Rhiannon Dalrymple

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

Introduced species often benefit from escaping their enemies when they are transported to a new range, an idea commonly expressed as the enemy release hypothesis. However, species might shed mutualists as well as enemies when they colonize a new range. Loss of mutualists might reduce the success of introduced populations, or even cause failure to e...

Microbial organisms, environmental conditions, and their interactions govern many ecosystem processes. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of priority effects, that is, the identity of potential decomposers present early in community assembly, in determining resulting decay rates especially for wood. In diverse forests, available woody s...

Background and aims: Lessons from above-ground trait ecology and resource economics theory may not be directly translatable to below-ground traits due to differences in function, trade-offs and environmental constraints. Here we examine root functional traits within and across species along a fine-scale hydrological gradient. We ask two related qu...

There is a wealth of research on the way interactions with pollinators shape flower traits. However, we have much more to learn about influences of the abiotic environment on flower colour. We combine quantitative flower colour data for 339 species from a broad spatial range covering tropical, temperate, arid, montane and coastal environments from...

Aim Leaf pubescence has several important roles, including regulating heat balance, reducing damage from UV radiation, minimizing water loss and reducing herbivory. Each of these functions could affect a plant's ability to tolerate the biotic and abiotic stresses encountered in different parts of the world. However, we know remarkably little about...

Large urban trees have many benefits. However, falling branches pose a serious hazard to both people and infrastructure. In several tree species, aerial roots grow down from branches to the ground. These roots are capable of thickening to support the branches, lessening the risk of tree failure. Unfortunately, in urban environments most aerial root...

Plant trait databases often contain traits that are correlated, but for whom direct (undirected statistical dependency) and indirect (mediated by other traits) connections may be confounded. The confounding of correlation and connection hinders our understanding of plant strategies, and how these vary among growth forms and climate zones. We identi...

The era of big biodiversity data has led to rapid, exciting advances in the theoretical and applied biological, ecological and conservation sciences. While large genetic, geographic and trait databases are available, these are neither complete nor random samples of the globe. Gaps and biases in these databases reduce our inferential and predictive...

For the majority of plant species in the world, we know little about their functional ecology, not even one of the most basic traits – the species’ growth habit. To fill the gap in availability of compiled plant growth form data, we have assembled, to our knowledge, the largest global database on growth form as a plant trait. From 163 data sources...

Rationale The era of big biodiversity data has led to rapid, exciting advances in theoretical and applied biological, ecological and conservation sciences. While large genetic, geographic and trait databases are available, these are neither complete nor random samples of the globe. Biases in species absence in these databases create problems, reduc...

Animal color phenotypes are invariably influenced by both their biotic community and the abiotic environments. A host of hypotheses have been proposed for how variables such as solar radiation, habitat shadiness, primary productivity, temperature, rainfall and community diversity might affect animal color traits. However, while individual factors h...

Receiver biases offer opportunities for the evolution of deception in signalling systems. Many spiders use conspicuous body colouration to lure prey, yet the perceptual basis of such deception remains largely unknown. Here we use knowledge of visual perception in key pollinator groups (bees and flies) to test whether colour-based lures resemble flo...

Key message The Acacia phyllode leaf form is hypothesised to be an adaptation to drought. However, in this experiment, the timing of phyllode development was not related to a low water treatment. Abstract Acacia species have markedly different leaf forms known as compound leaves, transitional leaves, and phyllodes, also known as heteroblastic devel...

The idea that species are generally more colourful at tropical latitudes has held great appeal among biologists since the days of exploration by early naturalists. However, advances in colour quantification and analysis only now allow an objective test of this idea. We provide the first quantitative analysis of the latitudinal gradient in colour on...

After years of qualitative and subjective study, quantitative colour science is now enabling rapid measurement, analysis and comparison of colour traits. However, it has not been determined how many replicates one needs to accurately quantify a species' colours for studies aimed at broad cross-species trait comparison. We address this major methodo...

Some of the world's most economically and environmentally damaging introduced species reproduce asexually. While sexually reproducing introduced herbs have proven capable of rapid evolution, no previous study has quantified morphological changes in multiple obligatory asexually reproducing introduced species, or asked whether their potential for ch...