Leo Ohyama: Navigating the ecological traits of insect societies
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
1d ago
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
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Félix P. Leiva: Cell Size is More Important in Conditions of Low Oxygen
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
2d ago
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
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Daniel G. Dick: Exploring the relationship between different measures of functional redundancy
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
3d ago
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
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Ximena Cibils: 2023 Haldane Prize Podcast
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
6d ago
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
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Indra Boving: Plants and flammability—Deep inside the mechanisms of wild fires
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
6d ago
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
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Samantha Bock: A long-standing evolutionary mystery: Why does temperature determine sex in long-lived reptiles?
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
1w ago
In this blog post, Samantha Bock, a post-doctoral researcher, discusses her study “Differential early-life survival underlies the adaptive significance of temperature-dependent sex determination in a long-lived reptile“, which has been shortlisted for Functional Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Career Researchers. About the paper: The temperature an animal experiences during development can determine whether it becomes female or male in many reptiles and some fishes. This phenomenon, known as temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), has fascinated and perplexed evolutionary biologi ..read more
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Guangqi Zhang: A whole-tree perspective on the role of non-structural carbohydrates in resource allocation trade-offs along the tree economics spectrum 
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
1w ago
In our latest blog post, Guangqi Zhang, postdoc at INRAE (France), presents his paper “Not all sweetness and light: non-structural carbohydrate storage capacity in tree stems is decoupled from leaf but not root economics”. He discusses the importance of considering multiple traits, shares his happiness for the publication of his research, and encourages ecologists to keep moving with eastern philosophy.  About the paper  Plant functional traits impact tree fitness indirectly via their effects on growth, reproduction and survival, influencing species’ ecological strategies. As product ..read more
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2023 Haldane Prize Shortlist: Functional Ecology’s Award for Early Career Researchers
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
2w ago
The Haldane Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Functional Ecology written by an early career author. With entries spanning the 37th volume of the journal, our Senior Editors carefully shortlisted the following 12 papers: Lina Aoyama Functional diversity buffers biomass production across variable rainfall conditions through different processes above- versus below-ground Lina found that although biomass was largely unaffected by the timing of drought in one season, there were community-wide functional trait shifts in response to rainfal ..read more
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Functional Ecology: International Women’s Day 2024 
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
2w ago
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2024, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of our new Associate Editors. In each post, our editors discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Inspire Inclusion‘, means to them.  Dr Iveren Abiem  Dr Iveren Abiem (Credit: Iveren Abiem) What work do you do?  I am a lecturer at the University of Jos, Nigeria. I am a forest ecologist and conservation biologist studying biodiversity in Afromontane forests.  How did you get into ecology?  I have always had a fascina ..read more
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Guoming Qin: Unlocking the Secrets of Soil Carbon Storage in Mangrove Ecosystems 
Functional Ecologists
by Functional Ecology
1M ago
In this post, Guoming Qin—a postdoc at the South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences—share his recently published paper: “Contributions of Plant- and Microbial-Derived Residues to Mangrove Soil Carbon Stocks: Implications for Blue Carbon Sequestration”. He underscores the importance of this research in advancing our understanding of carbon accumulation in mangrove ecosystems, shares his initial experiences with mangrove sampling, and expresses gratitude to his mentor.  About the paper  The term blue carbon describes the carbon captured and stored in the soil of coasta ..read more
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