Professor William Stock

Contact Details

Room	19.343
Phone	(61 8) 6304 5758
Facsimile	(61 8) 6304 5509
Email	w.stock@ecu.edu.au
Phone (Home)	(61 8) 9243 3403

Biography

I was born in Cape Town, South Africa where I attended school and university. I chose to study Botany because of my love of plants and the tremendous floral diversity of the fynbos vegetation in the Western Cape. My PhD studies on nitrogen cycling were part of the Fynbos Biome project which was one of the big South African funded ecosystem projects. After completing my PhD in 1985 I spent a post-doctoral year in Professor John Pate’s laboratory in Western Australia. The parallels of the West Australian kwongan vegetation with our own fynbos are striking and I felt very much at home working on nutrition and seed characteristics of Banksia spp. I then returned to a lecturing position at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg where I ran the first year biology courses. This position only lasted 18 months since I was recruited back to the University of Cape Town in 1988 to head up the teaching and research thrust in plant physiological ecology. I have had the opportunity of spending two periods of sabbatical leave overseas. The first was with Professor Walt Oechel's group in San Diego during 1994 and the second, in 2002, with the Environmental Biology Group at Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University. In 2003 I accepted the Chair in Environmental Management at ECU.

Current Professional Activities

Director, Centre for Ecosystem Management, Edith Cowan University
Honorary Research Associate, Department of Botany, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Associate Editor Austral Ecology
Editorial Advisory Panel African Journal of Range & Forage Science
http://www.nisc.co.za/

Current Research Interests

Nutrition of plants from low nutrient environments.
Resource limitation of reproductive output.
Plant response to herbivory.
Nutrient cycling in natural ecosystems and commercial forestry plantation.
Stable isotope ecology.
Impacts of elevated CO2 on plants.
Mycorrhizas in natural ecosystems.
Water use efficiency of forest species.
The role of nitrogen fixing organisms in fynbos functioning.
Ecosystem impacts of alien plant invasions.
Impact of atmospheric pollutants on ecosytems.

Links

uct botany web page
Zululand grassland project web page

Publications

ARCHIBALD, S., BOND, W.J., STOCK, W.D. & FAIRBANKS, DHK (2005). Shaping the landscape: Fire-grazer interactions in an African savanna. Ecological Applications 15: 96-109.

STOCK, W.D., LUDWIG, F., MORROW,C.D., MIDGLEY, G.F., WAND, S.J.E., ALLSOPP
, N. & BELL, T.L. (2005). Long-term effects of elevated atmospheric CO₂ on species composition and productivity of a southern African C₄dominated grassland in the vicinity of a CO₂ exhalation. Plant Ecology 178: 211-224.

HATTAS, D., STOCK, W.D., MABUSELA, W.T. & GREEN, I.R. (2005). Phytochemical changes in leaves of su-tropical grasses and fynbos shrubs at elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Global and Planetary Change 47: 181-192.

HAWKINS, H.J., WOLF, G. & STOCK, W.D. (2005). Cluster roots of Leucadendron laureolum (Proteaceae) and Lupinus albus (Fabaceae) takeup glycine intact: an adaptive strategy to low mineral N in soils? Annuals of Botany 96: 1275-1282. doi:10.1093/aapb/mci279 available on line at www.aob.oxfordjournals.org.

BOTHA, M.S. AND STOCK, W.D. (2005) Stable isotope composition of faeces as an indicator of seasonal diet selection in wild herbivores in southern Africa. South African Journal of Science 101, July/August 2005.

STOCK, W.D., CHUBA, D.K. & VERBOOM, G.A. (2004). Distribution of South African C₃ and C₄species of Cypereaceae in relation to climate and phylogeny. Austral Ecology 29, 313-319

YELENIK, S.G., STOCK, W.D. & RICHARDSON, D.M. (2004). Ecosystem-level impacts of invasive Acacia saligna in the South African fynbos. Restoration Ecology 12(1) 44-51.

VERBOOM, G.A., LINDER, H.P. & STOCK, W.D. & (2003). Phylogenies of the grass genus Ehrharta: Evidence for radiation in the summer-arid zone of the South African Cape. Evolution 57: 1008-1021.

SHRESTHA, M.K., STOCK, W.D., WARD, D. & GOLAN-GOLDHIRSH A. (2003). Water status of isolated Negev desert populations of Acacia raddiana with different mortality levels. Plant Ecol. 168: 297-307.

SPRIGGS, A.C., STOCK, W.D. & DAKORA, F.D. (2003). Influence of mycorrhizal associations on foliar delta 15-N values of legume and non-legume shrubs and trees in the fynbos of South Africa: Implications for estimating N-2 fixation using the 15-N natural abundance method. Plant and Soil. 255: 495-502.

VERBOOM, G.A., STOCK, W.D. & LINDER, H.P. (2002). Determinants of postfire flowering in the geophytic grass Ehrharta capensis Thunb. Func. Ecol. 16: 705-713.

WAND, S.J.E, MIDGLEY, G.F. & STOCK, W.D. (2002). Response to elevated CO2 from a natural spring in a C₄ dominated grassland depends on seasonal species phenology. Afr. J. Range Forage Sci 19:81-92.

WAND, S.J.E., MIDGLEY, G.F. & STOCK, W.D. (2001). Growth responses to elevated CO₂ in NADP-ME, NAD-ME and PCK C₄grasses and a C3 grass from Africa. Aust. J. Plant Phys. 28:13-15.

COCKS, M. & STOCK, W.D. (2001). Field patterns of nodulation in fifteen Aspalathus species and their ecological role in the fynbos vegetation of southern Africa. Basic Appl. Ecol. 2: 115-125.[download PDF]

OCHORA, J., STOCK, W.D., LINDER, H.P. & NEWTON, L. (2001). Symbiotic seed germination in twelve Kenyan orchid species. Syst. Geogr. Pl. 71: 585-596.

BELL, T.L., STOCK, W.D. & LINDER, H.P. (2000). Ecophysiological investigations of the distribution of Poaceae and Restionaceae in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. In: Jacobs, S.W.L & Everett, J. (eds). Grass Systematics and Evolution. pp 267-278.