Tag: ecology

#StoryBehindThePaper

Parasites are inside “Everything and everywhere all at once”, yet not often considered in studies on wild animals. What’s the bug?

Authors: Jeremy De Bonville, Emmanuelle Chrétien, Joëlle J. Guitard, Marie Barou Dagues. This blog post tells the #Storybehindthepaper for Few studies of wild animal performance account for parasite infections: A systematic review. What do we and wild animals all have in common? Parasites! As displeasing as this reality may sound, this fact is often overlooked by researchers conducting experiments on wild animals, either in the lab … Continue reading Parasites are inside “Everything and everywhere all at once”, yet not often considered in studies on wild animals. What’s the bug?

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Sticky post
#StoryBehindThePaper, Guest post

Robot frog helps to understand the function of a multimodal signal used by males in territorial contests

This blog post is provided by Vinícius Caldart. Vinícius is a shortlisted candidate for the 2023 Elton Prize, for work on Function of a multimodal signal: a multiple hypothesis test using a robot frog. Animals communicate with each other through signals. Signals can be visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, seismic, or electric and play a crucial role in the behavior and social interactions of animals. Signals of … Continue reading Robot frog helps to understand the function of a multimodal signal used by males in territorial contests

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Sticky post
Guest post

Warming and trophic downgrading impact multiple trophic groups within and across ecosystems

This blog post is provided by Pablo Augusto P. Antiqueira. Pablo is a shortlisted candidate for the 2022 Elton Prize, for work on Warming and top predator loss drive direct and indirect effects on multiple trophic groups within and across ecosystems. This blog post is also available in Portuguese. The current era is profoundly marked by anthropogenic changes, causing ecological and geological alterations. High species … Continue reading Warming and trophic downgrading impact multiple trophic groups within and across ecosystems

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Associate editor post, Guest post

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 climate action to keep global warming below 1.5°c. In the lead up to the conference, we’re asking our editors and authors to share their research at the interface of climate and ecology. In this post, our Associate … Continue reading The impacts of climate change: from a butterfly’s microbiome to food security

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Book review

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, lead editor Dr Rachael Antwis explains more. Research on the ubiquity and function of host microbiomes is one of the fastest growing areas across ecology, biomedicine and biotechnology. As a result of rapid advancements in … Continue reading Microbiomes of soils, plants and animals

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Guest post

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 on how this field can move forward, which is precisely the aim of a recent British Ecological Society cross-journal Special Feature. Here,  Isabel Smallegange (an Associate Professor of Population Biology at the University of Amsterdam) … Continue reading Lovers and fighters, and how their coexistence affects their evolution within an eco-evolutionary feedback loop

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Announcements, Diversity in Ecology

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 talent. This includes a commitment to building a community of ecologists which is as inclusive as possible. To achieve this, BES has undertaken a number of initiatives: launching an equality and diversity task group; running … Continue reading Diversity In Ecology

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Announcements, Conference Report

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, general speakers, and social events on offer. And with so many statistical ecologists attending, this conference promises to be well above average! But for those of you facing uncertainty, Dr Rachel McCrea, Chair of the ISEC Scientific … Continue reading Countdown to ISEC!

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Guest post

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 Elton and the team of people who made such work possible. In 1959 I began my Ph.D. research on lemming cycles under Dr. Ian McTaggart Cowan at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. To … Continue reading Population Cycles: Historical Notes from the Bureau of Animal Population to 2018

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Guest post

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 Fuxjager’s lab at Wake Forest University, takes an integrative approach into behavioural ecology. This involves studying the molecular and physiological mechanisms that underlie display performance all the way up to the diversity of macroevolutionary pattern … Continue reading Evolution of dance and color in the birds of paradise

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