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