Blog

Multifractals in intertidal biofilms

editor
7 November 2014
Ecologists strive to understand the causes of the observed variability in population abundance and distribution. 1/f noise models and multifractals provide complementary conceptual and analytical frameworks to characterise variability in temporal and spatial series of...

Editor's choice November

editor
4 November 2014
As announced in the August issue , Oikos is publishing meta-analyses at an increasing rate, and similar to the transformative capacity of the Forum section, a dedicated section associated with formalized, replicable systematic reviews and meta-analyses will also...

Everything is connected – in nature too

editor
24 October 2014
You might, sometimes, have heard the phrase ‘everything is connected’. Maybe you are thinking about computers and mobile phones, but in fact this statement is particularly true in nature. For instance, we know that species are not isolated entities, instead they are...

Marsupial browsing effects insect damages

editor
21 October 2014
Yes, made it through the wallaby attack!, No, no, no- no reason to celebrate for the Eucalyptus trees. Less marsupial browsing - opens up for more insects. Life is just not easy. Read more in the Early View paper "Direct and indirect effects of marsupial browsing on a...

Caught in the middle: Plants get consumed more frequently at intermediately degraded sites

editor
17 October 2014
Predicting herbivore intensity in disturbed habitats is not as easy as it might seem… Results were a bit surprising in “Land-use legacies and present fire regimes interact to mediate herbivory by altering the neighboring plant community” by Philip G. Hahn and John L...

The struggle for safety: caterpillar against birds

editor
14 October 2014
Aptly described by the naturalist Arthur-Miles Moss, the life of a caterpillar is a virtual struggle for safety from formidable predators, ruthless parasites, and fatal pathogens. To cope, caterpillars possess an array of anti-predator adaptations, or defenses, which...

Drought – increase or decrease in herbivore abundance?

editor
7 October 2014
Grasshoppers tend to increase in abundance during drought, no decree, or increase…Find out which and when in the Earl View Oikos paper “Water stress in grasslands: dynamic responses of plants and insect herbivores” by Paul A. Lenhart and co-workers. Below is their...

What exactly can network models predict?

editor
3 October 2014
Ecological networks quantify the diversity of direct and indirect interactions taking place in nature. However, due to their complexity, ecologists rely heavily on the use of metrics to summarize aspects of network structure thought to be of biological importance. Many...

What causes bat dialects?

editor
30 September 2014
Bat acoustic signals might seem rather simple. yet, there are individual differences. The background to these variations are studied in the Early View paper “Geographical variation in echolocation vocalizations of the Himalayan leaf-nosed bat: contribution of...

Costs of living in a nest

editor
26 September 2014
Nests are extremely important for males’ fitness when reproduction and parental care are associated with these structures. The possession of a nest and its conditions may determine male attractiveness (due to female reproductive decisions) and offspring survival (due...

Towards the catastrophic collapse?

editor
23 September 2014
There is concern that climate change will disrupt the temporal schedules of interactions between plants and their pollinators or seed dispersers. This can make communities vulnerable to other ecological threats, for example habitat destruction. In our paper “Robustness...

Finding the food in complex environments

editor
19 September 2014
Many animals locate resources and orient in rather complex environments like vegetation, coral reefs or leaf litter. How does the presence of a stimulus affect animal movement in such complex environments? And what is the relative contribution of a stimulus vs. the...

What are the processes responsible for the effects of habitat loss?

editor
12 September 2014
When habitat is lost so are species. One way of investigating the processes underlying this pattern is to pay attention to the identity (not only the number) of species. What happens to between-site differences in species composition when habitat loss transforms...

Modelling white storchs

editor
12 September 2014
Understanding lifetime tracks and fitness of long distance avian migrants. This is the title of our DFG-funded German-Israeli Project Cooperation and it is also our quest for several years. Within this project, we aim to explore how movement, survival and reproduction...

Better being early?

editor
9 September 2014
If invaders do better by early arrival and growing, will native species also benefit from being early? Not necessarily, as found in the Early View paper “Priority effects vary with species identity and origin in an experiment varying the timing of seed arrival” by Elsa...

Pollinator decline effects on plants

editor
5 September 2014
How pollinator decline affect plant-plant interactions for pollinator is studied in the Early View article ‘ Experimental reduction of pollinator visitation modifies plant-plant interactions for pollination’ by Amparo Lázaro and co-workers. Several studies have...

From rich to poor – what happens in the soil?

editor
2 September 2014
What happens with plants, microbes and animals during soli transition from mull to mor? Find out in the Early View paper "Coordination of aboveground and belowground responses to local-scale soil fertility differences between two contrasting Jamaican rain forest types...

Frugivory and seed dispersal

editor
22 August 2014
What is it that determines if a bird should deposit a seed from a fruit in a specific place or not? I the Early View paper "Seed dispersal in heterogeneous landscapes: linking field observations with spatially explicit models" , Jessica E Lavabre ad colleagues combines...

How much do asexual plants actually change?

editor
19 August 2014
A sexual reproduction system should confer higher mutation rates and hence evolutionary rate than asexual ones. Is it really so? Find out in the Early View paper “Asexual plants change just as often and just as fast as do sexual plants when introduced to a new range”...

Do invasive species alter litter nitrogen release?

editor
11 August 2014
Can invasive species actually alter their environment so that more nutrients are available for them? Find out in the Early View paper "Non-additive effects of invasive tree litter shift seasonal N release: a potential invasion feedback" by Michael J. Schuster and...

Pages

Subscribe to Blog