Professor Peter Grubb, Emeritus Professor
Investigative Plant Ecology
I 'retired' in 2001, but am currently writing a book about world vegetation, and papers on a wide range of topics. My chief interests are in (1) the dynamics of plant populations and explanations for the maintenance of diversity in plant communities, (2) ecological physiology and the relationship between form and function, including the impacts of herbivores, and (3) the nature of competition among plants. Together with former students and various colleagues I am writing papers on (1) the dynamics of populations of nine species of short-lived plants over 20 years in chalk grassland at a site in southern England, with emphasis on the scale at which density-dependence is detectable, the mechanisms of co-existence and changes in spatial distribution through time, (2) the extent to which spring ephemerals in temperate deciduous forests in northern Japan are 'sun plants embedded in the shade', (3) the relationship between seed size and shade-tolerance in warm temperate rain forests in the five areas of the world where they are found, and (4) attempts to interpret the wide range in nitrogen concentration in the leaves of different species of co-existing species of 'the same functional type', using shrubs in semi-deserts of South Africa and SE Spain and shade-tolerant trees in tropical rain forest in north-eastern Australia .
- Contact us:
-
Department of Plant Sciences
University of Cambridge
Downing Site Downing Street
CAMBRIDGE CB2 3EA
Email: pjg12@cam.ac.uk
Reception: +44 (0)1223 333900
Species-rich chalk grassland in Sussex where the populations of nine species of short-lived plants were monitored closely for twenty years.