Dr. Fox sampling coral. Photo credit: Brian Zgliczynski

Michael Fox: variable diets of coral reefs

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.

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Øystein Kielland: Phenotypic plasticity in oxygen supply

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.

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Alison Munson: a large scale look at understorey plants

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.

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Erin Sauer: toads, fevers and finding ecology

Dr Erin Sauer in Iceland (with puffin.)
Dr Erin Sauer in Iceland (with puffin.)

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

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Anusha Shankar + hummingbird. Credit: Julisa Ricart

Anusha Shankar: Modelling energy budgets of hummingbirds

Dr. Anusha Shankar is a National Geographic Explorer and Young Leader, a Lewis and Clark Field Scholar, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. In this insight, Dr. Shankar discusses her paper “Hummingbirds budget energy flexibly in response to changing resources”, how this work may be used for other species, and gives advice to fellow scientists.

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