Acorns—the fruits of oaks—are a key resource for wildlife in temperate forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Acorns are also economically important for extensive livestock rearing, and as a staple food have supported indigenous human populations. Consequently, differences in how individual trees and populations of oaks invest in acorn production, both in terms of the size of the acorn cro...

Old living oaks (Quercus robur) are known as a very species-rich habitat for saproxylic beetles, but it is less clear to what extent such veteran trees differ from an even rarer feature: downed trunks of large oaks. In this study, we set out to sample this habitat, using window traps, with two aims: (1) to describe the variation of assemblages among downed trunks of different type and (2) to co...

Problems with oak regeneration have been documented in the last 50 years at numerous sites in the Midwestern United States. We applied nuclear microsatellites to examine the demographic and fine-scale spatial genetic structure of red oaks in two old-growth stands in Indiana. Oaks in one stand have declined in numbers over the past several decades whereas oaks in the other, smaller stand have in...

Species distributions are limited by a complex array of abiotic and biotic factors. In general, abiotic (climatic) factors are thought to explain species' broad geographic distributions, while biotic factors regulate species' abundance patterns at local scales. We used species distribution models to test the hypothesis that a biotic interaction with a tree, the Colombian oak (Quercus humboldtii...

We developed new equations to predict Oregon white oak (Quercus garryano Dougl. ex Hook.) development within ORGANON, a stand-development model that is widely used in the Pacific Northwest. Tree size, competitive status, crown ratio, and site productivity were statistically significant predictors of growth and mortality. Three scenarios were projected with the new equations, the previous ORGANO...