The 27th International Ornithological Congress (August 19-26, 2018)
Brett K. Sandercock reports on the functional ecology of birds from the 2018 congress held in Vancouver, Canada. Brett was also the keynote speaker at a symposium on grassland birds organised by the British Ornithological Union.
Continue reading “The 27th International Ornithological Congress (August 19-26, 2018)”
We’re happy to welcome Adam Martin, (University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada) to the board. Adam is a forest- and agro- ecologist interested in plant ecophysiology, plant functional traits, forest carbon dynamics, and ecosystem functioning. He works in both natural and managed terrestrial ecosystems in temperate and tropical regions.
Find out more about Adam, his research and his approach to ecology here.
Our new Associate Editor, Isabel Smallegange, is an Associate Professor of Population Biology at the University of Amsterdam. Follow her @I_Smallegange or check out her blogs at isabelsmallegange.com, where she also discusses issues regarding work-life and gender balance in academia.
Continue reading “Associate Editor Profile: Isabel Smallegange”
In Insights we discover the story (and the people) behind a recent publication in Functional Ecology: what inspired the authors to do the research, how did the project develop and what wider impact might the work have?
In this week’s Insights, Tyler Refsland from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, talks about his paper titled: ‘Fire increases drought vulnerability of Quercus alba juveniles by altering forest microclimate and nitrogen availability’. Refsland and his colleague, Jennifer Fraterrigo present the results of an experiment where they imposed drought on natural and juvenile oak juvenile to disentangle the mechanisms underlying the effects of fire tree responses to drought. While postfire rerouting can temporarily improve water relations, fire exacerbates drought-driven declines in growth by both promoting a warmer microclimate and intensifying nitrogen limitation. Based on their results, Refsland & Fraterrigo postulate that the effect of fires ripple into the future by changing microclimate and resource condition, which could ultimately limit tree recruitment.
We’re happy to welcome Marko J Spasojevic, (University of California Riverside, USA) to the board. Marko is community ecologist working at the interface of ecology, biogeography, and conservation. His broad goal is to understand the mechanisms that influence patterns of biodiversity, and then to use that understanding to address environmental issues. His research combines large-scale observational studies across biogeographic regions, field experiments, functional and phylogenetic approaches, and advanced statistics and modeling to address environmental issues and to explore fundamental questions in ecology
We asked Marko to tell us about his current research and select some papers from the journal to recommend. Continue reading “Associate Editor Profile: Marko J Spasojevic”
We’re happy to welcome Tom Houslay, (Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK) to the board. Tom is an evolutionary ecologist whose research focuses on how genetic, environmental and social factors interact to shape multivariate phenotypes. He uses a combination of experimental manipulations and correlative (individual and quantitative genetic) studies to investigate variation in – and covariation between – life history and labile traits, including … Continue reading Associate Editor Profile: Tom Houslay
In Insights we discover the story (and the people) behind a recent publication in Functional Ecology: what inspired the authors to do the research, how did the project develop and what wider impact might the work have?
In this week’s Insights, Régis Céréghino, from the Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionelle et Environnement (EcoLab) at the Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, France, talks about his papers on his work on food webs in Tank Bromeliads (Constraints on the functional trait space of aquatic invertebrates in bromeliads; Functional traits and environmental conditions predict community isotopic niches and energy pathways across spatial scale; Ecological mechanisms and phylogeny shape invertebrate stoichiometry: a test using detritus-based food webs across Central and South America)
In Insights we discover the story (and the people) behind a recent publication in Functional Ecology: what inspired the authors to do the research, how did the project develop and what wider impact might the work have?
In this week’s Insights, Manrico Sebastiano from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) talks about his paper on the mechanisms that underlie the impact of viral disease. These mechanisms are relatively unknown and studies tend to focus on a few conventional laboratory species. Sebastiano and his colleagues have set-out to study the effects of resveratrol on viral infections in the free-living Magnificent frigatebird.
Richard Beason, regular contributor to our InSite/Out column, was at the 2018 Ecoacoustics Comgress in Brisbane. He reports back on a conference that included ecology, music, conservation, bioacoustics, technology and more. As my fieldwork was finished for this year, in this blog I set off for the 2018 Ecoacoustics Congress in Brisbane. Not only was this my first international conference, it was also the first … Continue reading A Congress with Concerts and Koalas: Ecoacoustics 2018 in Brisbane
Functional Ecologists 