Daphne Cortese visiting an anemonefish site in Moorea, French Polynesia (Photo by Marc Besson).

Daphne Cortese: Bleached anemones alter anemonefish physiology & behaviour

Daphne Cortese, PhD student at PSL Université Paris, Moorea, French Polynesia, explains the detrimental effects of anemone bleaching on the fish that depend on them in her recently accepted Functional Ecology paper, “Physiological and behavioural effects of anemone bleaching on symbiont anemonefish in the wild.” What’s your paper about? Our paper is about the cascading effect of bleaching on the physiology and behaviour of clownfish … Continue reading Daphne Cortese: Bleached anemones alter anemonefish physiology & behaviour

Mark Wilber

Mark Wilber: Resistance and tolerance of salamanders to an emerging fungal pathogen

Dr. Mark Wilber, Assistant Professor in the Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries at the University of Tennessee, discusses his recently accepted article, “Putative resistance and tolerance mechanisms have little impact on disease progression for an emerging salamander pathogen”, describes his favourite part about being ecologist, and how he got into the field. What is the background behind your paper? Hosts can defend themselves against … Continue reading Mark Wilber: Resistance and tolerance of salamanders to an emerging fungal pathogen

International Women’s Day 2021: #ChooseToChallenge

Originally posted on The Applied Ecologist:
The theme for International Women’s Day 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge. “A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all… Continue reading International Women’s Day 2021: #ChooseToChallenge

Bushfire grounds near Bermagui in south-eastern Australia, viewed through a destroyed termite mound. Photos: F. Scarff, J. Lewin.

Fiona Scarff: Effect of plant hydraulic traits on flammability

In this new post Fiona Scarff, a former postdoc at Macquarie University, presents her work on the effect of plant hydraulic traits on flammability, highlights the importance of lab meeting for fostering research and discusses the importance of failure in science. Our paper is about how readily live plants can burn in wildfires. Plants dry out in the hot, dry, windy weather that accompanies the … Continue reading Fiona Scarff: Effect of plant hydraulic traits on flammability

Selfie of Dr Adam Frew

Meet the editors: Adam Frew

Adam is an ecologist interested in plant-microbe and plant-insect interactions. His research investigates plant defences against herbivores, the ecology of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, and everything in-between. He usually employs experimental approaches in controlled environment (glasshouse/growth chamber) and field studies to tease apart the functional ecology of the interactions between mycorrhizal fungi, plants, and herbivores. He recently took up an ongoing position at the University of … Continue reading Meet the editors: Adam Frew

Jitka Klimesova sorting biomass in field

Jitka Klimesova: why we should all care more about belowground plant organs

Jitka Klimesova serves as Senior Scientist at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Třeboň and as Professor at Charles University in Prague. Her main interest is in functional morphology of clonal and regenerative organs of herbs. She is the main author of the only existing database of clonal and bud bank traits for an entire flora (CLO-PLA; Czech Republic), organizes … Continue reading Jitka Klimesova: why we should all care more about belowground plant organs

Sandra Varga setting up a field experiment to exclude pollinators in Lincoln, UK.

Meet the editors: Sandra Varga

Sandra is an evolutionary ecologist deeply interested in understanding how plants interact with their environment, linking aboveground and belowground processes. Specifically, she explores the relationships between plants, mycorrhizal fungi, pollinators and herbivores. She is particularly interested in the evolution and maintenance of sexually dimorphic plant breeding systems, and how these systems and their associates are impacted by climate change. She combines observational approaches with manipulative … Continue reading Meet the editors: Sandra Varga

Louise S. Nørgaard

Louise S. Nørgaard: Energetics, population density and pathogen performance

Louise S. Nørgaard is currently working as a Research Fellow at the centre of Geometric Biology at Monash University, Melbourne. In this Insight, she talks about her recent publication in Functional Ecology, ‘Energetic scaling across different host densities and its consequences for pathogen proliferation’. About the paper What’s your paper about? Using the freshwater Daphnia magna and its gram-positive bacteria Pasteuria ramosa, we explore how … Continue reading Louise S. Nørgaard: Energetics, population density and pathogen performance

Author Lewis Halsey, with his 4-month old daughter, Charlotte. Photo by: Lewis Halsey

No quantification without calibration – estimating energy expenditure

Prof. Lewis Halsey, Environmental Physiologist in the Life Sciences Department at the University of Roehampton, discusses with us his recently accepted article, “Proxy problems: why a calibration is essential for interpreting quantified changes in energy expenditure from biologging data”, describes his research interests, and provides advice to fellow ecologists. About the Paper Every time an animal does anything, from moving around to reproducing to fighting … Continue reading No quantification without calibration – estimating energy expenditure

Monique Weemstra

Monique Weemstra: how do trees modify their roots to adapt to their location?

We welcome 2021 with a new post by Monique Weemstra, a postdoc at the University of Michigan. Here she talks about her latest research looking at how trees can modulate their root traits to account for environmental gradients and the importance of working with people enjoying ecology as much as you do. About the paper This study is a part of the ECOPICS project: a … Continue reading Monique Weemstra: how do trees modify their roots to adapt to their location?