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How Google affects biodiversity

Is there really a connection between biodiversity and conservation and Internet? Oh, yes, read Michal Zmihorski and his colleagues new Early View paper in Oikos, " Ecological correlates of the popularity of birds and butterflies in Internet information resources"...

Relatedness and colonisation

How close to a relative should one settle? David Aguirre et al have shown that relatedness has an effect on colonization and settlement in some species, at least. Here's David's summary of the paper that is now on Early View in Oikos: "In organisms with sessile adults...

On architecture and moose populations

In the new Oikos paper (now on Early View), "Simulated responses of moose populations to browsing-induced changes in plant architecture and forage production", John Pastor and Nathan R. de Jager present a model examining how tree crown architecture affects moose...

Secrets of Nobel Prize winner

Recently, the Noble prize laureates for 2012 were presented. But what is it that turns these researchers into Nobel prize winners? What are the key factors that makes the difference between a winner and the average researcher? My interest for thistopic, stems from my...

Well informed animal movement

In the paper "From random walks to informed movement", Emanuel Fronhofer and colleagues present a model showing that with "memorized" spatial information, an animal will boost it's foraging success, as compared to random walk. Now on Early View. Read Emanuel's story...

What shapes the personality?

Oh, yes, fish have personalities as well! Matthew Edenbrow and his colleague has digged deeper into this to unravel the basis behind it. Now on early View: "Environmental and genetic effects shape the development of personality traits in the mangrove killifish...

Fruit-frugivore interactions not that simple after all...

Now online: Perea et al. " Context-dependent fruit-frugivore interactions: partner identities and spatio-temporal variations" Here Ramon Perea summarizes the study: Plants are able to use animals as vectors for the dispersal of their seeds. Many fleshy fruits...

Evolution in cave amphipods

First author Cene Fiser gives a short version of their paper " Coevolution of life history traits and morphology in female subterranean amphipods ". Fine-tuning evolution often requires compromises. Maximizing female’s fitness by optimization egg number and egg size to...

Double trouble in paradise

In the study "Density- and trait-mediated top–down effects modify bottom–up control of a highly endemic tropical aquatic food web" Christopher Dalton and co-workers have looked at bottom-up and top-down effects in anchialine ponds on Hawaii. Here's Chrsitopher's own...

Mistletoe network

Isn't it often so that the most brilliant ideas come to us when our brains are "on holiday", thinking of something completely different. That was the case for Ray Blick. The idea of studying networks among mistletoes and their hosts, that came during along train...

Understanding fox demography

One of the new papers online in Oikos is about the importance of full understanding of demography of wild populations for management programs. One of the authors, Eleanor Devenish-Nelson gives us here the background to the study " Demography of a carnivore, the red fox...

Hello - are you out there? On detectability and abundance

In the new Early View paper " The influence of abundance on detectability" McCarthy and co-workers explore the relationship between actually being detected and being there. Here is Michael McCarthy's own story on the study, the paper and the results: How hard do we...

On the beauty of beta diversity

Recently published in Oikos online is the paper by Carvalho et al. "Measuring fractions of beta diversity and their relationships to nestedness: a theoretical and empirical comparison of novel approaches". Here, José Carvalho gives us the background and a summary of...

Future h-index?

Too much h-index around? Number of citations, h-index and journal’s impact factors are easily used statistics in evaluations of applications for academic jobs and fundings. Easy – yes. But appropriate – not really. One of our editors, Stefano Allesina (University of...

Allee effect - a matter of friendship

Suppose you don't have enough friends around you to do well. Then a foe shows up and takes the place of a friend. What would happen? In our paper "Competition, facilitation and the Allee effect", we study the dynamics of two populations with Allee effect (you need a...

DataUp now live

No excuses now, you can archive your data directly from excel files. A real snap! Here's the link, check it out. I will try it this week too. At this point, it does not seem to provide DOIs but maybe they will. http://dataup.cdlib.org Perhaps we should encourage...

Oikos now on facebook

Yihaa! Finally we're on facebook as well! Like us and get updated on new hot Oikos papers online! http://www.facebook.com/oikosjournal

It's raining again...

Nothing can spoil a vacation as efficiently as a rainfall. And nothing affects a farmer's mood as rain- it's presence or it's abscence. Too much or too litte. Always an issue worth of debating. In one of the latest Early View papers in Oikos, "Seasonal, not annual...

Failure leads to success!

Last week I attended the conference ” Innovation in Mind” here in Lund. It’s not about technical innovations per se, but more about the creative process that might lead to technical innovations. Or groundbreaking research results. Or the brilliant idea that allows you...

Gender bias in invited Nature papers

” fewer women than men are offered the career boost of invitation-only authorship in each of the two leading science journals”, states researcher Daniel Conley, from the Department of Geology in Lund. Together with his colleague Johanna Stadmark he critices this gender...

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