Meet the Editors: Alan Knapp

Alan Knapp in South Africa
Alan Knapp in South Africa

Ahead of this year’s British Ecological Society Annual Meeting in Birmingham, we wanted to give you the chance to get to know some of the people behind the decision letters. Today, we have Senior Editor Alan Knapp, Professor at Colorado State University (@alan_knapp). Alan is also a Faculty Associate at the Konza Prairie LTER.

Alan will be at the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, DC.

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Meet the Editors: Lara Ferry

Lara Ferry, getting her motorcycle license
Lara Ferry, getting her motorcycle license

Ahead of this year’s British Ecological Society Annual Meeting, we wanted to give you the chance to get to know some of the people behind the decision letters. Today, we have  Senior Editor Lara Ferry, Professor & Associate Dean, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, Arizona State University. Lara was also recently named named a President’s Professors, an honour that recognizes ASU faculty who have made substantial contributions to undergraduate education.

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Meet the Editors: Ken Thompson

Ken Thompson (in the middle).
Ken Thompson (in the middle).

Ahead of this year’s British Ecological Society Annual Meeting, we wanted to give you the chance to get to know some of the people behind the decision letters. First up from Functional Ecology is Senior Editor, Ken Thompson. Ken Thompson is also a successful writer and copies of his latest book, Darwin’s Most Wonderful Plants, will be available at the Annual Meeting.

What can you tell us about the first paper you published? Continue reading “Meet the Editors: Ken Thompson”

AE Profile: Antonio José Manzaneda

AJM1We’re happy to introduce another member of our editorial board, Antonio José Manzaneda. Antonio is based at the University of Jaén, Spain, and is a plant evolutionary ecologist whose work focusses on the evolution of complex traits with a relevant ecological function in the context of adaptation. Read more about his research below.

Estimados colegas, aquí abajo os pongo algunas líneas sobre las investigaciones que he venido desarrollando durante mi carrera profesional como ecólogo evolutivo. Destaco algunas de las publicaciones sobre hormigas y semillas que realicé durante mi doctorado en la Sierra de Cazorla y otros parques naturales de España, mi trabajo sobre Boechera y sus herbívoros con Tom Mitchell-Olds en las Montañas Rocosas, y también de mi trabajo con Brachypodium y el significado evolutivo y ecológico de rasgos funcionales en este complejo de especies. Espero disfrutéis y que ayude a que conozcáis un poco mejor mi trabajo.

Un saludo cordial.

Antonio

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Oscar between an annual prairie in Sierra Norte (Spain) and an algae community in Mull Island (UK) searching for generalities across ecosystems.

AE Profile: Oscar Godoy

Oscar is community ecologist focused on answering two fundamental questions in ecology. 1) Which are the determinants of species coexistence and exclusion within ecological communities, and 2) Which are the consequences of these coexistence dynamics for ecosystem functioning? Approaches to tackle these questions include the combination of ecological theory with observational studies, manipulative experiments and a strong component of statistical modelling. He has just started MESSY lab (Mediterranean Ecological Studies and SYnthesis lab) at the University of Cádiz (Spain), which aims to investigate mechanisms of species coexistence across multiple trophic levels in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

Oscar es un ecólogo de comunidades centrado en contestar dos preguntas fundamentales en Ecología. 1) ¿Cuáles son los determinantes de coexistencia y exclusión de especies en las comunidades ecológicas?, y 2) ¿Cuáles son las consecuencias de estas dinámicas de coexistencia para el funcionamiento de los ecosistemas? Las aproximaciones para manejar estas preguntas incluyen la combinación de teoría ecológica con estudios observacionales, experimentos manipulativos y un fuerte componente de modelización estadística. Oscar acaba de empezar MESSY lab (Laboratorio de Estudios Ecológicos Mediterráneos y Síntesis) en la Universidad de Cádiz (España), el cual tiene por intención investigar los mecanismos de coexistencia de especies contenidas en múltiples niveles tróficos tanto para ecosistemas terrestres como marinos.

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The ideal situation for block cross-validation where a large sample spans the predictive space, and structure in the observations can be used to tease out more-independent data folds. In practice, the independence achieved through blocking is often difficult to assess.

Hindsight: Tackling pattern, scale, and independence to ensure ecosystem models are predictive

In our Hindsight series, researchers highlight a historical piece of research that was -and is- significant to them. In this post, Kai Chan and Edward Gregr look how at the problem of pattern and scale in ecology informs the choice of training and testing data for models to reach beyond description to prediction. Kai Chan is also a Lead Editor for the journal People and Nature.

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Genetic diversity: a poor cousin of species diversity?

In July, Functional Ecology published the Special Feature: A Mechanistic Understanding of Global Change Ecology. We have invited the authors of the papers to write about their paper. In this post, Julia Koricheva (@korichevalab) author of  The relative importance of plant intraspecific diversity in structuring arthropod communities: A meta‐analysis writes about her paper why she wrote it, what she found and where the big gaps are.

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The wrong kind of nitrogen

StevensIn July, Functional Ecology published the Special Feature: A Mechanistic Understanding of Global Change Ecology. We have invited the authors of the papers to write about their paper. In this post, Carly Stevens  writes about her paper Atmospheric nitrogen deposition in terrestrial ecosystems: Its impact on plant communities and consequences across trophic levels: why she wrote it, what she found and where the big gaps are.

 

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