Included in Nature with Clare Rishbeth | Case Report 1 - Disabilities

Duncan Irschick talks to Coleman M. Sheehy III about how arboreality and the associated gravitational stress on blood circulation have influenced the evolution of tail length in snakes. Since their evolutionary origins about 100 million years ago, snakes have diversified into a wide variety of aquatic, burrowing, terrestrial, and arboreal habitats where they experience various levels of gravitational stress on blood circulation. At the extremes, these stresses range from low to none in fully aquatic species living in essentially “weightless” environments, to relatively high in climbing species, especially arboreal forms specialized for climbing trees. As a result, arboreal snakes exhibit many adaptations for countering the effects of gravity on blood circulation, including relatively tight tissue compartments in the tail. However, patterns of tail length in relation to arboreal habitats and gravity have not been previously studied. You can read the paper, "The evolution of tail length in snakes associated with different gravitational environments" here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12472/abstract

1 Juni 20154min

In celebration of Fascination of Plants Day on 18 May 2015: Journal of Ecology's Executive Editor, David Gibson, has interviewed Anthony Davy about the Journal's Biological Flora of the British Isles series.

18 Maj 201515min

Alan Knapp talks to the 2014 Haldane Prizewinner Scott Ferrenberg about his paper, "Smooth bark surfaces can defend trees against insect attack: resurrecting a ‘slippery’ hypothesis". The concept of smooth bark on trees and shrubs acting as an anatomical defence against epiphytic vegetation and phytophagous insects has, for some time, fallen out of favour. Ferrenberg and Mitton, in a study of bark beetle attack on Pinus flexilis – a pine species that exhibits both smooth and rough bark surfaces – set out to test the role of bark defence against insects. http://www.functionalecology.org/view/0/fecBESYoungInvestigator2014.html

13 Apr 20159min

The Editors of the Journal of Ecology are pleased to honour Professor Deborah Goldberg in our continuing Eminent Ecologist series. Deborah is the Elzada U. Clover Collegiate Professor and Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, USA. More than that, Deborah is a hugely influential community ecologist having published a large body of highly cited work investigating the processes underlying patterns in plant community dynamics. In recognition of her work we have selected 10 of her most influential papers published in the Journal of Ecology. To provide some context, Deborah has written a fascinating post for the Journal of Ecology blog (https://jecologyblog.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/eminent-ecolog…borah-goldberg/). In addition, I was fortunate enough to interview Deborah in August 2014 during which we reflected over the insights, and controversies, arising from her work, as well as some of the non-ecological work that she has been involved with. This interview is available here as a podcast. We trust that you will enjoy reading, or perhaps even rereading in some cases, the selection of Deborah’s papers in the Virtual Issue (http://www.journalofecology.org/view/0/VIdeborahgoldberg.html) that have been published within the Journal of Ecology. David Gibson Executive Editor, Journal of Ecology

1 Apr 201530min

Hal and Rob are two of the co-authors on "The COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database: an open online repository for plant demography" http://bit.ly/10M3OZG

18 Feb 201546min

Stephanie Green explains why generalist lionfish are really 'picky eaters' and how their feeding habits will affect invaded Caribbean fish communities. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.12250/abstract

25 Nov 20142min

Katie Field, Associate Editor for Functional Ecology, talks to Ken Thompson about her new Virtual Issue: Mycorrhizal networks in ecosystem structure and functioning. The vast majority of land plants form mutualistic symbioses with soil-dwelling fungi known as mycorrhizas, which can link many plants in a common mycelial network. These networks can be enormous, with around 200m of mycorrhizal fungal hyphae present in a single gram of typical forest soil. The flow of nutrients between plants and mycorrhiza and the resulting redistribution of nutrients throughout a community is an area of much recent research with important contributions having been made by publications in Functional Ecology.

11 Nov 201418min

Survival of the weakest seems an unlikely title for paper in ecology, but that is exactly what they found in their Haldane prizewinning paper, as Kyle Demes explains in this podcast. Demes, K. W., Pruitt, J. N., Harley, C. D.G., Carrington, E. (2013), Survival of the weakest: increased frond mechanical strength in a wave-swept kelp inhibits self-pruning and increases whole-plant mortality. Functional Ecology, 27: 439–445. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.12067 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12067/abstract

30 Sep 20147min