The impacts of climate change: from a butterfly’s microbiome to food security
This year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) will be held in Glasgow in November, and now more than ever before, the pressure is on for world leaders to agree on […]
Tag Archives: ecology
Microbiomes of soils, plants and animals
A new book in the BES Ecological Reviews series explores how microbiomes contribute to a range of important functions in their hosts, from nutrition, to behaviour and disease susceptibility. Here, […]
Lovers and fighters, and how their coexistence affects their evolution within an eco-evolutionary feedback loop
Eco-evolutionary dynamics are well studied but the term is applied to a wide variety of effects and interactions. Yet comparing these different types of studies on eco-evolutionary dynamics will inform […]
Diversity In Ecology
Blog Editor Sarah Marley introduces a new series of blog posts targeting #DiversityInEcology. One of the major goals of the British Ecological Society (BES) is to inspire, engage and recognise […]
Countdown to ISEC!
There are only three more days to register for the next International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC). Many workshops are now fully-booked, but there is still a significant line-up of invited sessions, […]
Population Cycles: Historical Notes from the Bureau of Animal Population to 2018
This guest post by Professor Charles J. Krebs (Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia) looks back at his experiences studying population cycles across several decades, his work with Charles […]
Evolution of dance and color in the birds of paradise
In this post, we take a behind-the-scenes look at a recent study into the drivers of complexity in bird of paradise displays. Meredith Miles, a PhD student in Dr Matthew […]
How do birds avoid their sibling-species competitors?
Being similar can be problematic. When ecologically-similar species co-occur, competition can result. So how can this be avoided? A recent paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology shows how birds […]
Frogs and Herbicides: A Gut Feeling
Dr. Sarah Knutie led a study to explore whether a commonly-used herbicide affects the gut microbes of frogs and if the gut microbes could mediate the effect of the herbicide […]
Social or solitary: Does social network protect from disease?
The spread of infectious diseases is heavily influenced by the structure of animal social networks. So how do disease risks vary by different social systems? Dr Pratha Sah addresses this […]
Glimpsing evolutionary instability in mountains
There are many challenging environments on the planet, and the Andes Mountains are no exception. Animals living at height need to overcome a range of extremes – but how do […]
International Day of Women and Girls in Science
Science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of the internationally-agreed Sustainable Development Goals. To help further gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, the United […]
It’s a bear! Adopting a ‘computer vision for animal ecology’
How can automated image processing be applied for detecting, counting and identifying animals in natural landscapes? A recent review article published in the Journal of Animal Ecology covers this exact […]
How does infection alter animal migration performance? It’s complicated.
Animals move around. A lot. Migratory animals are widely assumed to play an important role in the long-distance dispersal of parasites and pathogens. But how does this affect the migratory […]
Estimating Species Populations – a critical step in understanding ecological processes
Understanding the size of animal populations is necessary – but also extremely challenging. Andrea Campos Candela, a PhD student with the Fish Ecology Lab in the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced […]
A practical guide for inferring reliable dominance hierarchies and estimating their uncertainty
There are thousands of academic papers published each year. But how do they all come about? Damien Farine and Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar share the ‘behind the scenes’ story of their recent paper on […]
Strategic pauses in female elephant seals
A recent paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has found that poor-quality female southern elephant seals use breeding pauses as a tactic to produce more offspring over their […]
Badgers and Disease Ecology
Traditionally one of the UK’s most charismatic (and certainly distinctive) mammals, the badger has received mixed attention in recent times as a result of their involvement in disease transmission. To […]
Scaly Not Scary – Reconciling Humans and Snakes
Snakes have long been vilified in popular media – but do they deserve such a bad reputation? Many people believe otherwise, with 16th July marking World Snake Day and providing the […]
Marine Mammal Conservation in the Light of Marine Spatial Use
Earlier this month, the European Cetacean Society (ECS) held their 31st annual conference in Middelfart, Denmark. Established in 1987, ECS has several hundred members from more than 25 European countries […]
Animal Ecology In Focus 