Congratulations to Professor Almuth Hammerbacher who has scored a hat-trick with a third publication in a journal with an Impact Factor of higher than 10 in consecutive years. She is the co-corresponding author of the latest paper “Storage of carbon reserves in spruce trees is prioritized over growth in the face of carbon limitation” published online on 17 August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) with an Impact Factor of 11.9. The preceding two were published in Nature Communications (2020; current Impact Factor 14.9) and Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2019; Impact Factor 17.1).

In this latest paper the authors provide molecular evidence that trees faced with severe photosynthetic limitation strategically regulate storage allocation and consumption at the expense of growth. Understanding such allocation strategies is crucial for predicting how trees may respond to extreme events involving steep declines in photosynthesis, like severe drought, or defoliation by heat waves, late frost, or insect attack.

Almuth is the leader of the Applied Chemical Ecology research group in FABI and also a member of the Tree Protection Co-operative Programme (TPCP). These papers are published as part of collaborate research with European colleagues.