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Editor's choice April 2013

drupaladmin
28 March 2013
For the April issue, we chose the following two papers as editor’s choice according to our motto of synthesizing ecology. Mumby et al. (2013) discuss various articles that either support or reject the hypothesis that coral reefs might be able to exist under certain...

New Oikos Cover!!

drupaladmin
26 March 2013
From the April issue 2013 onwards, Oikos will have a photo illustrating ecology in action on it's cover. To find the right photo for this year's cover, we had a photo competition during winter. The happy winner of the competetion is Sascha Rösner, Marburg, Deutschland...

Time to get rid of the males?

drupaladmin
22 March 2013
It has been debated for a while...are males really necessary? Find out how fish of the genus Chrosomus solve the small problems associated with asexual reproduction, in the Early View paper " Diets of sexual and sperm-dependent asexual dace ( Chrosomus spp.): relevance...

On the evolution of fruit colour

drupaladmin
19 March 2013
Ever thought about why an orange is orange while an apple is green? And a blueberry blue and blackberry black, while a raspberry is red? Well, one explanation - seasonality - is studied in the new Early View Paper "Fruit color and contrast in seasonal habitats – a case...

Guess who planted invasive seeds on blackbuck mating territories?

drupaladmin
15 March 2013
To consider at your Friday dinner tonight: Sex-biased diets affect the ecology of other species in the surroundings. Read more in the new early View paper "Antelope mating strategies facilitate invasion of grasslands by a woody weed" by Shivani Jadeja and colleagues...

The little black dress of ecology

drupaladmin
12 March 2013
Taylor´s power law and bird populations are studied with in the new Early View paper "Interspecific differences in stochastic population dynamics explains variation in Taylor's temporal power law", by Marit Linnerud and her coworkers. Here's Marit's summary of the...

Cocktail mingle ecology

drupaladmin
8 March 2013
I would so much like to see someone using Hari Sridhar, Ferenc Jordán and Kartik Shankers paper "Species importance in a heterospecific foraging association network" as a basis for a study of humans on cocktail parties. Which small groups may be the core of highly...

Theoretical weed ecology

drupaladmin
7 March 2013
Do you like trying new food items? I do. And many herbivore insects seem to do so as well. Invading alien species, yummy yummy! How these interactions affect the ecology of the invaders is studied by Matthew L. Forrister and Joseph S. Wilson in " The population ecology...

Can we trust field-guides in ecological studies?

drupaladmin
5 March 2013
How consistent are field-guides and atlases? Enough to be used as sources in ecological research studies? Jay Fitzsimmons has checked and has the answer! Find out in his new Early View paper "How consistent are trait data between sources? A quantitative assessment" ...

When to stay and when to go - how porpoises make their decisions

drupaladmin
4 March 2013
How do animals decide how to forage? In the new Early View paper "How a simple adaptive foraging strategy can lead to emergent home ranges and increased food intake" Jacob Nabe-Nielsen and colleagues demonstrate that it only requires a few simple behavioural rules to...

Plagiarism in Oikos?

drupaladmin
1 March 2013
We now check all submitted manuscripts for possible plagiarism using iThenticate .This means that all manuscripts are compared to more than 32 billion webpages, more than 34 million scholarly content items and more than 91 million news pages, books and magazines (and...

Top of the Pops

drupaladmin
26 February 2013
One of the most cited papers in Oikos, during 2011 (published 2009 and 2010) is " New perspectives for estimating body condition from mass/length data: the scaled mass index as an alternative method ", by J Peig and AJ Green. Here, Jordi Peig gives a short summary of...

Mites hitch-hiking with bugs

drupaladmin
22 February 2013
Thumb's out when the mite Spadiseius calyptrogynae needs to move to a new host plant. It can't get their on it's own, so it simply hitchhikes on bees, bats or beetles. Emanuel H. Fronhofer and co-workes have studied this in the new Early View paper " Picky hitch-hikers...

New populatin metrics for top-down-bottom up

drupaladmin
20 February 2013
Here is an interesting essay about measuring top-down-bottom-up effects, written by Leonard Polishchuk. He is also the first author of the Early View paper "How to measure top–down vs bottom–up effects: a new population metric and its calibration on Daphnia ", on which...

Hiding in the litter from the beasty ants

drupaladmin
18 February 2013
In the new Early View paper "Non-trophic effects of litter reduce ant predation and determine caterpillar survival and distribution" , Richard Karban and co-workers have studied the importance of litter for caterpillars hiding from ants in a hetergenous landscape. Here...

Cascading effects of fish migration

drupaladmin
15 February 2013
How the anadromous fish alewife affect the whole food-web in it's ecosystem is studied by Jerome J. Weis and David M. Post in their new Early View paper "Intraspecific variation in a predator drives cascading variation in primary producer community composition" . Below...

Modelling species interactions

drupaladmin
13 February 2013
A model to quantify species interactions is proposed in the new Early View paper "Costs, benefits, and loss of vertically transmitted symbionts affect host population dynamics" by Kelsey M. Yule, Tom E.X. Miller and Jennifer A. Rudgers. Below is Kelsey's background...

To join the party or not...?

drupaladmin
12 February 2013
Did you believe that hermite crabs were always seeking lonelyness? Oh, now, partytime might attract the hermits as well! Read more in the new Early View paper "Eavesdropping foragers use level of collective commotion as public information to target high quality patches...

Environmental pollution goes theoretical ecology

drupaladmin
7 February 2013
Pollution issues meet complex food-web modelling and theoretical ecology in the Early View paper "The more polluted the environment, the more important biodiversity is for food web stability", by Leslie Garay-Narvaez, Matias Arim, José D. Flores and Rodrigo Ramos-...

Pasture – red kangaroo – dingo interactions

drupaladmin
4 February 2013
Read David Choquenot's and David M. Forsyth's new Early View paper "Exploitation ecosystems and trophic cascades in non-equilibrium systems: pasture – red kangaroo – dingo interactions in arid Australia" to learn more! Here's Dave's background story to the study: This...

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