editor
9 May 2017
Figure 1: Foraging common wasp worker carrying its prey. The beech forests in Nelson Lakes National Park, New Zealand, are filled with the buzzing sound of wasps. Nests are well hidden in the ground but in this forest, they can be easily spotted by observing foraging...
We were amazed when we first heard rumours that giant tortoises migrated up and down the volcanoes of the Galapagos Islands. Darwin had first mentioned the possibility after discussing with local farmers why tortoise trails went uphill! Later, several researchers found...
editor
19 April 2017
A food web describes the diversity of species and their feeding relationships, i.e. "who eats whom". Food webs are essential parts of ecology as they summarize who is present in an ecosystem and how species interact with one another, here as consumer and prey. It may...
editor
11 April 2017
More species, more genes? Why positive correlations between species and genetic diversity might not be the rule Diversity is an essential facet of natural ecosystems that cuts through many organizational scales. The diversity of species observed in a given area (...
editor
10 March 2017
The photo on the cover for our March Issue was shot by Johannes Foufopoulos. A male Aegean Wall Lizard (Podarcis erhardii) photographed on the Cycladic island of Naxos (Greece). The species occurs in numerous relict populations across land-bridge islands that were...
editor
3 March 2017
When explaining animal distributions in ecosystems, ecologists have long debated the relative importance of food availability on the one hand, and density-dependence on the other. A high availability of food typically attracts and concentrates animals. Foragers may...
editor
17 February 2017
Masting is the synchronous production of large seed crops across individuals within a plant population, and is thought to have evolved (at least in part) as a mechanism to escape seed predators. How does this work? Theory predicts that superabundant, synchronous seed...
Organisms respond to predation risk in multiple ways. Induced defences are not restricted to plants in response to herbivore attack, but are also prominently present in vertebrates and arthropods. Induced responses can be of behavioural or morphological origin and...
editor
3 February 2017
Infectious diseases that can be contracted from the environment form a persistent threat to human health, livestock and wildlife. With the changing environment, there is increasing need for predictive modelling of environmentally transmitted disease dynamics...
editor
3 February 2017
Plant demographers have it easy, as the saying goes. Plants don't move and their fates may be followed through time in permanent plots - as the photo of M. Paniw, taking measurements of Drosophyllum lusitanicum in a heathland patch, shows. What happens, though, to...
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