In our latest post, Curtis Lubbe – a researcher at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences – discusses the fascinating subterranean world of roots, the diversity of plant forms and species in meadows, and what the future in this field may bring. Profile I am completely fascinated by the variety of subterranean plant organs and their traits, especially those involved in storage, movement, and stress mediation.  I have an arts background, so the knobbly, creeping, or chunky belowground structures satisfy my aesthetic needs, while digging and taking plants from soil satisfie ..read more

Functional Ecology is delighted to announce that the winner of the 2023 Haldane Prize is Indra Boving! The Haldane Prize is awarded annually for the best paper published in the journal by an early career researcher. Winner: Indra Boving Research: Live fuel moisture and water potential exhibit differing relationships with leaf-level flammability thresholds In this blog post, we ask Indra some questions about her research and career to date. How did you get into ecology? I spent a lot of time outside as a kid and can remember spending long afternoons climbing the branches of an Eastern hemlock o ..read more

In this blog post, Yunxian Xu discusses his study “Mycorrhizal fungi alter root exudation to cultivate a beneficial microbiome for plant growth“, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers. About the paper: Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are a class of soil microorganisms that are widespread in terrestrial ecosystems and can form a reciprocal symbiotic relationship with most terrestrial plants to promote the uptake of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium by their hosts. Although studies of whole-genome sequencing of se ..read more

In this blog post, Spencer Virgin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, discusses his study “Behavioural thermoregulation and food availability drive fine-scale seasonal habitat partitioning in limpets”, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers About the Research Most research on the effect of climate change and extreme heat on organism distributions focuses only on large-scale biogeographic patterns, ignoring potentially important small-scale variability. In the intertidal zone of temperate rocky shores ..read more

In this post, Ryan Stephens, an ecologist at East Tennessee State University, discusses his review paper “Meta-analysis and critical review of trophic discrimination factors (Δ13C and Δ15N): Importance of tissue, trophic level and diet source“. This paper has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers. About the Paper Naturally occurring stable isotopes, especially carbon (13C/12C, expressed as δ13C) and nitrogen (15N/14N, expressed as δ15N), are common tools used to understand what species are eating. Stable isotope analyses assume that “you are ..read more

In this blog post, Leo Ohyama, a PhD candidate, discusses his study “Ecological traits of social insects: Colony, queen and worker size relationships reveal a nexus trait with broad ecological relevance“, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers. About the Paper Trait-based approaches in ecology allow researchers to associate ecological characteristics spanning phenology, morphology, and physiology to species identities. This provides an additional dimension to quantify and understand the diversity of ecological communities and assembl ..read more

In this post, Félix P. Leiva, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany, discusses his article “The role of cell size in shaping responses to oxygen and temperature in fruit flies“, which has been shortlisted for the Haldane Prize, Functional Ecology´s prize for Early Career Researchers. About the paper Our paper makes a significant contribution by unveiling that temperature and oxygen can explain responses in the body size of our model ectotherm. Additionally, it underscores the pivotal role of cell size in modulating these responses. We conducted a laboratory experiment us ..read more

In this blog post, Daniel G. Dick, a public education and geoscience communication postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University, Canada, discusses his study “Measuring functional redundancy using generalized Hill numbers”, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers. About the Paper Whether an ecological community can withstand an external perturbation (such as rapid global warming) is thought to be largely determined by certain ecosystem-level properties, such as species diversity and functional redundancy. The literature regarding how bes ..read more

Podcast out now! Ximena Cibils chats to us about her research paper, Silicon and Epichloë-endophyte defences in a model temperate grass diminish feeding efficiency and immunity of an insect, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s Haldane Prize 2023. Ximena with Scott Johnson, who brough her diploma with him to Uruguay last year! (Credit: Ximena Cibils)Ximena and and Jon Hudson, intern with the Summer Undergraduate Scholarship program at Western Sydney University (Credit: Jamie Waterman) You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can also ..read more

In this revisited blog post, Indra Boving, a PhD candidate at University of California-Santa Barbara, USA, shares her work ‘Live fuel moisture and water potential exhibit differing relationships with leaf-level flammability thresholds’, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for early career researchers. About the paper Our paper was inspired by patterns observed across the landscape in Southern California chapparal: wildfires typically become larger and more frequent at distinct levels of plant hydration. These patterns guide fire severity warnings and risk ind ..read more