How do mesocarnivores interact in an urban environment? And how did the SARS-CoV-2 lockdown affect it?

This blog post is provided by Julie Louvrier (Twitter: @LouvrierJulie) and tells the #StoryBehindThePaper for the paper “Spatiotemporal interactions of a novel mesocarnivore community in an urban environment before and during SARS-CoV-2 lockdown”, which was recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. Cities represent a novel environment for wildlife species: human activities and disturbance happen during the day; a high density of buildings and … Continue reading How do mesocarnivores interact in an urban environment? And how did the SARS-CoV-2 lockdown affect it?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Nematode infection of non-pollinating fig wasps in Ficus petiolaris

This blog post is provided by Justin Van Goor, Finn Piatscheck, Derek Houston, and John Nason and tells the #StoryBehindThePaper for their article “Differential effects of nematode infection on pollinating and non-pollinating fig wasps: can shared antagonism provide net benefits to a mutualism?“, which was recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. Justin Van Goor completed his PhD at Iowa State University studying fig nematodes … Continue reading The enemy of my enemy is my friend: Nematode infection of non-pollinating fig wasps in Ficus petiolaris

Indirect interactions through shared predation can drive food-web responses to environmental change: lessons learnt from a lake mesocosm experiment

This blog post is provided by Fernando Chaguaceda and tells the #StoryBehindThePaper for the article “Short-term apparent mutualism drives responses of aquatic prey to increasing productivity“, which was recently published in Journal of Animal Ecology. Mobile generalist predators that feed on more than one prey are common in nature, from the majestic whales that spread their feeding habitats from pole to pole to small animals … Continue reading Indirect interactions through shared predation can drive food-web responses to environmental change: lessons learnt from a lake mesocosm experiment

Untangling community dynamics using spatially explicit Bayesian networks

In this article, Nick Fountain-Jones from the University of Tasmania introduces how advances in Bayesian networks can be used to untangle community dynamics and, in particular, the moose microbiome by telling us the #StoryBehindThePaper. Microbial communities are inherently complex systems with potentially hundreds of millions of interacting species. Every surface of the body is occupied by a diverse set of microbes; interactions between them, mediated … Continue reading Untangling community dynamics using spatially explicit Bayesian networks