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Importance of food quality for extinction

editor
23 May 2017
In communities of competing prey species of different food quality, predators may supplement their diets of low-quality prey with high-quality prey, leading to indirect interactions between different prey species. We show that this interaction not only ensures the...

Cover May

editor
9 May 2017
The cover for the May Issue is drawn by Robert Fischer, one of the authors to the paper "Importance of mixotrophic bacterivory can be predicted by light and loss rates". Robert describes it like this: The watercolor painting represents a free interpretation of an...

Rotifers hedge their bets against environmental unpredictability

editor
9 May 2017
Humans are not the only species to hedge their bets against uncertainty. No habitat is completely predictable and organisms –from microorganisms to vertebrates– living in fluctuating environments may exhibit bet-hedging strategies, which are believed to have evolved to...

Fitness in invasive social wasps

editor
9 May 2017
Figure 1: Foraging common wasp worker carrying its prey. The beech forests in Nelson Lakes National Park, New Zealand, are filled with the buzzing sound of wasps. Nests are well hidden in the ground but in this forest, they can be easily spotted by observing foraging...

Welcome Julien Cote - new SE

editor
21 April 2017
We have the great pleasure to welcome Julien Cote, University of Tolouse, France, to our Editorial Board. Get to know him on his website http://www.juliencote.fr/ and in the interview below: What's you main research focus at the moment? I currently study the impacts of...

The who, when, where, how and why of partial migration

editor
21 April 2017
We were amazed when we first heard rumours that giant tortoises migrated up and down the volcanoes of the Galapagos Islands. Darwin had first mentioned the possibility after discussing with local farmers why tortoise trails went uphill! Later, several researchers found...

Complexity and structure of food webs in the Barents Sea

editor
19 April 2017
A food web describes the diversity of species and their feeding relationships, i.e. "who eats whom". Food webs are essential parts of ecology as they summarize who is present in an ecosystem and how species interact with one another, here as consumer and prey. It may...

More species, more genes?

editor
11 April 2017
More species, more genes? Why positive correlations between species and genetic diversity might not be the rule Diversity is an essential facet of natural ecosystems that cuts through many organizational scales. The diversity of species observed in a given area (...

Welome Morgan Kelly - new SE

editor
11 April 2017
We have the great pleasure to welcome Morgan Kelly, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, to our Editroial Board. Get to know her in the interview below: What's you main research focus at the moment? My research...

Cover April

editor
7 April 2017
The photo on our cover for our Per Brink Special Issue shows a juvenile moor frog (Rana arvalis) in the forest floor in Central Sweden, May 2016. This species is one of the most abundant and widespread amphibians in Scandinavia, even tolerating freezing during the...

Hura, hura, Oikos’ first Per Brinck issue is out.

editor
5 April 2017
Who’s issue? Per Brinck was a Swedish ecologist who has played an instrumental role for the development and recognition of the science of ecology in the Nordic countries, especially as serving as the Editor-in-Chief for Oikos for many years. In honour of him, Oikos...

Welcome Adrián Escudero- new SE

editor
4 April 2017
We have the great pleasure to welcome Adrián Escudero, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Mostoles, Spain, to our Editroial Board. Get to know him in the interview below and by checking out his research here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adrian_Escudero What's you...

March cover

editor
10 March 2017
The photo on the cover for our March Issue was shot by Johannes Foufopoulos. A male Aegean Wall Lizard (Podarcis erhardii) photographed on the Cycladic island of Naxos (Greece). The species occurs in numerous relict populations across land-bridge islands that were...

The place to study litter decomposition

editor
7 March 2017
This paper is based on field work mostly done in the Ohu Village. This is a village in Papua New Guinea that runs its own small rainforest conservation area of approximately 300 ha. The surrounding lands have been largely converted to food gardens or are covered by...

Does density dependence matter in foraging?

editor
3 March 2017
When explaining animal distributions in ecosystems, ecologists have long debated the relative importance of food availability on the one hand, and density-dependence on the other. A high availability of food typically attracts and concentrates animals. Foragers may...

How do the foragers respond to masting?

editor
17 February 2017
Masting is the synchronous production of large seed crops across individuals within a plant population, and is thought to have evolved (at least in part) as a mechanism to escape seed predators. How does this work? Theory predicts that superabundant, synchronous seed...

Welcome Miguel Verdu - new SE

editor
17 February 2017
We are very happy to welcome Dr Miguel Verdu, Valencia, Spain to our editoral board. Below is a short interview with Miguel: What's you main research focus at the moment? I am interested in the signature that evolution leaves into ecological processes acting at species...

Editor's choice February

editor
16 February 2017
Organisms respond to predation risk in multiple ways. Induced defences are not restricted to plants in response to herbivore attack, but are also prominently present in vertebrates and arthropods. Induced responses can be of behavioural or morphological origin and...

Sigmoidal function of infections

editor
3 February 2017
Infectious diseases that can be contracted from the environment form a persistent threat to human health, livestock and wildlife. With the changing environment, there is increasing need for predictive modelling of environmentally transmitted disease dynamics...

On carnivorous plants, seed banks, and uncertainty

editor
3 February 2017
Plant demographers have it easy, as the saying goes. Plants don't move and their fates may be followed through time in permanent plots - as the photo of M. Paniw, taking measurements of Drosophyllum lusitanicum in a heathland patch, shows. What happens, though, to...

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