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Forest ecosystems: does tree diversity matter?

editor
5 May 2015
Forests provide a large collection of ecosystem functions and services. They produce wood for pulp and timber, and contribute to the regulation of the carbon and water cycles. Furthermore, they host a major part of the world’s biodiversity, and provide numerous...

Why bigger is not only bigger

editor
28 April 2015
The study of scaling is an attempt to understand why bigger is not only bigger. A big cello produces a lower pitched sound than a small violin. A large cup of hot water will cool more slowly than a small one. When the size of a bridge is increased, the design must...

Ecological release in the sand

editor
24 April 2015
When a population encounters a newly-formed habitat, colonizers of the new habitat often undergo “ecological release,” meaning that they expand their ecological niche in the new habitat compared to their original habitat. Ecological release usually occurs because in a...

What drives diversity patterns?

editor
21 April 2015
Protist microcosm experiments including 15 different species (left photos, clockwise: Blepharisma, Euglena gracilis, Paramecium bursaria and Colpidium) were used to test the effect of active dispersal along dendritic versus linear networks (right photo), and subsequent...

Spatial structure in ecosystems

editor
21 April 2015
Ecologists have long been interested in the spatial structure of communities, that is, any non-random spatial organization in the distribution of communities. If communities are spatially structured, sites near each other are compositionally more similar than the more...

Urbanisation and biodiversity

editor
10 April 2015
How does urbanisation affect organisms with different mobility and specialisation degree? At which distance does urbanisation affect these different organisms? These are the key questions that are addressed in the Oikos' paper "Impacts of urbanisation on biodiversity:...

Snails chat chemically about food availability

editor
10 April 2015
Slow moving animals, like snails, pay a high price for moving the wrong way. If they send each other information about the best choice via chemical signals, they could optimize their movement decisions considerably. Photograph of the great pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis...

April Cover

editor
8 April 2015
The photo on the April cover was taken by Michael Singer, one of the authors to the paper: "The struggle for safety: effectiveness of caterpillar defenses against bird predation" by Lichter-Marck et al. "The photo was taken in the field. I came across the caterpillar...

Effects of tree diversity on insects

editor
7 April 2015
Plant diversity, typically measured as the number of plant species at a local site, plays a primary role in regulating and maintaining many ecosystem processes such as decomposition rates, plant growth, and resistance against disturbance. In addition, plant diversity...

Editor's Choice March and April

editor
2 April 2015
March was a hectic project month in Belgium, with a series of important deadlines. A shame that I did not provide blog notes for our editor’s choices for March - they are great. Timothee Poisot and colleagues published a forum paper on the context-dependency of species...

How does influenza virus affect behaviour?

editor
31 March 2015
Avian influenza viruses may be spread by wild birds, and waterfowl in particular. In order to model the dispersal of these viruses, it is important to assess the effects of infection on the birds’ behaviour. We compared the local and regional movements of mallard ducks...

What can ecology learn from clinical medicine?

editor
31 March 2015
Our Forum article on how medical surrogate approaches could be applied to ecology is the result of research being done by the surrogate ecology group at The Australian National University (comprised of the paper’s authors). While discussing how to make a new and...

Welcome Florian Altermatt - new SE

editor
27 March 2015
We are very happy to welcome Florian Altermatt, University of Zurich, to the Oikos Editorial Board. Below, he introduces himself: 1. What's you main research focus at the moment? My main interests at the moment are to understand how spatial network configuration shapes...

Why do the trees grov where they grow.

editor
24 March 2015
The southwestern Ecuador holds one of the last remnants of seasonally tropical dry forest of the Tumbesian region, a place where amazing biodiversity, endemism and adaptation to extreme conditions can be found. However, this forest face high anthropogenic pressures...

Herbivory variation - latitude or climate?

editor
24 March 2015
Ecologists have repeatedly reported that lower latitudes are associated with increases in herbivore abundance and damage. However, recent studies have confirmed that this pattern is not as common as previously thought. In our paper, " Latitudinal variation in herbivory...

How do long-lived species respond to environmental changes?

editor
13 March 2015
New model predicts how long-lived species experience changes in the environment. Presented in the Oikos Early View paper " An integrated population model for a long-lived ungulate: more efficient data use with Bayesian methods" by Aline M. Lee and coworkers. Watch...

Castration or death?

editor
10 March 2015
Not a choice many of us would care to face. But this is an essential risk management decision made by the snail Littorina littorea based on the micro-positioning it chooses within the intertidal zone on rocky coastlines of the North Atlantic. If a snail chooses to live...

What is an apex predator?

editor
10 March 2015
Always wondered about the apex predator? Read the Early View paper in Oikos "What is an apex predator?" by Arian D. Wallasch and co-workers. Below is the author's summary of the study: What is the difference between a dingo and fox? We had been counting animal tracks...

Dispersal among local communities

editor
6 March 2015
Whether ecological communities can exhibit historical contingency is an important question in community ecology. Ample theoretical and empirical evidence has shown that difference in assembly history can lead to alternative community states that differ in species...

Control of large carnivores could backfire if mesopredators are released

editor
6 March 2015
Humans cull large carnivore populations in areas around the world to reduce predation on wild and domestic ungulates. However, medium-sized ungulates such as sheep and deer are often preyed upon by smaller predators such as coyotes and lynx as well. Suppression of...

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