EcoTAS 2017: Plant Ecology in AUS and NZ

This week has been EcoTAS 2017, the joint conference of the Ecological Society of Australia and the New Zealand Ecological Society. This year it was held in Hunter Valley in New South Wales, Australia, with a theme of ‘putting ecology to work’ in an effort to explore how ecological science can contribute to the economy,…

INTECOL 2017 – One week in China: Insights from Marc Cadotte

As advertised in a previous blog post, the international conference of ecology INTECOL 2017 was held last week in Beijing, China. This year’s conference theme was Ecology and Civilization in a Changing World. Marc Cadotte, Senior Editor of Journal of Applied Ecology, attended the conference and wrote a nice blog post for the EEB and Flow blog, in which…

“Linking biodiversity, material cycling and ecosystem services in a changing world”: Reflections and reactions to ESA 2017

Journal of Ecology was well represented at the 2017 annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America with Senior Managing Editor Andrea Baier on the BES stand in the convention hall, and several Associate Editors joining me for a board meeting and dinner, in prowling the halls, networking, and attending and giving presentations. I survived…

When are traits functional?

A trait is any aspect of an organism that defines it with respect to a concept. A trait may be color, when examining heat absorption; accent, in the case of humans when attempting to approximate nationality; specific leaf area (i.e., area to dry mass ratio of a leaf) when interested in investment in photosynthetic machinery…

Hierarchy of Hypotheses as an organizing tool for research. Report on a workshop

Journal of Ecology Executive Editor David Gibson, Associate Editor Lorena Gómez-Aparicio, and Methods in Ecology and Evolution Senior Editor Bob O’Hara recently attended a workshop “The hierarchy-of-hypotheses approach: Exploring its potential for structuring and analyzing theory, research and evidence across disciplines” August 19-21, in Hannover, Germany. Below they tell us more about this workshop. Set…