Dear all,

I’d like to first take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy, healthy and successful 2018. I hope that in the year that lies ahead, this blog will contribute to your work and may inspire you to submit your best work to Functional Ecology.

Let me also take the opportunity to thank all contributors to our columns Insights, Hindsight, and Community+Ecology. In the coming weeks, some changes to functionalecologists.com will be made, so keep an open eye. A special thanks to Gesche, Stacey, Richard and Rob for their guest posts in the InSite/Out columns. I hope to see more of your posts in the following year.

I am just back from annual leave, which started after the hugely inspirational Ecology Across Borders meeting in Ghent, Belgium (more on that meeting in one of my following blogs). This year for me begins with Functional Ecology having published its January edition, which has a special focus on functional traits along a transect (guest editors Shuli niu, Aimee classen, and Yiqi Luo).

I am also very fascinated by the current weather conditions across the globe. Last week, it was colder in Sunshine state Florida than it was in Alaska. Guest blogger Rob Mills, sees hardly any snow in the Scottish mountains, while in the Alps the recent snow dump caused chaos, and even more is expected.

In the low countries, like my home country of the Netherlands, recent weather conditions have caused the rivers to reach very high levels. The good news here is that recent developments in creating more space for rivers has paid off, and flooding of communities has not yet occurred. To finish, on the other side of the world (from where I am!), Sydney deals with the highest temperatures measured since 1939. Who says nothing wrong with our climate? I am curious to see how our natural ecosystems deal with these phenomena.

All best, Bjorn

Bjorn Robroek is the blog editor for Functional Ecologists.