I'm inserting an elastomer tag in a juvenile damselfish, so they can be identified in the field once released. Photo courtesy of Doug Chivers.

Maud Ferrari: Sharing predation cues in degraded coral reefs

Dr. Maud Ferrari, Professor in the Department of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan, discusses with us her paper titled, “The fading of fear effects due to coral degradation is modulated by community composition”, the broader impact of her research, and her interest in ecology.

Me posing for an NSERC picture. I'm pretending to be looking at a fish tank in my lab in Canada. Photo courtesy of NSERC.
Me posing for an NSERC picture. I’m pretending to be looking at a fish tank in my lab in Canada. Photo courtesy of NSERC.
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Wetland team collecting data in the filed with Jana in the middle

Jana Doudová: Under the dominants

Jana Doudová, research at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, explains his work ‘Along with intraspecific functional trait variation, individual performance is key to resolving community assembly processes’, highlights how plant facilitation can be present in productive ecosystems and tells her history about how she got fascinated by plants. 

Wetland team collecting data in the filed with Jana in the middle
Wetland team collecting data in the filed with Jana in the middle

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Carlos Garcia-Robledo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut.

Carlos Garcia-Robledo: Drivers of body size in tropical insects – Evolutionary history or temperature?

Dr. Carlos Garcia-Robledo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, discusses with us his recently accepted paper, “Evolutionary history, not ecogeographic rules, explains size variation of tropical insects along elevational gradients.”

Carlos Garcia-Robledo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut.
Carlos Garcia-Robledo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut.

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Ally releasing a snowshoe hare. Photo credit: Ally's iPhone.

Allyson Menzies: Exploring thermoregulatory strategies of sympatric species

Ally in the Yukon. Photo credit: Yasmine Majchrzak.
Ally in the Yukon. Photo credit: Yasmine Majchrzak.

Allyson Menzies, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University, discusses her most recently accepted paper, “Body temperature, heart rate, and activity patterns of two boreal homeotherms in winter: homeostasis, allostasis, and ecological coexistence”, her interest in ecology, as well as the pros and cons of outdoor fieldwork.

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Timothy Perez: extreme leaf temperature and heat tolerance

Timothy Perez, postdoc at the University of British Columbia, shows us his last work ‘Photosynthetic heat tolerances and extreme leaf temperatures’, explains the importance of plant tolerances under climate change and the challenge that is to do experimentation in hurricane season.

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Esther Sebastián-González: Waterbirds are also vital seed dispersers

Esther Sebastián-González, postdoc researcher presents her paper ‘Waterbird seed‐dispersal networks are similarly nested but less modular than those of frugivorous birds, and not driven by functional traits’, and show us how waterbirds paved her road into ecology.

Esther Sebastián-González in a fieldwork trip in Mongolia (Author JM Pérez-García)
Esther Sebastián-González in a fieldwork trip in Mongolia (Author JM Pérez-García)

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Jo Carpenter with a kakapo, a native seed predator endemic to New Zealand. Credit: Theo Thompson

Jo Carpenter: Can introduced seed predators compensate for the loss of native seed predators on islands?

Jo Carpenter with a kakapo, a native seed predator endemic to New Zealand. Credit: Theo Thompson
Jo Carpenter with a kakapo, a native seed predator endemic to New Zealand. Credit: Theo Thompson

Dr. Jo Carpenter, a postdoctoral researcher at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research discusses with us her recently accepted article, “The forgotten fauna: native vertebrate seed predators on islands”, as well as her favourite part about being an ecologist and conservationist.

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Configuring the thermal camera in preparation at dawn in preparation

Benjamin Blonder: thermal ecology, from deserts to mountains

Dr. Benjamin Blonder from University of California at Berkeley presents his last publication ‘Low predictability of energy balance traits and leaf temperature metrics in desert, montane, and alpine plant communities‘, one of his first steps in the world of thermal ecology. He shares his experience about how little actually we know about how plants manage leaf temperature and the hard but very rewarding fieldwork at Rocky Mountains.

Benjamin Blonder
Benjamin Blonder
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Florian Roth: carbon, coral and communities

Florian Roth, postdoc researcher talks about his paper High rates of carbon and dinitrogen fixation suggest a critical role of benthic pioneer communities in the energy and nutrient dynamics of coral reefs, what makes this work different and what got him into ecology.

Dr. Florian Roth. [Photo credit: Yusuf El-Khaled]
Dr. Florian Roth. [Photo credit: Yusuf El-Khaled]

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