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New Editor: Andrew MacDougall

editor
11 December 2014
Welcome to Oikos’ Editorial Board, Dr Andrew MacDougall, University of Guelph. Visit his webpage here. And read more about him below: 1. What’s you main research focus at the moment? How the co-varying influences of global environmental change transform fundamental...

Editor's Choice December

editor
9 December 2014
The last issue from 2014 is online. We selected the meta-analysis by Kulmatisk et al on the impact of soil foodwebs on plant growth and the forum on the relative importance of neutral stochasticity in community ecology b y Vellend et al. as editor’s choice. These two...

Welcome Sara Magalhaes New SE

editor
5 December 2014
Very welcome, Dr Sara Magalhaes, to the Oikos Editorial Board! Get to know Sara by visiting her webpage and read the mini-interview here: 1. What’s you main research focus at the moment? I work mainly with spider mites, which are herbivorous haplodiploid tiny spider-...

How plant genetic diversity affects herbivory

editor
2 December 2014
Human activities drastically reduce biodiversity at various taxonomic levels. While much of the current effort in research and biological conservation focuses on species diversity, the importance of intraspecific genetic diversity is sometimes overlooked. At the same...

Rodents and the yummy spines

editor
1 December 2014
Decades of ecological research have focused on interactions between herbivores and the chemical defenses of plants. However, far less is known about how effective physical defenses (spines, thorns, etc.) are against mammalian herbivores. It has been argued that co-...

How do different herbivores affect plant communities?

editor
28 November 2014
Walk through a grassland at the peak of summer and you will quickly become aware of how many grasshoppers inhabit the area. But what effect do these grasshoppers and other insect herbivores have on the plant community you are walking through? How does the effect of...

New SE: Leif Egil Loe

editor
26 November 2014
We welcome Professor Leif Egil Loe, Aas, Norway to the Oikos Editorial Board. Who is Leif Egil then? I asked some questions to get to know him better: 1. What's you main research focus at the moment? Most of what I am working on is related to ungulate ecology. I am...

Pesticide effect on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning

editor
25 November 2014
Global biodiversity is constantly declining, and up-to-date research has shown that biodiversity loss affects the functioning of ecosystems and the services they provide to humans. Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relations have yet mainly been analyzed in...

Same looks, different behaviors

editor
21 November 2014
At first sight, these nematodes all look the same. Nevertheless, they each belong to a different species. Such cryptic species- species that morphologically look the same but show genetic divergence- are more different than we first might think. Previous research...

Predation and transmission of direct life-cycle parasites

editor
18 November 2014
Find out what role predation plays in the transfer of less complex parasites in the Early View paper "The underrated importance of predation in transmission ecology of direct lifecycle parasites" by Giovanni Strona. Below is his short summary of the study: Predation is...

Sexual size dimorphism in island plants

editor
18 November 2014
Variation in size between sexes is something that we associate mainly with animals. But what about plants? Do female plants have larger elves than males? Find out in the Early View paper in Oikos “Sexual size dimorphism in island plants: the niche variation hypothesis...

Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what’s known and what’s next?

editor
14 November 2014
In our new paper “Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what’s known and what’s next?” just published online early in Oikos, we synthesise our current understanding of the functional consequences of changes in species richness in the marine realm. For those...

Are mismatches the norm?

editor
12 November 2014
Conservation biologists and climate change researchers are worried by the observed phenological changes, that is, timing of biological events. These concerns are partly motivated by the expected species-specific and thus potentially non-parallell phenological shifts...

Elevation effects on body size

editor
11 November 2014
The higher up, the smaller the insects…or? Dispersing insects might be different. Read more in the Early View paper “Dispersal potential impacts size clines of grasshoppers across an elevation gradient” by Richard Levy and colleagues. Below is the author’s own summary...

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...

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