Ecology Podcast

From wildfires to flash floods and deadly earthquakes, the slow collapse of our ecological and social system is affecting millions of lives across the world. One reason is the demands of our capitalist society. Against this backdrop, what roles can ecologists play to advocate for nature?

In this episode of the Ecology Podcast, we’re joined by Dr Lydia Cole from the University of St Andrews to discuss what practice and pragmatism could look like among scientist activists.

This episode is a teaser for an upcoming talk Lydia is co-organizing at the BES Annual Meeting. Find out more at https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/bes-annual-meeting-2026

As part of our 'Community' series, we’re launching the Emerging Leadership Management (ELM) Network, hosted by Rob Brooker, Thorunn Helgason, and Pen Holland. This is the podcast for people who love to lead or one day might emerge as a leader.

In this episode, Professor Sue Hartley OBE talks about the necessity of being challenged, listening to others in leadership, and leading with noble intent.

We talk about everything from Sue’s leadership journey to early lessons in letting go of control and the need for delegation, to the importance of recognising your own limitations and making space for rest.

In the latest Ecology Podcast, alumni committee member of the EDGE network Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna chats with Dr Robyn James about the challenges and strategies to tackle gender (in)equity in environmental conservation at the project or program level across multiple sectors.

We thank Robyn for taking the time out to discuss these issues and direct everyone to her rich research that spans gender and environmental conservation: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HL-gu8MAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao. Robyn is open to being contacted about new research, opportunities, advice and guidance on all things gender and environmental conservation!

Have further thoughts? Like the episode? Engage with the EDGE network by:

following their LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bes-edge-network/posts/?feedView=all

signing up to their newsletter: https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/join-the-edge-network/

emailing them at: [email protected]

For today's episode, Ivy is joined by Shahar Chaikin, author of "Native habitat affinities predict fish invasions with post-invasion habitat shifts". We discussed the story behind the paper and his experience as an ecologist.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70293

Read Shahar's blog post here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/07/06/who-is-next-in-line-predicting-which-red-sea-fish-will-invade-the-mediterranean-sea/

Watch the video teaser here: https://youtu.be/_OI8w4ZsDDs

For today's episode, Ivy spoke with Dr David Fisher about his recently published Special Feature titled "Flexible friends: Plastic social buffering of environmental variation", co-edited by Natalie Pilakouta.

The Special Feature aimed to explore how organisms plasticly alter their social behaviour in response to environmental variation, how these changes affect fitness, and whether plasticity in social behaviour allows populations to cope with current human-induced rapid environmental change.

Read the full Special Feature here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2656.flexible-friends

For today's episode, Ivy is joined by Shahar Chaikin, author of "native habitat affinities predict fish invasions with post-invasion habitat shifts". We discussed the story behind the paper and his experience as an ecologist.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70293

Read Shahar's blog post here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/07/06/who-is-next-in-line-predicting-which-red-sea-fish-will-invade-the-mediterranean-sea/

Watch the video teaser here: https://youtu.be/_OI8w4ZsDDs

In this episode, we speak to András Zábó and Aamir Ahmad, about their paper 'RAPID: Real-time animal pattern re-identification on edge devices, an open-source tool for field deployment'. We discuss the development of the tool, some of the challenges faced during development, and the intersection of ecology and technology.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.70332

Blog post: https://methodsblog.com/2026/06/22/rapid-re-identification-of-patterned-animals/

In today's episode, Anna is joined by Douglas Sheil and Emmanuel Akampurira, authors of a recently published paper in People and Nature, "Supporting interventions to lessen human-wildlife conflict".

Douglas and Emmanuel discuss their route into ecology, the reasons for their research, their findings, and how their discoveries can support and inform the research area moving forward.

Read their full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.70314

In this episode we talk to Matia Muller about his recently published paper 'Assessment of large-scale spatial variation in age-specific survival and age at first breeding in a long-lived species', which was published in Journal of Animal Eology.

We discuss the main findings of the paper, the importance of the results, and life as an ecologist.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2656.70291?campaign=wolearlyview

For today's episode, Ivy is joined by Martyna Syposz, author of "Snowmelt predicts earlier breeding across the latitudinal range of an Arctic nesting seabird, the Little Auk (Alle alle)". We discussed the story behind the paper and her experience as an ecologist.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2656.70287

Read Martyna's blog post here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/06/19/arm-deep-in-arctic-rocks-what-a-changing-arctic-means-for-little-auks/