The Elton Prize is awarded each year for the best paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology written by an early career author at the start of their research career.

The overall winner is selected by the Senior Editors of the journal, and will be announced in the coming weeks. Watch this space! This year’s shortlisted candidates are announced below.

The shortlisted candidates are:

Miguel Gomez; interactions between fitness components across the life cycle constrain competitor coexistence

Garben Logghe; arthropod food webs predicted from body size ratios are improved by incorporating prey defensive properties

Sarah Raymond; the impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns on wildlife-vehicle collisions in the UK. Read her blog post here.

Bradley Strickland; an apex predator engineers wetland food-web heterogeneity through nutrient enrichment and habitat modification

Duorun Wang; nearby large islands diminish biodiversity of the focal island by a negative target effect

Clara Woodie; long transients and dendritic network structure affect spatial predator-prey dynamics in experimental microcosms

Joe Woodman; disentangling the causes of age-assortative mating in bird populations with contrasting life-history strategies

Xiaozhou Ye; maintenance of biodiversity in multitrophic metacommunities: dispersal mode matters

Congratulations to all of our shortlisted candidates! We have received a high volume of excellent applications – those selected above should be extremely proud of their work! Thank you to all authors who submitted an application for the award.

Leave a comment