Not all ecology is done at ground level – in this Insight, Evan Gora, a postdoc at the University of Lousiville, talks about looking at decomposition when the dead wood stays in the canopy.
Gora, EM and JM Lucas. 2019. Dispersal and nutrient limitations of decomposition above the forest floor: evidence from experimental manipulations of epiphytes and macronutrients.
Continue reading “Evan Gora: deadwood in the canopy”
Michael Fox is a postdoctoral scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research interests revolve around the interactions between oceanography and coral reef ecology. He recently published a paper highlighting a new method for quantifying heterotrophic nutrition in reef-building corals, which revealed that coral diets might be more variable than we thought.
Continue reading “Michael Fox: variable diets of coral reefs”
In this Insight, Dr. Kielland of the Norwegian University for Science and Technology (NTNU) discusses his paper “Warm and out of breath: thermal phenotypical plasticity in oxygen supply,” the challenges associated with developing the methods used in the paper, and how his research can be interpreted in the context of increasing temperatures.
Continue reading “Øystein Kielland: Phenotypic plasticity in oxygen supply”
Marcos Fernández‐Martínez is a FWO post-doc at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). In this Insight, he talks about his recent paper looking at how moss characteristics change depending on their evolutionary history and the climate and water chemistry of where they live.
Continue reading “Marcos Fernández‐Martínez: Springs and mosses”
In this Insight, Olivia Cope talks about how she got into ecology, long-term research and her recent paper Chemical defense over decadal scales: Ontogenetic allocation trajectories and consequences for fitness in a foundation tree species
Continue reading “Olivia Cope: Grow big or strong?”
In this insight, Dr. Alan Cohen of the Université de Sherbrooke shares with us the inspiration for, challenges, and messages behind his review article “Are trade-offs really the key drivers of aging and lifespan?”.
Continue reading “Alan Cohen – Challenging the idea that trade-offs are behind aging and lifespan”
Sergio Rasmann is a researcher at the University of Neuchâtel. In this post, he talks about his recent paper, Plant adaptation to different climates shapes the strengths of chemically mediated tritrophic interactions, and why he became an ecologist.
Continue reading “Sergio Rasmann: changing chemistry”
For their recent paper, 29 researchers came together to look at Geographic scale and disturbance influence intraspecific trait variability in leaves and roots of North American understory plants (Kumordzi, BB, Aubin, I, Cardou, F, et al. Funct Ecol. 2019; 00: 1– 14. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13402)
In this Insight, Alison Munson talks about why they did it, what they learned and the challenges involved in bringing together multiple research teams for a continental-scale project.
Continue reading “Alison Munson: a large scale look at understorey plants”
Dr. Erin L. Sauer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in the Forest and Wildlife Ecology Department. Her research focuses on understanding how environmental pressures and animal behaviour shape host-parasite interactions, and she recently published a paper showing that behavioural fever reduces ranaviral infection in toads
Continue reading “Erin Sauer: toads, fevers and finding ecology”
Functional Ecologists 