British Ecological Society Journals

Journal of Ecology's Executive Editor, David Gibson, interviews Helen Alexander - the 2019 winner of our annual Eminent Ecologist award.

Large, wild herbivores are declining worldwide, losses that have a number of knock-on effects, including changing the resilience of ecosystems to change, plant regeneration, and how much plant growth an area is capable of. Even though ecologists have long studied these effects using experimental fencing, there is little consensus about how these herbivores impact important ecosystem functions and impacts of large herbivore removal are highly variable, as Elizabeth Forbes discusses in this podcast and in her recent paper: Synthesizing the effects of large, wild herbivore exclusion on ecosystem function https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13376

Chuck Fox and Jane Hill chat about Functional Ecology's new experiment looking at single vs double-blind review. You can find out more about this experiment here: http://j.mp/BES_DoubleBlind

David Gibson (Executive Editor) interviews Iain Stott(Associate Editor) at this year's Ecological Society of America annual meeting #ESA2019 ~ Journal of Ecology

David Gibson (Executive Editor) interviews Nicole Rafferty (Associate Editor) at this year's Ecological Society of America annual meeting #ESA2019 ~ Journal of Ecology

On this episode, JAE Multimedia Editor Ravi interviews Liam Bailey of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin. They discuss climate change, R software, fieldwork stories and much more.

In this episode, Ken Thompson talks to Rannveig Jacobsen, recently shortlisted for the Haldane Prize for Early Career researchers for her paper, "Exclusion of invertebrates influences saprotrophic fungal community and wood decay rate in an experimental field study". You can find this paper, along with the other shortlisted papers, here: http://bit.ly/Haldane2018

Ken Thompson, Editor of BES sister journal Functional Ecology catches up with Kevin at the annual meeting to ask him: Why now? Why this journal? And what is reason for the well-evidenced positive relationship between human happiness and nature/biodiversity?

Ken Thompson talks to Emma Sayer, Reviews editor for Functional Ecology, about what makes a good review paper, where they come from and how she identifies them (see her recent paper: The anatomy of an excellent review paper https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13207 (free access)

The reproducibility and transparency of research in science and social science is increasingly questioned, both within the academic community and across society in general. In "The prevention and detection of human error in ecological stable isotope analysis", David J. Hawke, Julie C. S. Brown and Sarah J. Bury pick up an issue that applies to complex, hi-tech measurements made in specialist science laboratories that are often remote from the researcher: the potential for inadvertent errors to occur in reported results. We argue that the researcher and the specialist laboratory both need to take a no-blame, quality management-based approach to preventing and detecting error. Although we have focused on one particular technique widely used in ecology (stable isotope analysis), the principles apply to any complex laboratory measurement. Read the full Methods in Ecology and Evolution article here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13077

People and Nature managing Editor speaking about the strengths and difficulties of peer review for an interdisciplinary journal.

Ken Thompson, Senior Editor of Functional Ecology talks to Sylvain Coq of CEFE about two recent papers on leaf litter decomposition and the role of macroinvertebrates

David Gibson, Executive Editor of Journal of Ecology, interviews Carla Staver at ESA2018, New Orleans.

David Gibson, Executive Editor of Journal of Ecology, interviews Cristina Garcia at ESA2018, New Orleans.

Journal of Ecology Executive Editor David Gibson interviews Managing Editor Emilie Aimé at ESA2018, New Orleans.

On this episode, JAE Multimedia Editor Ravi interviews Elton Prize, Natalie Clay. They talk about ants, art, girls in STEM, nutritional ecology, and her award-winning paper.

In this podcast, Gesche Blume-Werry and Ken talk about snowmelt, root-growth and phenology - and the importance of looking underground. Gesche's paper "Root phenology unresponsive to earlier snowmelt despite advanced above‐ground phenology in two subarctic plant communities" was a Highly Commended paper by an early career author - read this paper, along with other prizewinning and highly commended papers here: http://bit.ly/BESECR2017 For more on Gesche's research, read her posts from the field on the functionalecologists.com blog: https://functionalecologists.com/tag/gescheblume-werry/

Lara Ferry talks to Daniel Fitzgerald about his Haldane prize-winning paper, "Using trophic structure to reveal patterns of trait‐based community assembly across niche dimensions".

On this episode, JAE Multimedia Editor Ravi interviews Ben Weinstein the winner of the inaugural Sidnie Manton Award and Andrew Robertson co-author of the highly commended paper.

At the BES Annual Meeting, Ken Thompson caught up with Jitka Klimešová and discussed her work on a recent Functional Ecology paper, Herben et al's Effects of disturbance frequency and severity on plant traits: An assessment across a temperate flora http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13011/full