The recipient of the 2023 I.W. Bailey Award is Eunice Romero, Faculty of Science, Department of Physical Geography and Geoecology, Charles University, Czech Republic awarded for her paper entitled: “Wood anatomy of 13 species from a successional tropical dry forest: description and ecological implications” published in IAWA Journal 43 (4), 2022: 372-402 for this year’s award.


The judges commented:

“In this paper, authors focused on a valuable scientific question of plant structure and function (potential drought adaptations specified in this study) and set up a convictive experimental design with reasonable sampling duplication of TDF (Tropical Dry Forest) successional species, smooth extraction of wood anatomical traits, and very impressive statistical analyses using different methods (e.g., Principal Component Analysis, PCA). The results derived from this work provided supplemented knowledge to explain the mechanisms of woody plants for coping with hydraulic/drought stress using combinations and interactions of wood anatomical features. In addition, the qualified illustrations and tables of wood anatomical traits and statistical data were well shown in this paper."

This work contributes to understanding wood function under stress situations. Tropical dry forests should be much more vulnerable to weather fluctuations. In times of global warming, this work will expand our horizon of wood anatomy.

This investigation provides insight into dry forest ecology using well-illustrated wood anatomical investigation with impressive use of principal component analysis to highlight trends.”

I.W. Bailey Award 2024 is calling for Nominations. From 2014 onwards, the I.W. Bailey Award is presented annually for the best original or review paper submitted to the IAWA Journal by graduate and undergraduate students or postdocs up to five years after their PhD defense. The Award consists of a certificate and €1000, sponsored by Brill Publishers. Candidates may nominate their submissions directly to the editors of IAWA Journal: Lloyd Donaldson (lloyd.donaldson@scionresearch.com) and Marcelo Pace (marcelo.pace@ib.unam.mx), together with a one-page cv, and one supporting statement from a senior IAWA Member before September 1st, 2024. The Award Committee will be formed by the Editors and Associate Editors of the IAWA Journal. Please visit http://www.editorialmanager.com/iawa/ for instructions to authors.

We thank the judges of this year's award, Yafang Yin, and Yoon Soo Kim for their time and effort.