In This Issue: Foreign Influence and Collaborations Under Scrutiny in Agencies and in the House National Defense Authorization Act NSF issues ‘Dear Colleague’ letter addressing foreign interference in research. Congress House passes 2020 National Defense Authorization Act including and foreign interference in science provision. Executive Branch A White House plan to critically review climate science in on indefinite hold. Courts…

ESA 2019 Preview: Human-induced land use change is the primary driver of EIDs, including those carried by mosquitoes such as malaria, dengue, Zika, EEE, and West Nile. Why, then, does land-use planning often fail to recognize the effects these changes have on the risk of spreading disease?

By Florida State University 6/11/2019 Research by an evolutionary biologist from Florida State University has shown parasites have important and far-reaching effects on predatory fish and the ecosystems they inhabit. These findings, published this week in the journal Ecology, provide important evidence for the little-studied role of parasites in trophic cascades, which are powerful, indirect interactions that can affect entire…

By Manchester Metropolitan University 7/4/2019 A rare tree has been re-discovered in a remote area of Indonesia decades after it was thought to be extinct. Liam Trethowan, an ecology PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, spotted a cluster of ‘Kalappia’ trees some 200 km from where it was last seen in the 1970s while conducting fieldwork in the Indonesian rain…

New research on damselflies in northern Africa suggests that females may facilitate the reproductive success of inferior males when their health is at risk.

In This Issue: Member Opportunities Action Alert: Ask your Members of Congress to raise the caps and restore funding for science. Apply to join the Rapid Response Team. House Bill Would Increase Funding for Ecological Science, Block Offshore Drilling NSF receives a 7% increase. House Science Committee Advances Harassment, Diversity Bills Bill would create an interagency working group to develop…

By Villanova University 6/19/2019 Three Villanova University researchers, part of a team that through a five-year study in Alberta, Canada determined the “critical load”—or recommended maximum amount of nitrogen that can enter the region’s peat bogs through precipitation without causing damage to its ecosystem—have released their findings in an article published June 18 in Ecological Monographs. Titled “Experimental Nitrogen Addition Alters…

The following selected sessions and events at the Annual Meeting delve into this year’s meeting theme.

By University of Göttingen 6/18/2019 For a long time, ecologists have relied on their senses when it comes to recording animal populations and species diversity. However, modern programmable sound recording devices are now the better option for logging animal vocalisations. Scientists lead by the University of Göttingen have investigated this using studies of birds as an example. The results were…

By São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) 5/15/2019 Plants in the Brazilian savanna, the Cerrado, have evolved to deal with fire. When fire is used intelligently as part of a carefully planned land management method, it is indispensable to the conservation of this superb ecosystem, the world’s most biodiverse savanna. Two months suffice for the Cerrado to burst into flower after…

By University of Rennes, Earth Sciences and Astronomy Observatory (OSUR) 6/12/2019 Demographic and health factors that condition female dispersal decisions. In an article entitled “Disease avoidance, and breeding group size and dispersal patterns of western lowland gorilla females” published in the journal Ecology in June 2019, Alice Baudouin, Pascaline Gouar, Jean-Sebastien Pierre and Nelly Ménard (ECOBIO) explore the mechanisms of social dispersal…

By University of Illinois 6/18/2019 If current climate and crop-improvement trends continue into the future, Midwestern corn growers who today rely on rainfall to water their crops will need to irrigate their fields, a new study finds. This could draw down aquifers, disrupt streams and rivers, and set up conflicts between agricultural and other human and ecological needs for water,…