Anna Liang (Washington University in St. Louis, USA) and colleagues recently had their paper on snail herbivory published in Journal of Ecology. This study was a large part of Anna’s undergraduate senior thesis done under the supervision of Scott Mangan and Claudia Stein. Many thanks to Claudia and Anna for sharing these photos from their…
Journal of Ecology author and Associate Editor Amy Iler tells us more about her new paper on the effects of climate change‐induced early flowering in aspen sunflowers… As someone who has spent hours upon hours counting flowers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) to measure flowering phenology, I often wondered how the changes in flowering…
Friday 8th March is International Women’s Day – a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The theme for 2019 is Balance for Better. Find out more on Twitter by following @womensday and using #IWD2019 and #BalanceforBetter. To mark International Women’s Day 2019 we hear from our Associate Editors Imma Oliveras and Mahasweta…
Before writing and publishing papers and presenting exciting new findings, most ecologists experience one of the best things about doing science: field work! If you are lucky – as I was in this case – doing field work means great weather, an awesome team, a beautiful landscape, hard work, good samples, lots of fun and…
Cynthia Chang and Ben Turner are the guest editors for our latest special feature: Ecological Succession in a Changing World. Cynthia and Ben tell us more about their special feature and the inspiration behind it, below. There is no doubt that succession is a foundation of ecology. However, when ecologists talk about succession, it often…
Crystal McMichael is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecosystem and Landscape Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam. Her research interests are focused on assessing long-term (100s to 1000s of years) ecological processes in tropical ecosystems, and how distributions of species (including people) have changed over those time scales. Crystal is particularly interested in how tropical…
SIBECOL 2019: the 1st Iberian Ecological Society Meeting Earlier in February in sunny Barcelona more than 700 Ecologists gathered to celebrate the First Iberian Ecological Society meeting. This is a great achievement for science at large, as more than ever we need strong societies that can catalyze high-level research and help…
The Editor’s Choice article for Volume 107 Issue 2 is a study by Leunda et al. about long-term treeline dynamics. Associate Editor Bérangère Leys has taken a closer look at the paper in the blog post below… Ecosystem responses to climate change is a great concern and a lot of effort has been made to…
Volume 107 Issue 2 of Journal of Ecology is now available online! This issue includes a fascinating special feature on ecological succession. The special feature, guest edited by Ben Turner and Cynthia Chang, brings together work that highlights the importance of ecological succession in understanding the response of plant and microbial communities to disturbance. The…
The Bornean rainforest is one of the most ecologically diverse habitats for an ecologist to explore. Ryan Veryard (third year student at Oxford University) has kindly sent us some photos of his fieldwork in Borneo as a part of his third year project working with Andy Hector (Professor of Ecology, Oxford, and Journal of Ecology…
Karl Duffy‘s paper on ecogeographical isolation is published in the latest issue of Journal of Ecology (107.1). Karl tells us more about his paper in the blog post below. Since Humboldt, evolutionary biologists and ecologists have been interested in the geographical distributions of plants. Prior to the Modern Synthesis, ecological and geographical (ecogeographical) differences between…
Brandie Quarles (Duke University) gives some background on her recent paper on ageing in plants. Ageing, or senescence, is defined as a decline in function and an increased risk of mortality with increasing age. When many people hear the word aging, they likely think about it in the context of humans or other animals. I’ve…
The latest mini-review published in Journal of Ecology is Humboldt and the reinvention of nature by Juli Pausas and William Bond. Juli shares the inspiration behind the paper below. It all started when I was reading an excellent book by Andrea Wulf titled The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. The book provides…
Following on from iDiv’s press release, lead author Stefan Kupers shares some background on their study about tropical tree species and drought and reflects on the significance of the findings. Despite high annual rainfall, tropical forests can suffer severe droughts. These droughts are expected to become more frequent and extreme with climate change. On regional…
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) press release. Growth rates shape species distributions of tropical tree seedlings on a soil moisture gradient, according to a new study published in Journal of Ecology. Even in wet environments like tropical rainforests, tree species are separated along local gradients of soil moisture. Researchers from iDiv found evidence…
