Early Career Researcher prizewinners

Podcasts for the journal Functional Ecology

Functional Ecology

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

FE: Haldane Prizewinner Kyle Demes talks to Duncan Irschick about the advantages of fragile fronds

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

Haldane Prizewinner Scott Ferrenberg talks to Alan Knapp about resurrecting a ‘slippery’ hypothesis

Journal of Ecology blog editor Pierre Mariotte interviews the 2014 Harper Prize winner Michiel Veldhuis. 

Interview with 2014 Harper Prize Winner Michiel Veldhuis

Alan Knapp talks to Brian Steidinger, the winner of the 2015 Haldane Prize for Early Career Research, about his paper "Variability in potential to exploit different soil organic phosphorus compounds among tropical montane tree species"
(Functional Ecology, 29:1, pp 121–130)

Soil phosphorus is as essential as water for plant growth, but its low availability in some areas forces plants to develop different strategies to acquire it. Mycorrhizal associations, symbiotic associations between a fungus and a vascular plant, represent the most common strategy for access to the different pools of soil P by plants and it therefore seems reasonable to assume that different symbiotic fungal species will be differently able to exploit this non-renewable resource and that non-mycorrhizal species could have a competitive disadvantage. Brian Steidinger and his co-authors tested this hypothesis by comparing phosphatase enzyme activity and performance of five tropical tree species belonging to different functional groups: arbuscular mycorrhizal angiosperms, arbuscular mycorrhizal conifers, ectomycorrhizal angiosperms and non-mycorrhizal proteoid plants. 
- See more at: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/grants-awards/honours_awards_prizes/prize-for-the-best-paper-by-a-young-author/haldane-prize

FE Alan Knapp interviews Haldane Prizewinner Brian Steidinger

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

FE:  Ken Thompson talks to Rannveig Jacobsen about the influence of insects on decomposer fungi

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

Jane Hill interviews Chuck Fox about FE's new Single vs Double-blind experiment

"Breaking down leaves is basically hard work, so if the fungi have the option of an easier life, they take it?"

Why - and how - do algae slow the rate of leaf decomposition in aquatic ecosystems? In this podcast, Ken Thompson interviews Hal Halvorson about his paper "Periphytic algae decouple fungal activity from leaf litter decomposition via negative priming", recently shortlisted for Functional Ecology's Haldane prize.
(Find this and the other shortlisted papers at http://j.mp/2019HaldaneShortlist).

FE Ken Thompson & Hal Halvorson: algae, fungi and leaf decomposition

"It seems that both groups are picking the flowers when they're feeding - they're walking about and you can see them pick flower after flower after flower after flower."

In this podcast, Jurene Kemp talks about her paper, Cryptic petal coloration decreases floral apparency and herbivory in nocturnally closing daisies - recently shortlisted for Functional Ecology's Haldane Prize.
(Find this and the other shortlisted papers at j.mp/2019HaldaneShortlist).

FE: Ken Thompson &  Jurene Kemp: Daisies that close at night use colour to hide from herbivores

JEC: Interview with Harper Prize 2012 winner Simon Doxford

Terries Williams talks to Emma Sayer about Hunters vs Hunted, Narwhales vs iPhones, the difficulties of bribing grizzly bears and her new paper on new perspectives on the energetic costs of survival at the top of the food chain - the first ever Calow-Grace review.
Read the paper here:
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13649

FE: Terrie Williams talks to Emma Sayer on the costs of surviving at the top of the food chain

Podcasts from the British Ecological Society