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

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 decided to organise biannual thematic symposium that bring together recognised ecologists to present contributions on novel, unexplored or understudied – but highly relevant- fields at the interface of ecology and evolution. The first Per Brinck thematic symposium took place in Turku (Finland) on Monday 1 February 2016.
The symposium brought together editors and researchers that contributed to the theme of ‘(Re)appreciating the role of life history in Eco-evolutionary dynamics’. This premise was fostered by the fact that we fell that much research in the field of ecology and evolution aims at predicting responses to global change, but that only a minority fails to follow an individual perspective to scale-up from population to ecosystem dynamics. Basically, individual life histories affect demography and are in return impacted by environmental changes. They are thus central to eco-evolutionary interactions in their most pure meaning. If predictive ecology needs a mechanistic understanding and a more systems ecological approach (I have an opinion on this but decide to keep it a more open question), then a full appreciation of life histories that are central to demography and environmental feedbacks is needed. Dustin Marshall and I are very happy to present an intriguing issue with research and forum papers that synthesise insights on the relevance of individual life histories for eco-evolutionary dynamics in structured population, within a spatial perspective and across marine and terrestrial environments. We also provide novel insights from the perspective of microbial interactions within animal’s gut and plant’s above-belowground connections and added highly relevant non-solicited contributions in the spirit of this central theme.
Enjoy reading this special issue, and remember, there are more to appear the next years!

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/oik.2017.v126.i4/issuetoc
 
 
Cheers,
Dries
 

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