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Cover February

editor
9 February 2016
The cover photo of the February Issue shows The Clauge River in the Chaux's forest (Jura, France). The Clauge comprised several forested headwater streams that go dry for 1-5 months during the summer period. However, the river harbours rich aquatic invertebrate...

What causes underwater plant collapses?

editor
5 February 2016
Underwater plants play a keystone role in shallow aquatic ecosystems: they stabilize clear-water conditions with high biodiversity and their decline can cause a shift to a turbid state with phytoplankton dominance. Various mechanisms have been suggested triggering...

Is phenological asynchrony associated with climate?

editor
26 January 2016
Trophic levels and species within them usually respond differently to global warming (Walther et al. 2002, Thackeray et al. 2010). This can lead to disruptions of many ecological interactions and, thus, different ecological processes may be altered, for instance the...

The key to success - for aliens and native species

editor
26 January 2016
The question why some species are rare while others are common has puzzled ecologists since decades and it has not lost any of its relevance. Especially in times of globalization, species invasions are among the most pressing issues in ecology. More recently it has...

Disturbance effects on specialists and generalists

editor
26 January 2016
In nature, species differ by many characteristics, such as dispersal ability, competitiveness or fecundity, that can be associated one with another. In addition, species can display distinct levels of habitat specialisation. This means that some species (‘specialist...

Does functional diversity follow changes in communities?

editor
26 January 2016
Ecological studies based on time-series often investigate community changes centered on species abundance or biomass but rarely expose the consequential functional aspects underlying such changes. Various measures of functional diversity (FD) gained much attention in...

Follow the Per Brink symposium live

editor
22 January 2016
On Feb 1st, Oikos, together with Nordic Society Oikos and Wiley arrange the Per Brink symposium: (Re)appreciating the role of life history in Eco-evolutionary dynamics? The symposium will be live streamed and and can be followed by the first 100 persons to sign up!...

Cover January

editor
22 January 2016
The cover for the January Issue shows an Amur tiger drinking water in the Russian Far East. The photogrpaher is Ivan Seryodkin. Read the paper "Spatial variation in the density and vulnerability of preferred prey in the landscape shape patterns of Amur tiger habitat...

Common or rare - all about the soil?

editor
22 January 2016
The question why some species are rare while others are common has puzzled ecologists since decades and it has not lost any of its relevance. Especially in times of globalization, species invasions are among the most pressing issues in ecology. More recently it has...

Skip the tropics to avoid malaria?

editor
22 January 2016
Animal migrations play a major role in our understanding of how species are distributed across space and time. Many migratory animals travel enormous distances each year, leaving us to wonder why such long migration routes are necessary. One possible explanation is the...

Does stress induce variations in mating system?

editor
22 January 2016
A classical hypothesis is that colonizing plants are more selfing and non-colonizing plants, found later in ecological successions, are more outcrossing. We proposed to refine this framework in the context if the Grime's CSR theory of ecological strategies. Without...

What role do monkeys play in seed dispersal?

editor
19 January 2016
Seed dispersal by vertebrate is a key process affecting the movement of offspring away from a parent plant. But, if plants are limited mobility, they strongly rely on the effective dispersal by vertebrates. In addition to merely transportation, fleshy-fruited plants...

Are birds faster in spring than in autumn?

editor
19 January 2016
In "Towards a new understanding of migration timing: slower spring than autumn migration in geese reflects different decision rules for stopover use and departure” we reveal how some birds differ from migration theory. By analyzing 65 GPS migration tracks, we showed...

Editor's Choice and Editorial January

editor
12 January 2016
This month, Dries has asked me to write the blog post for Oikos and elaborate on the editorial we wrote for the January issue of Oikos. But first, the editor’s choice of papers for this month. Mokany et al. argue that there is insufficient integration in models between...

How can so similiar species co-exist?

editor
15 December 2015
Some ecosystems contain assemblages of species that can be surprisingly similar in their morphology, feeding niche and ecological function, but whose diversity can facilitate the persistence of the entire ecosystems (Duffy 2006). For example, a high diversity of...

Finding the nectar robbers....

editor
11 December 2015
Robbers, larcenists, illegitimate visitors, parasites, exploiters… all these terms are used for animals which sometimes display a particular behaviour: they open and use a hole in the flowers to get to the nectar within. Far from being a rare event, nectar robbing is a...

December Cover!

editor
8 December 2015
The cover for Oikos December Issue shows "A male southwestern fence lizard (Sceloporus cowlesi) carrying a radio-transmitter displays to rivals at White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, USA". Photo by H. Streby Link to the paper: Evidence for ecological release...

Biodiversity beyond species

editor
8 December 2015
When people think about nature, they usually think in terms of species -- whether it be an oak tree, a red squirrel, or a sunflower. Sometimes, ecological studies fall into the same trap and categorize organisms by species when there's a lot more variation going on at...

Selection, habitat preference and the evolution of sexual size dimorphism in arvicoline voles

editor
8 December 2015
In mammals, the male generally is the larger sex. For example, a mature male of southern elephant seal weights 3,200 Kg on average, whereas the females in his harem typically weigh five times less. However, females do still outweigh males in some species. For example,...

Does fish size affect trophic cascades?

editor
4 December 2015
Understanding the ecological consequences of human activities has become a central issue in ecology. A large number of studies have shown that anthropogenic biodiversity loss is not random, but is biased against large vertebrate consumers at the top of trophic networks...

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