Tag: population ecology

Guest post

Persistence (and a bit of luck) pays off: Costs of reproduction in mountain ungulates

Fitness costs of reproduction are expected when resources are limited. This can drive the evolution of life‐history strategies and can affect population dynamics, particularly if females change their allocation of resources to reproduction. Dr Marco Festa-Bianchet (Université de Sherbrooke) explains the value of long-term studies for understanding such trade-offs and gives the #StoryBehindThePaper for his recent synthesis article in the Journal of Animal Ecology. Long-term studies … Continue reading Persistence (and a bit of luck) pays off: Costs of reproduction in mountain ungulates

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Guest post

Live fast, don’t die young

Understanding the trade-offs between survival and reproduction is essential for the study of population dynamics. A recent paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology used a novel statistical framework to reveal previously unknown life-cycle trends for two sympatric bat species. Lead author Dr Antica Culina from the University of Oxford and Netherlands Institute of Ecology, explains the research. Survival and reproduction both require energy, which is generally … Continue reading Live fast, don’t die young

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Guest post

A high cost of infidelity for swift parrots

A recent paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has found that a chronic shortage of females in a critically endangered parrot species has led to love triangles, sneaky sex on the side, increased fighting between males, and fewer babies.  Here to tell us more are three of the authors: Rob Heinsohn, George Olah, and Dejan Stojanovic. Most birds are at least socially monogamous, … Continue reading A high cost of infidelity for swift parrots

Sarah Marley1 Comment
Guest post

Explaining population variability in marine fishes

Populations are not stable. But despite decades of study, the drivers of population variability are yet to be fully understood. A new study in the Journal of Animal Ecology suggests that somatic growth variation can be as important as early life‐history survival in driving population fluctuations in some marine fish species. Quantitative ecologist Dr Christine Stawitz led the study as part of her dissertation research with … Continue reading Explaining population variability in marine fishes

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Understanding what’s driving Arctic skua declines in Scotland

Dr Allan Perkins is a Senior Conservation Scientist at the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science. Here, he describes some of the challenges faced by Arctic skuas and his paper assessing ‘bottom-up’ processes, which was recently published in JAE. Arctic skuas are spectacular birds, pirates among our seabird communities. Having spent the winter, off Namibia and South Africa, they return each spring to nest on the coastal … Continue reading Understanding what’s driving Arctic skua declines in Scotland

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Ecological inference from occupancy estimates depends on sampling scale

Understanding animal occupancy should be relatively simple – but actually requires some complex thinking. In this blog post, Jonathon J. Valente (Postdoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Migratory Bird Center) and Quresh S. Latif (Biometrician, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies) delve into the surprisingly tricky question of ‘how many sites are occupied?‘ Occupancy has long been a focus in ecology. Estimating probability of site occupancy … Continue reading Ecological inference from occupancy estimates depends on sampling scale

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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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Lessons from two decades of detailing an invasion front

What can we learn about population dynamics from invasive species? A recent synthesis article published in the Journal of Animal Ecology examines the contributions from one of the best-documented cases of species invasion, the spread of the gypsy moth in North America. Dr Kristine Grayson started working with gypsy moth as a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Postdoctoral Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University … Continue reading Lessons from two decades of detailing an invasion front

Journal of Animal Ecology2 Comments
Guest post

Giving a hoot about owl populations

International Owl Day – who gives a hoot?  Dr Sarah Hoy sure does!  Sarah completed her PhD at the University of Aberdeen, which studied how the demography and dynamics of tawny owls have changed over the last 30 years in response to changing environmental conditions.  She is now a researcher in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science at Michigan Technological University, working with the … Continue reading Giving a hoot about owl populations

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Guest post

When Some Choughs Do Better Than Others

Red-billed choughs are a species of conservation concern, as discussed a recent Journal of Animal Ecology publication investigating their effective population size.  Amanda Trask, lead author of the study, recently finished her PhD at the University of Aberdeen on conservation genetics and demographics of one of the last remaining red-billed chough populations in Scotland, and is currently working as a Research Ecologist with the British Trust for … Continue reading When Some Choughs Do Better Than Others

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