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On the usefulness of boring presentations

editor
31 July 2015
Old data + new techniques = new answers to old questions: On the usefulness of boring presentations Most biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments focus at one trophic level and use randomly assembled communities. However, in natural systems communities are rarely...

Editor's Choice July

editor
2 July 2015
Two research papers were chosen as EC for July. The two papers have in common that they generate synthesis in community ecology by collecting large datasets to test predictions on network structure and functional organisation. Staab et al. tested the hypothesis that...

EC August

editor
29 June 2015
We selected for the August issue two rather atypical contributions as editor’s choice. We see Oikos as a journal at the interface of ecology and evolution and decided to highlight a forum and research paper that are focusing on the genetic component of population...

August cover

editor
16 June 2015
The photo on the August cover shows a polar bear that has just caught a bearded seal. The phot was taken by Wayne Lynch. The paper about the polar bears is "Multi-temporal factors influence predation for polar bears in a changing climate" by Nick Pilfold and coworkers.

July Cover

editor
16 June 2015
The photo on the cover on the July-issue shows various protists and relates to the paper "Dendritic network structure and dispersal affect temporal dynamics of diversity and species persistence" by Mathew Seymore et al. "Different species commonly used in protist...

June Cover

editor
12 June 2015
The photo at Oikos' June cover is taken by Bram Vanschoenwinkel, one of the authors to the paper "Hydrological stability drives both local and regional diversity patterns in rock pool metacommunities" in the same issue. Here he describes the photo and the study: The...

Editor's Choice June

editor
5 June 2015
The first paper by Christoph Mensen and colleagues “ Stressor-induced biodiversity gradients: revisiting biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships”, uses biodiversity gradients to test to which degree a realistic loss of species due anthropogenic stressors...

Adult performance: driven by environmental effects or offspring size?

editor
29 May 2015
When organisms grow up to reproductive maturity, they are shaped by the environment that surrounds them and the way they interact with it. Intrinsic effects shape this interaction, and are a product of an organisms’ phenotype. In early development, size is postulated...

Invasive success and the evolution of enhanced weaponry

editor
26 May 2015
The success of invasive plants is often attributed to the production of chemicals that are highly inhibitory against naïve neighbours at the introduced range (‘novel weapons hypothesis’). However, invasive populations could not only possess such novel weapons, but...

Amur tigers: how they choose where and what to eat

editor
22 May 2015
We know that the distributions of carnivore populations across the globe depend heavily upon where prey species are available. Prey availability depends not only on prey density but also on prey accessibility which is affected, in part, by the configuration of...

Ecosystem engineers and physical forces in synergy

editor
22 May 2015
Seed dispersal is a critical process in the life history of flowering, often involving multiple steps both horizontally and vertically. For many plant species, seed burial i.e. vertical seed movement can have mighty consequences for seed fate, plant recruitment and...

Importance of fear in ecology

editor
19 May 2015
Fear, the anticipation of a potentially imminent danger, is taking over most decisions in modern human societies, from neighborhood watch program to foreign policy decisions. However, fear is not limited to human species and is now believed to influence almost all...

Sex-ratio in wild horses

editor
19 May 2015
Ecologists have long been interested in the prominent role that the sex ratio plays on population processes, including sexual selection, evolutionary trajectories, and population dynamics. As such, I (we) were interested in investing the determinants of sex ratio...

Can medium-term studies predict long-term patterns?

editor
18 May 2015
Long-term studies, either survey or experiments, have been identified as crucial tool of ecology since decades. However, and in particular in the case of experimental manipulations, they remain rarely reported in the literature and because their time scale is not...

What can nestedness metrics tell us about birds?

editor
18 May 2015
The prevalence of nestedness in ecological communities has been studied and debated for over twenty years. These studies have all dealt with the concept of compositional nestedness, i.e. the ordered composition of species assemblages. However, this traditional approach...

You are where you eat.

editor
18 May 2015
Central place foragers make consistent returns to a central place between foraging bouts, generally a den or a nest. Territorial animals often aggressively defend their territories and as such regularly monitor the boundaries of their home range. Home range development...

Keystone predators in invaded communities

editor
8 May 2015
The importance of keystone predators in structuring biological communities and ecosystems has been one of the cornerstones of ecology. Surprisingly though, almost nothing is known about the effect of keystone predators in systems that are dominated by non-natives...

Cover May

editor
8 May 2015
The cover of Oikos' May Issue shows a "male Soay sheep in his full glory" and is taken by Tim Coulson. Together with Emily G. Simmonds, Tim has written one of the Editor's Choice papers in the May Issue " Analysis of phenotypic change in relation to climatic drivers in...

Editor's Choice May

editor
8 May 2015
Oikos publishes novel work of great synthetic value on a wide range of organisms. For the May issue, two vertebrate papers were chosen as editor's choice. The work of Hance Ellington and Dennis Murray provides synthesis on the impact of hybridization on ecological...

Warming the tundra: how do invertebrates and plants respond?

editor
5 May 2015
Caterpillar of the Arctic moth (Gynaephora groenlandica) feeding on Salix arctica. Accelerated rates of warming in tundra ecosystems can simultaneously affect plants, herbivores and their interactions. Invertebrate herbivores are likely to respond strongly to warming...

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