Happy World Photography Day 2020!

To celebrate World Photography Day, Capturing Ecology 2019 winner and ecology PhD student Sanne Govaert tells us about her experiences of ecology and photography. Ecologists, start photographing now! The most important goal in my life is to inspire and be inspired. Photography is a great way to achieve this, especially in ecology. We all know…

What is the effect of gene flow origin on the adaptive potential of environmentally marginal populations?

Journal of Ecology has just published a new research article by Morente-López et al. ‘Gene flow effects on populations inhabiting marginal areas: origin matters’. Lead author Javier Morente-López discusses the paper and its implications.  Climate change is causing species to experience new environmental pressures, leading to changes in their distributions and affecting ecological niches. It…

Volume 108 Issue 5

Volume 108 Issue 5 of Journal of Ecology is now available online! Our latest issue is packed with incredible articles, including research considering the landscape epidemiology of ash dieback, a review of fire as a fundamental ecological process and a study of dispersal strategies of alpine plant communities across the Andes. You can also read our new Biological…

Optimal Defense Theory in an ant–plant mutualism

Here we take a closer look at a fascinating plant defense article by Calixto et al., which has recently been published in Journal of Ecology. Author Kleber Del-Claro explains different methods for anti-herbivore plant defenses and shares the results of this research, which is the first to show that ant recruitment via extrafloral nectar follows…

Navigating the Virtual ESA2020 Meeting

Many of us regular ESA delegates were disappointed that the 2020 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting had to go virtual. I look forward to the annual chance to catch up with colleagues and friends, meet new ecologists, and hear about the latest research. This year I was looking forward to several days in Salt…

Marine Plant Ecology

Earlier this week Journal of Ecology published a new Virtual Issue on Freshwater Plant Ecology, which you can read in full here. In this post Rich Shefferson shares a selection of recent marine plant articles! The featured papers fall into four key research themes: Population, Community, Ecosystem & Evolution. I suppose I am not alone…

Freshwater Plant Ecology

Journal of Ecology is pleased to announce a new Virtual Issue on Freshwater Plant Ecology. Featuring research on algae, phytoplankton, aquatic biofilms, invasive species, dispersal, phylogenetics and much more! Here our Editors Amy Austin, Christer Nilsson and Janne Alahuhta give us an overview of the themes covered in this collection of papers. Streams, lakes, rivers…

Harper Prize Winner 2019: Maria Leunda

Author Maria Leunda offers an insight into the research behind her paper Ice cave reveals environmental forcing of long‐term Pyrenean tree line dynamics, which won our 2019 Harper Prize. Maria also further discusses how she ended up doing this exciting research and introduces her study site in the Central Pyrenees.  Alpine ecosystems are particularly sensitive…

Editor’s Choice: Volume 108 Issue 4

How Will Climate Change Affect Community Stability? There’s a great deal of concern and uncertainty over the patterns and causal mechanisms that underlie community grassland change in response to climate change (Ratajczak & Ladwig 2019). Experimental work is needed to better understand the potentially synergistic effects of global change stressors on stability of grasslands. In…

Happy World Mangrove Day 2020!

To celebrate World Mangrove Day 2020, we’re taking a closer look at this important ecosystem and highlighting some of the fascinating mangrove papers that have been published in Journal of Ecology in recent years. In 2015, in order to raise awareness of the importance of mangrove ecosystems, the General Conference of UNESCO designated 26 July…