Re-evaluating the role of tannins in Australian forest ecosystems

Ecologists have a rather poor understanding of how tannins affect ecosystems, partly due to a preoccupation with chemistry and methods of analysis. We have published an innovative technique that circumvents these problems. It permits the user to measure the effects of tannins in any ecosystem in a common currency. We plan to use this method to provide basic knowledge about the interactions between tannins and nitrogen in eucalypts and measure its genetic basis - information not available previously. This enables us to better understand key ecological processes, such as animal feeding and litter degradation, and to predict the effects of climate change. The outcome is a novel way of looking at the chemistry of eucalypt forests