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Stay or go for next clutch?

editor
14 January 2015
Moving to a new site for next brood? Good or bad? And why? These questions are answered in the Early View paper “Mechanisms and reproductive consequences of breeding dispersal in a specialist predator under temporally varying food conditions” by Julien Terraube and co-...

Now or never: adaptive phenology and biotic interactions

editor
9 January 2015
Timing is everything. For an interaction to take place, organisms not only have to be at the same place, they need to be there at the same time. The timing of flowering has likely been an important trait ever since the first flowers appeared on Earth ~200 million years...

Welcome new SE: Francois Massol

editor
19 December 2014
We are very happy to welcome Dr. Francois Massol to Oikos Editorial Board. Get to know him here: What’s your main research focus at the moment? These days, I try and focus my efforts on the evolution of dispersal and the evolutionary ecology of interaction networks...

How small rodents in the Arctic affect birds in New Zealand

editor
17 December 2014
The complicated predator-prey interactions are one of the most fascinating fields in ecology. They have been studied for decades, and the more we learn, the more surprising and unpredicted stories that we find. For me, finding that small rodents (lemmings) in the high...

Not easy being a seedling…

editor
16 December 2014
Who will eat me and how fast will I be out-competed? Questions about the future for eucalyptus seedlings in a kangaroo world. Read more in Early View paper “Associational refuge in practice: can existing vegetation facilitate woodland restoration?” by Rebecca S. Stutz...

Butterfly resilience to climate warming

editor
15 December 2014
How species may cope with global warming is studied in the Early View paper “Geographic mosaics of phenology, host preference, adult size and microhabitat choice predict butterfly resilience to climate warming” by Nichole L. Bennett and coworkers. Below is their...

New Editor: Andrew MacDougall

editor
11 December 2014
Welcome to Oikos’ Editorial Board, Dr Andrew MacDougall, University of Guelph. Visit his webpage here. And read more about him below: 1. What’s you main research focus at the moment? How the co-varying influences of global environmental change transform fundamental...

Editor's Choice December

editor
9 December 2014
The last issue from 2014 is online. We selected the meta-analysis by Kulmatisk et al on the impact of soil foodwebs on plant growth and the forum on the relative importance of neutral stochasticity in community ecology b y Vellend et al. as editor’s choice. These two...

Welcome Sara Magalhaes New SE

editor
5 December 2014
Very welcome, Dr Sara Magalhaes, to the Oikos Editorial Board! Get to know Sara by visiting her webpage and read the mini-interview here: 1. What’s you main research focus at the moment? I work mainly with spider mites, which are herbivorous haplodiploid tiny spider-...

How plant genetic diversity affects herbivory

editor
2 December 2014
Human activities drastically reduce biodiversity at various taxonomic levels. While much of the current effort in research and biological conservation focuses on species diversity, the importance of intraspecific genetic diversity is sometimes overlooked. At the same...

Rodents and the yummy spines

editor
1 December 2014
Decades of ecological research have focused on interactions between herbivores and the chemical defenses of plants. However, far less is known about how effective physical defenses (spines, thorns, etc.) are against mammalian herbivores. It has been argued that co-...

How do different herbivores affect plant communities?

editor
28 November 2014
Walk through a grassland at the peak of summer and you will quickly become aware of how many grasshoppers inhabit the area. But what effect do these grasshoppers and other insect herbivores have on the plant community you are walking through? How does the effect of...

New SE: Leif Egil Loe

editor
26 November 2014
We welcome Professor Leif Egil Loe, Aas, Norway to the Oikos Editorial Board. Who is Leif Egil then? I asked some questions to get to know him better: 1. What's you main research focus at the moment? Most of what I am working on is related to ungulate ecology. I am...

Pesticide effect on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning

editor
25 November 2014
Global biodiversity is constantly declining, and up-to-date research has shown that biodiversity loss affects the functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide to humans. Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relations have yet mainly been analyzed in...

Same looks, different behaviors

editor
21 November 2014
At first sight, these nematodes all look the same. Nevertheless, they each belong to a different species. Such cryptic species- species that morphologically look the same but show genetic divergence- are more different than we first might think. Previous research...

Predation and transmission of direct life-cycle parasites

editor
18 November 2014
Find out what role predation plays in the transfer of less complex parasites in the Early View paper "The underrated importance of predation in transmission ecology of direct lifecycle parasites" by Giovanni Strona. Below is his short summary of the study: Predation is...

Sexual size dimorphism in island plants

editor
18 November 2014
Variation in size between sexes is something that we associate mainly with animals. But what about plants? Do female plants have larger elves than males? Find out in the Early View paper in Oikos “Sexual size dimorphism in island plants: the niche variation hypothesis...

Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what’s known and what’s next?

editor
14 November 2014
In our new paper “Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what’s known and what’s next?” just published online early in Oikos, we synthesise our current understanding of the functional consequences of changes in species richness in the marine realm. For those...

Are mismatches the norm?

editor
12 November 2014
Conservation biologists and climate change researchers are worried by the observed phenological changes, that is, timing of biological events. These concerns are partly motivated by the expected species-specific and thus potentially non-parallell phenological shifts...

Elevation effects on body size

editor
11 November 2014
The higher up, the smaller the insects…or? Dispersing insects might be different. Read more in the Early View paper “Dispersal potential impacts size clines of grasshoppers across an elevation gradient” by Richard Levy and colleagues. Below is the author’s own summary...

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