Dr. Ana Salgado shares with us the background behind and synopsis of her paper “Narrow oviposition preference of an insect herbivore risks survival under conditions of severe drought”, as well as her experience in becoming an ecologist, her hobbies, and why this project has been her favorite so far during her academic career.
Continue reading “Ana Salgado: Butterfly oviposition preference affects offspring survival”
In our latest Insight, Kechang Niu of Nanjing University talks about the importance of individual variation in harsh environments, the background to his latest paper Harsh environmental regimes increase the functional significance of intraspecific variation in plant communities Nanjing University, and his unusual path into ecology.
Continue reading “Kechang Niu: A plant’s perspective”
Renato Morais, a Ph.D. student at James Cook University in Australia, gives us a ‘behind-the-scenes’ view of his research on the energetic effects of coral mortality, related to his recent publication in Functional Ecology entitled “Severe coral loss shifts energetic dynamics on a coral reef”.
Continue reading “Renato Morais: Mass coral mortality affects energetic functioning of coral reefs”
Dr. Ana Alexandre, a postdoc at Centro de Ciencias do Mar at University of Algarve, presents in this Insights the findings of she and her colleagues on her latest paper titled, “Ocean warming increases the nitrogen demand and the uptake of organic nitrogen of the globally distributed seagrass Zostera marina”.
Continue reading “Ana Alexandre: Seagrass nutrition altered by ocean warming”
Dr. Keith Sockman, an Associate Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, participates in our latest installation of Insights by discussing with us his paper, co-authored with Dr. Allen Hurlbert, titled, “How the effects of latitude on daylight availability may have influenced the evolution of migration and photoperiodism”.
Continue reading “Keith Sockman: Exploring link between latitude, daylight, and migration”
2021 Update: The research discussed in this blog has been shortlisted for the 2020 Haldane Prize for early career researchers.
Andrii Zaiats, a PhD student at Boise State University, talks about his research into neighbouring plant interactions and competition for water, Intraspecific variation in surface water uptake in a perennial desert shrub – his first peer-reviewed publication.
Continue reading “Andrii Zaiats: Surface roots in a high desert shrub”
Dr. Zenon Czenze is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pretoria, soon to begin a Lecturer position at the University of New England in Armidale. Here, Dr. Czenze shares his team’s observations that led to the paper “Regularly-drinking desert birds have greater evaporative cooling capacity and higher heat tolerance limits than non-drinking species.”
Amy Brunton Martin talks about her new paper, Orchid sexual deceit affects pollinator sperm transfer, which shows the costs of being fooled for an orchid pollinator, and highlights the importance of considering both sides of a relationship when looking at deceptive interactions in nature.
Continue reading “Amy L. Brunton Martin: Sexually deceptive orchids elicit sperm wastage – a cost for pollinators!”
In this post, Svenja Kleinschmidt talks about her recent paper, Potential growth more than functional traits explain successional habitat filtering in rainforest trees.
In this Insight, Yingying Wang, a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, discusses her paper Phylogenetic structure of wildlife assemblages shapes patterns of infectious livestock diseases in Africa – recently shortlisted for the Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers.
Functional Ecologists 