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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
editor
20 November 2015
The ubiquitous Taylor’s law (TL) scaling between the mean and the variance of species population density was discovered more than half a century ago. The mechanistic basis of TL has been the focal point of research, and little attention was paid to its application...
editor
20 November 2015
Understanding the environmental conditions that a species can tolerate is a growing concern in ecology and evolutionary biology. Research is beginning to reveal that the environmental factors that actually challenge organisms in nature (e.g., temperature, precipitation...
editor
2 November 2015
The symbiosis between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is a crucial interaction that mediates nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. It is hypothesized that this symbiosis was essential for the evolutionary radiation of terrestrial plants...
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