Attending the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting, a Festival of Ecology? There are many exciting live presentations, workshops, as well as on-demand content for our first fully virtual conference. Here are a few highlights we have picked out for the readers of Animal Ecology In Focus.

The Journal of Animal Ecology playlist 

Talks

Annette Fayet
University of Oxford
Foraging ecology and niche separation in two closely-related sympatric tropical seabirds

David Richardson
University of East Anglia
Contemporary evolution of a viral-sensing gene in an isolated bird population: TLR3 evolution over 25 years in the Seychelles warbler

Tom Bishop
University of Liverpool
Global evidence for species and community-level convergence in the ants

Mariano Rodriguez-Cabal
Grupo de Ecología de Invasiones INIBIOMA – CONICET – Universidad Nacional del Comahue
The disruption of a keystone interaction erodes pollination and seed dispersal networks

Matthew Barbour
University of Zurich
A keystone gene underlies the persistence of a food web

Rachael Antwis
University of Salford
Fungal microbiomes are determined by host phylogeny and exhibit widespread associations with the bacterial microbiome

Sarah Worsley
University of East Anglia
Gut microbiome variation and fitness within a natural population of the Seychelles Warbler

Uriah Daugaard*
University of Zurich
Warming can destabilize predator–prey interactions by shifting the functional response from Type III to Type II

*In this talk  Uriah Daugaard presents his 2019 Elton Prize winning paper.

Posters

Hannah White
Trinity College Dublin
Projecting future stability of functioning in agricultural grasslands

M. Noelia Barrios-Garcia
CONICET CENAC-APN UNCo (CRUB) Fagnano 244 (8400) Bariloche Argentina
Afterlife effects of invasive wasps nests on soil properties

Speed Review

Planning to submit a paper to a BES journal? Then you should sign up for the Speed Review sessions on Wednesday 16 – Friday 18 December!

The Speed Review is a chance for you to get a Senior Editor’s opinion on your manuscript. You can share a figure or a key finding from your research to centre your discussion on and each session will be limited to 5–10 minutes. Please try to have a succinct summary of your manuscript ready as well. The Editor you speak to will let you know what they think of your paper and try to give you some advice about any areas to highlight or any potential concerns that they might have about it. 

To sign up, find the BES Publications booth in the virtual Exhibition Hall and click link to our online form (first come, first served).

Once signed up, please remember to be online in the “BES Speed Review” community chat on your chosen day and we will allocate you to the relevant journal editor. If you have any questions, please contact us.

We hope you enjoy this year’s Annual Meeting. Use the hashtag #BES2020 to keep up to date with what everyone else is getting up to at the conference and if you’re at the virtual Exhibition Hall, come speak to us on the BES Publications booth – we will be there all week!