[Eds note: The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this Tuesday taster has actually gone online on a Thursday… Sorry everyone, especially Bjorn – Jennifer and I were out of the office and unable to post on the right day. Normal service will be resumed next week! – Emilie, Functional Ecology Managing Editor.]

• Ecology without Borders registration closed! More than a day before closure of ‘early bird’ registration, the Ecology without Borders meeting in Ghent is fully booked. Me and Jennifer will be there, so if you want to talk about the blog, come and see us!

• Functional Ecology have accepted an interesting study on how Arctic warming affects Arctic char and its temperate relative, the rainbow trout. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13006/full

• All over the news last week: an alarming decrease in insects has been reported by Dutch and German ecologists in PlosOne. Are we poisoning and isolating our pollinator populations? For background information, see here, here and here.

Strong decline in daily biomass of insects in malaise traps. Hallmann et al. (2017) PLoS ONE12(10): e0185809. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185809

• If this news alarms you, but not yet ready to give up your Sunday roast; read here how you could do cook a more sustainable one. As a quick summary:
  • Cut down the meat: meat accounts for up to 70% of the environmental impact of a Sunday roast.
  • Turn down the heat: 20-30% energy saved by cooking less long
  • Use alternative cooking methods

• Why did the sky turn red last week? If you want to know the science behind this event, Dr David Moore of the National Centre for Earth Observation in Leicester has written an excellent summary of it.

Bjorn

Bjorn Robroek is the blog editor for Functional Ecologists.