This week in Functional Ecology, a very interesting paper on how feeding behaviour and diet have been instrumental in shaping waterfowl beak shape . The author, Aaron Olsen, also put together a tutorial on how to create a “backtransform morphospace” in R. Two independent studies, published in Nature, show that mobility in research increases impact. If you want to move to a new lab; what … Continue reading Tuesday taster: 10/10/2017
It’s late July, the alpine meadows of the Swiss Alps are in full bloom, and the heat of the summer sun drives a deep sweet smell from the litter of the spruce forest floor as we start our walk up. My friend and colleague Mark leads the way as we move up the tour de Mont Blanc from la Fouly in the Valais, heading for our research site at ~2500m. There, the sun has given rise to abundant flowers, rich meadows, the buzzing of insect and bird life, but still works hard at melting the last of last of the snow. As we reach the site, we are greeted with the familiar, but always astounding, mixture of snowbeds, ridges, meadows, flush wetland, pools and screes of this dynamic and fantastic environment (see picture). Continue reading “Ecologist’s Diary with Rob Mills: Making the most of summer snow”
In this Hindsight, Dicky Clymo, Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary University of London, writes about the first measurements of gas effluxes from a peat bog: the first drops of what has since become a storm. Continue reading “Hindsight: The earliest measurements of gas fluxes from a blanket bog”
“The fine roots of perennial plants are a royal pain to study”. Continue reading “Ecologist’s Diary with Gesche Blume-Werry: A royal pain”
At my dinner table, we often talk about the environmental issues around eating beef. The information is often ambiguous and the whole issue seems to be a minefield, but cattle farming is evidently contributing to emissions, and eating grass-fed beef is not going to change that, as stated in a blog on the Food Climate Research Network. If you are interested in regime changes in … Continue reading Tuesday taster: 03/10/2017
This week’s favourite in Functional Ecology is a newly accepted paper by Martijn Vandegehuchte and colleagues who studied how mammals –large and small – affected grazing by insects. In their study they also tested if these interactions were moderated by plant functional type identity. An interesting paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution shows how Cuckoo females produce ‘hawk-like’ calls to mislead host parents and increase … Continue reading Tuesday taster: 26/09/2017
It’s been a while since I’ve touched base about the TeaComposition H2O initiative. To recap, this global initiative aims to understand long-term aquatic decomposition and carbon cycling in seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, tidal marshes, all types of freshwater wetlands as well as lakes, ponds and streams. In using household tea as pseudo-plant litter, we can standardised the starting material, which gives us the power to tease apart the larger-scale drivers that influence decomposition, like climate, inundation and habitat type. Continue reading “Ecologist’s Diary with the TeaComposition H2O Initiative: 3”
In Insights we discover the story behind a recent publication in Functional Ecology. What inspired the authors to do the research and how did the project develop before the publication? and what wider impact might their work have?
This week, Anamarija Žagar talks to Bjorn about her paper on the performance of two co-existing lizards in Slovenia and the role of functional and morphological traits. Anamarija currently works at the National institute of Biology in Slovenia, and is also affiliated as a research associate to the CIBIO Research Centre in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources at the University of Porto in Portugal.
With the new academic year starting, an interesting study shows that small group seminars are most effective in preventing students to drop out of university. A runner myself, I liked this BBC coverage on running in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands, where (perhaps this week) the oldest snow patch may disappear. Following up on my blog for Peer Review Week 2017, researchers from Imperial … Continue reading Tuesday taster: 19/09/2017
Functional Ecologists 