Official blog of Functional Ecology
I have to confess – I don’t like tea.
Well, maybe herbal tea every once in a while. You know, the ginger and lemongrass type.
However, when out in the field, at 30°C and in knee-deep in mangrove hydrogensulphidemudstink, one begins to appreciate the refreshing aroma of green and rooibos tea. Continue reading “Insite/Out of the TeaComposition H2O Initiative: Number One”
Going to a symposium usually means days of talks in meeting rooms or conference centres, but Alexandra Townsend, an Early Career Researcher from Queen Mary University of London, recently attended a symposium that was a little more unusual: the Early Career Scientist Symposium run by the Plant Environmental Physiology Group (PEPG).
Continue reading “Plant Physiology with a view: A different kind of gathering”
It is almost midnight and I am still enjoying the sunlight that enters the windows of my hotel room. I am in Eastern Finland, trying hard to get some sleep (not easy if your body tells you it is not dark enough yet). On my flight in from London, an opinion piece in the New York Times caught my attention and changed my views on the beautifully mown turfs that I see every day. Interestingly, the opinion article refers to a paper that I find worth reading, highlighting the large microbial diversity in New York’s Central Park. The paper by Ramirez and her colleagues keeps making a deep impact on my thinking about patterns in Ecology.
Talking about impact, I can segue to impact factors; you love them or you hate them. But inevitably, for many of our community they have become a part of our professional life. Last week ISI Web of Science has released its new impact factors. Functional Ecology has consolidated its position amongst the leading journals in ecology; with an impact factor of 5.63, it ranks 14 out of 153 listed journal. If you are interested in alternative approaches to calculating journal impacts, I would recommend going back to a late 2014 post on ConservationBytes.com.
Last, sex, bugs, and Rock ‘n Roll! With the fast approaching arrival of summer, also the season of music festivals has arrived. This year again a bunch of festival loving researchers will bring ecological science to music-lovers. Want to know more? Check their website , or follow them on Twitter @BESroadies.
Bjorn Robroek
Our latest issue out now, with a cover from Sonia Bejarano et al’s paper The shape of success in a turbulent world: wave exposure filtering of coral reef herbivory. Continue reading “31.06 – Behind the cover”
In our first Hindsight, Dr. Ken Thompson takes us back to his PhD research and points out one –perhaps forgotten– follow up study from Van Assche & Van Nerum that may have you asking if there is such thing as plant intelligence.
In Insights we discover the story behind and beyond a recent publication in Functional Ecology: What inspired the authors to do the research, how the project developed, leading to the final publication and what implications their results might have on the scientific community and on society.
This week, Ellie Goud of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, discusses her recent paper on the use of non-destructive plant traits as a proxy for carbon fluxes from peatland ecosystems.
Bjorn Robroek is the blog editor for Functional Ecologists.
In Insite/out, we follow four ecologists from different fields in their daily work. Through regular updates, by means of columns, pictures and video, these enthusiastic researchers take us along the ups and downs of their field and lab work. Below they introduce themselves and give us a taste of what their posts are about. Continue reading “Insite/Out – meet the researchers!”
By Bjorn Robroek
Over the last few months, my life has changed drastically. I left the beautiful mountains of Switzerland behind, exchanging them for the rolling hills of Southwest England when I took up a lectureship in ecology at the University of Southampton. One week into my new position at Southampton, I found myself teaching plant and invertebrate ecology to 50 undergrads in Andalusia, Spain– a fantastic experience that reminded me how broad the field of ecology is. Ecology comes in many different flavours, and ecologists are also a varied group, with different interests, experiences and backgrounds. I am extremely chuffed to launch functionalecologists.com, a blog for the journal Functional Ecology. To understand ecology takes a wide range of approaches, and I hope that this blog will show the many different ways that Functional Ecology can offer different aspects of ecology to ecologists. Continue reading “Welcome, Functional Ecologists!”
