Image Credit: Davian Ho, Maya Peters Kostman, and Philippa Steinberg for the Innovative Genomics Institute, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, Image Cropped There’s a certain poetry to the popularity of disease ecology. Once a quirky biological sub-field, the study of diseases in an ecological context had spread steadily in popularity over the last two decades. Then COVID hit, and much like the disease itself, disease ecology rocketed into the forefront of natural sciences. This wasn’t just contained to university and hospital corridors. Before COVID, how often did you hear words like “transmission”, “virulence ..read more

Image Credit: angela n., CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped The time has come for the Stats Corner to wrap up as Ecology for the Masses closes. I want to thank Sam Perrin for bringing me on board, carving out a place for statistics on the site, and supporting my writing for the past two years. He was always generous with his time helping me brainstorm topics when I was out of ideas and providing helpful feedback to make the posts more engaging and accessible. We all have Sam to thank for the fun pictures that kick off each post as well.   This part of the blog has covered many topics: Independence ..read more

Image Credit: Thomas Brown, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped A couple of months ago, on a drive into town, my mum and I were listening to the radio. A particular segment, on adders in the UK, caught my attention. The guest, one Nicholas Milton, author of “The Secret Life of the Adder: The Vanishing Viper”, spoke passionately and informatively about the plight of the adder in Britain. He specifically noted how negative public perception of the UK’s only native venomous snake, egged on by media sensationalism and fearmongering, played into the difficulties in protecting and campaigning for the adder. In ..read more

When you think about contagious diseases, the image that’s conjured is probably not a romantic one. Spanish flu, polio, the Black Death – while they’ve all shaped our history, they’re not exactly prime fodder for light-hearted musicals or sitcoms. And while many of these diseases we’ve successfully conquered as a society, we still see many diseases that do not have a cure yet. Over the last few years, we’ve become intimately acquainted with the concept of diseases jumping from animals to humans. And while we’ve generally been more focused on what those diseases mean to us, they’ve shaped the v ..read more

Image credit: Movie poster advertisement for Tarantula (1955), Public Domain, Image Cropped In the mid twentieth century, movies like ‘Tarantula’ and ‘Them!’ set the scene for what life would be like if giant bugs existed. Scenes filled with nightmares arisen from experiments gone wrong, children-stealing ants, great taglines like “Science’s Deadliest Accident”, and some unbelievably outdated special effects. Luckily, giant bugs don’t exist… Anymore.  Let’s rewind 358.9 million years ago, to the Carboniferous Period, when the giant landmasses of Laurasia and Gondwana collided and fused to ..read more

Climate anomalies and competition reduce establishment success during island colonization (2022) Nicholson et al., Ecology and Evolution, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9402 The Crux The colonisation of islands by species on the move has given rise to some of the most fascinating ecosystems around the world. Think the marsupials of Australia, Papua New Guinea’s Birds of paradise, or the multitudes of weird and wonderful creatures that pop up in tiny unexpected landmasses around the globe. On the flipside, invasive species arriving on islands can hit like veritable hurricanes, with similar (thoug ..read more

I don’t know about y’all but underwater sound communication from mere fish was not something I would’ve thought is a thing. Sure, we have some species (such as dolphins or whales) that use echolocation, or sharks that use their tingly shark-y senses to navigate their underwater world, but it turns out stingrays are out there making actual sounds! Goofy cute stingrays having gossip circles – what’s not to love?? Read more: Evidence of sound production in wild stingrays Stingrays (much like their close cousins sharks) are known to respond to sounds in their environment, such as by moving aw ..read more

Image credit: Muséum de Toulouse, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Top-down response to spatial variation in productivity and bottom-up response to temporal variation in productivity in a long-term study of desert ants (2022) Gibb et al., Biology Letters, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0314 The Crux Ecosystem productivity can tell us a lot about how an ecosystem functions. The more productive an ecosystem is, the more life it can support. But productivity doesn’t just affect the diversity or number of species within an ecosystem, it affects how those species interact, from the large carn ..read more

Turns out humans aren’t the only species that like to express their individual tastes and styles. Bowerbirds are well known for their extravagant nest building and decorating techniques used to find a potential mate. They go to extreme lengths to decorate their bowers (the characteristic stick-built structures) with brightly coloured ornaments or, as shown by twitter user @dnatimelord below, they can deviate from the script and go a bit more gothic with a collection of bones. Just in time for spooky season! spotted bowebird bower, they love collecting bones! Epping Forest National Park pic.t ..read more

Image credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped Invasive snails, parasite spillback, and potential parasite spillover drive parasitic diseases of Hippopotamus amphibius in artificial lakes of Zimbabwe (2021) Schols et al., BMC Biology, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12915-021-01093-2 The Crux Artificial lakes can be a huge plus for the regions where they are constructed. People come to hang out at them, they can serve as habitat for local or migrating species, and they can also improve water accessibility. In fact, the majority of the research that I did for my PhD took place in arti ..read more