reveal the strength of competit...

Determining assembly rules of co-occurring species persists as a fundamental goal in community ecology. At local scales, the relative importance of environmental filtering vs. competitive exclusion remains a subject of debate. In this study, we assessed the relative importance of habitat filtering and competition in structuring understory ant commu...

Understanding the relationship between the biodiversity and functioning of an ecosystem is a key component of ecological studies. Given the importance of soil as the basis for life on earth, understanding this relationship across the multiple trophic levels of the brown food web is vital. The thesis begins by trialling methods of soil analysis at t...

As a source of ‘suspended soils’, epiphytes contribute large amounts of organic matter to the canopy of tropical rain forests. Microbes associated with epiphytes are responsible for much of the nutrient cycling taking place in rain forest canopies. However, soils suspended far above the ground in living organisms differ from soil on the forest floo...

Nest site availability limits the fitness and survival of skinks and geckos, particularly in the canopy of tall tropical rainforests. We document the systematic colonisation and nest use of epiphytic bird’s nest ferns (Asplenium spp) by the gecko Hemiphyllodactylus typus and the skink Lipinia cf. vittigera. As part of a controlled experiment we pla...

Tropical rainforests are increasingly disturbed by human activities. While restoration projects often succeed in replacing tree cover, they rarely manage to restore soil function. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand the changes that occur during soil restoration. Model ecosystems such as the Eden Project present an ideal opportunity...

Understanding the ecological patterns and ecosystem processes of tropical rainforest canopies is becoming increasingly urgent in the face of widespread deforestation. However, accessing rainforest canopies is far from simple, and performing manipulative experiments in the canopy is particularly challenging. Botanic gardens provide an ideal ‘halfway...

Suspended soils can contribute significantly to the above ground biomass of tropical forests, yet these are rarely included in forest carbon budgets. Whilst the analysis of soil community dynamics can prove challenging, in particular at the top of trees, the use of the bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus) as a natural microcosm can facilitate experim...

Background Suspended soils, such as those in epiphytes, form important components of the discrete, often limited nutrient pools of tropical forests. The bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus) is a natural microcosm, which has been used to reveal patterns and processes in canopy invertebrate diversity and rainfall nutrient enrichment. However, little is...