Ecology Podcast

Associate Editor Sharif Mukul and Stuart W. Smith discuss this month's Editor’s Choice paper.

In this podcast for Functional Ecology, Assistant Editor, Frank Harris, sits down with Jack J. Devlin—an early career researcher from the University of Kentucky—to discuss his recently published paper ‘Simulated winter warming negatively impacts survival of Antarctica's only endemic insect.’

Read the paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.14089

Read a transcript of this interview here: https://functionalecologists.com/2022/07/12/simulated-winter-warming-negatively-impacts-survival-of-antarcticas-only-endemic-insect-podcast-transcript/

A plain language summary of this study is available here: https://fesummaries.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/simulated-winter-warming-negatively-impacts-survival-of-antarcticas-only-endemic-insect/

Antarctic winters are challenging for terrestrial invertebrates, and species that live there have specialised adaptations to conserve energy and protect against cold injury in the winter. However, rapidly occurring climate change in these regions will increase the unpredictability of winter conditions, and there is currently a dearth of knowledge on how the highly adapted invertebrates of Antarctica will respond to changes in winter temperatures.

With warmer winters expected to become more common with climate change, this study’s results indicate that winter warming could negatively impact cold-adapted insects like the Antarctic midge (Belgica antarctica).

At the time of writing, this research is “in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric”.

In this podcast for Functional Ecology, Assistant Editor, Frank Harris, sits down with two Guest Editors—Pablo García-Palacios and Ji Chen— to discuss our recently published Special Feature on soil carbon storage.

Read the Special Feature for free here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13652435/2022/36/6

A transcript of this podcast is available to read here: https://functionalecologists.com/2022/06/30/emerging-relationships-among-microbes-soil-carbon-storage-and-climate-change-podcast-transcript/

The Guest Editors' Functional Ecology blogpost can be read here: https://functionalecologists.com/2022/06/07/pablo-garcia-palacios-ji-chen-emerging-relationships-among-soil-microbes-carbon-dynamics-and-climate-change/

The Special Feature identifies emerging findings from soil microbial ecology and climate change research that can reduce uncertainty if incorporated into theory and models. The contributions span from novel perspectives on the priming effect and soil microbial enzymes, to understudied key biomes for global soil C such as tropical forests, to plant inputs–microbial necromass–mineral interactions, to soil C and microbial responses to changing precipitation patterns and recent advances in trait-based and soil C modelling.

Together, this collection of papers draws attention to novel frameworks and ideas that can pave the road for future research on microbial contribution to soil C turnover and storage under climate change.

Blog Associate Editor, Julie Koch Sheard, sits down with the Guest Editors of Journal of Animal Ecology's Special Feature, Understanding climate change response in the age of genomics.

As global temperatures continue to rise, there is a major threat to species and ecosystems worldwide. In order to develop conservation and mitigation strategies, and understanding of how animal populations respond to changing environments is crucial.

Recent genomics-based studies have begun to shed light on the mechanisms by which animal populations respond to climate change and offer methods to predict how they will respond in the future. This Special Feature highlights emerging genomics approaches and their applications across a diverse range of animal species; exploring range shifts, phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation of animal populations. By connecting these topics and their ecological implications, this feature aids researchers in using genomics to understanding climate change response.

JOURNAL CLUB: Jane Catford interviews Prof. David Tilman about his mini-review: Extinction, climate change and the ecology of Homo sapiens. Listen to the podcast, and then join Dave online for a live Twitter discussion! (full details below)

• 00:00 Introductions and a summary of the paper.

• 03:12 What’s led you from the start of your career, to asking these big questions around the impacts of agriculture, fossil fuels, and the intersection of human health and the environment?

• 06:25 You say in your abstract that ‘ecology needs to become a more mechanistic and predictive science’ - how can we achieve that, and what do you think has been holding us back?

• 08:42 If we had more mechanistic predictive models, do you think we could have better anticipated those unintended consequences that came out from mandating that we use maize for fuel?

• 12:13 You make a strong argument that we need to be doing more multi-disciplinary thinking and working - in practice, how do we do that?

• 19:10 Which strategies should be used to best communicate our science to policy makers and decision makers?

• 21:24 The messages from your paper are very sobering, how do you deal with this and stay optimistic as you look to the future?

• 24:40 Live Twitter discussion details

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1365-2745.13847

If you’d like to chat to Dave about his research, join us for a JOURNAL CLUB discussion, LIVE on Twitter, and tag us in your questions and comments:

🗓️DATE: Tuesday 24th May 2022, 3pm (UK time)

📌TWITTER TAGS: #JEcolJournalClub @GDavidTilman

Or, leave your questions in the comments below, by the above date.

Lara Ferry talks to Lillian Tuttle, an early career researcher shortlisted for the 2021 Haldane Prize, about how a small-yet-mighty fish, the cleaner goby, may be relatively immune to lionfish predation for an unexpected reason.

Read the research here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13806

Emma Sayer talks to Kelsey Shaw, an early career researcher shortlisted for the 2021 Haldane Prize, about how parasites thrive or suffer when embedded in different ecological communities.

Read the review here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13892

Enrico Rezende talks to Ummat Somjee, an early career researcher shortlisted for the 2021 Haldane Prize, about New Zealand giraffe weevils and the wonder of exhibiting an extreme 30-fold range in male body mass.

Read the research here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13888

This is an audioblog provided by Christyn Bailey, telling the #StoryBehindThePaper: ‘It’s a hard knock life for some: heterogeneity in infection life-history of salmonids influences parasite disease outcomes‘, which was recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

FE Haldane 2020: Shortlisted author Anderson Feijo talks to Senior Editor Lara Ferry