Happy New Year to all our readers!

I started working for the Blog a bit more than a year ago (I really enjoy it!) with the help of the great Editorial Blog Team including Executive Editor David Gibson, Assistant Editor James Ross and Managing Editors Emilie Aimé and Andrea Baier. Together we are committed to promote easy access to scientific knowledge and make ecology available to scientists of all discipline, stakeholders and the general public.

We also aim to promote the work of ecologists, particularly young scientists and women, who both have their dedicated category in the blog (see Early-Career Scientist and Women in Science). This year we also introduced the video podcasts in the blog to give early-career scientists the opportunity to talk about their research – All videos (with subtitles) are available in the video category and in our YouTube Channel.

In 2016, we have had 13473 visitors of the blog with more than 21000 page views – a record since its creation in 2012. We are grateful for your support and want to thank you for your interest in our blog posts and the many shares on social medias.

To read or re-read, here are Top 10 accessed blog posts of 2016:

1. Editor’s Choice 104:4 The Big Bang and thereafter, across latitude
2. Reflecting on ESA2016 ‘Novel Ecosystems in the Anthropocene’: Three Ecologists Provide Contrasting Perspectives.
3. The Future for Ash Looks Bleak says Journal of Ecology Species Survey
4. Trees May Acclimate to Drought, But Not to Warming, in Semi-Arid Systems
5. The Quest for Predicting Plant-Soil Feedback
6. Richard Bardgett’s Ecological Inspirations: Soils, Herbivores, and Chronosequences
7. Ecto-Mycorrhizal Fungi: A Stronger Role In Pathogen Defense than Nutrient Uptake
8. Demography Behind the Population
9. Fun Times at the BES Annual Meeting 2016
10. Editor’s Choice 104:6 – New Zealand’s plant priorities

We would also like to thank our Editorial Board members who have contributed in the last year. This includes Hans Cornelissen’s article about teaching and research, Emily Lines and her student’s blog about urban trees in London, Anthony Davy celebrating the 75 years of the Biological Flora of the British Isles, Honnor Prentice for International Women’s Day, Yvonne Buckley about her Harper Review, Matt McGlone for his impressions of the Southern Connection congress 2016, James Cahill for his comments on size asymmetry of resource competition, Jane Catford’s review of BES 2016, Marcel Van der Heijden for his interview on soil biodiversity, Charlie Canham, Jacquelyn Gill and Emily Farrer for their podcasts about Anthropocene, and Rob Salguero-Gómez for his thoughts on ESA 2016. And of course David Edwards, Richard Shefferson and Emily Lines for their Editor’s Choice articles in 2016.

In 2017, we want to do even better and have lots of things planned. We will continue to post video podcasts from early-career scientists, and also want to promote ecological research of specific countries/areas of the World. One of our objectives for this new year is to increase exchanges between scientists and in order to start the debate, we wish to publish more opinion posts about research, methods and careers in Ecology.

Make sure you get in touch if you have suggestions for interesting topics or are interested in contributing!

Pierre Mariotte
Blog Editor, Journal of Ecology