Home > Editorial Board > Associate Editors' Profiles

Meet the Associate Editors

Edie Allen

Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, USA

Research interests include plant community ecology, soil ecology, invasive species and restoration ecology. Foci are the functional role of mycorrhizal fungi in invaded communities, impacts of invasive plants on native assemblages, plant-soil feedbacks in invaded and restored communities, and shifts in community functioning under anthropogenic nitrogen deposition. Website

Niels Anten

Department of Biology, Utrecht University, Netherlands

Niels wishes to learn more about the rules and patterns that underlie the relationship between plants and their environment. Specifically if we can explain this relationship from the perspective of Darwinian fitness; do plants possess traits that enable them to maximise their performance within the constraints imposed by the environment? His interest in plants and their environment also stems from a more humanist point of view. How can plants be used efficiently and in a sustainable way to meet human needs? Website

Manfred Ayasse

Institute of Experimental Ecology, University of Ulm, Germany

Manfred’s research interests are in Behavioural Ecology, Social Behaviour and Chemical Ecology of social insects. He is studying mechanisms of regulation of reproduction and task sharing in social bees and investigating interactions between animals and plants. Special focus is on specialized pollination systems (mimicry, deceptive pollination in orchids). He wants to know how pollinators are attracted by their host plants and how such pollination systems evolved. Website

Jennifer Baltzer

Department Biology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Jennifer’s research focuses on the contribution of functional and whole-plant traits to plant species distributions, both locally and regionally, and on the plastic and adaptive responses to environmental variation.She works primarily in forest ecosystems including tropical, temperate and boreal forests. Website

Wolf Blanckenhorn

Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Wolf integrates research questions and methods of evolutionary biology, ecology, population biology, behaviour, genetics, phylogenetics, functional morphology and physiology to achieve a thorough understanding of whole organism evolution. His research focuses on the evolution of animal life histories, body size and sexual dimorphism, and phenotypic plasticity, particularly in the context of thermal adaptation. He works primarily on insects. Website

Jon Blount

University of Exeter, UK

Jon's research focuses on behavioural and physiological ecology, specifically mechanisms which underpin the information content of animal signals, carry-over effects, costs of reproduction, and senescence. He uses a variety of field and lab study systems including various species of birds and mammals, poison dart frogs and ladybirds. Website

María Jesús Iglesias Briones

Ecologia y Biologia Animal, Universidad de Vigo, Spain

Maria's main research interest is the role of soils in global change, in particular I try to quantify soil biodiversity changes and their potential implications for the C sink/source function. Research combines the use of stable isotopes (13C and 15N) at natural abundance levels as potential in situ tracers of the trophic structure of edaphic communities and their functional role in natural and agricultural systems together with the application of radiocarbon techniques to investigate the interaction between soil fauna activities and the temperature sensitivity of soil organic matter decomposition in response to climate change

Alison Brody
Department of Biology, University of Vermont, USA

Alison's research focuses on understanding the patterns, underlying mechanisms, and processes, that govern multiple species interactions. Questions include how species interactions affect plant life-history and the evolution of floral traits, and how species interactions drive biological diversity. Study systems primarily involve flowering plants and their suite of visitors in sub-alpine habitats, and termites and ungulates in East African savannas. Website

Diane Campbell

University of California, Irvine, USA

Diane studies the mechanisms of evolution in natural plant populations. She is particularly interested in how interactions with animal pollinators influence evolution of floral traits and reproductive systems, and in hybrid fitness and its implications for speciation. Website

Scott Carroll

Institute for Contemporary Evolution and University of California Davis, USA

Scott studies ongoing evolution in wild and anthropogenic environments. He is interested in local mechanisms behind global patterns of adaptive radiation and convergence, as explored in soapberry bugs on native versus introduced host plants. Through the ICE he promotes discourse in applied evolutionary biology across the life sciences. Website

Dan Costa

University of California at Santa Cruz, USA

Dan's research interests are the adaptations of marine mammals and seabirds to life in the marine environment, especially the movements, foraging ecology and energetics of pinnipeds and seabirds.Website

Jim Dalling

University of Illinois, USA

Jim's research explores the processes determining the local abundance and distribution patterns of tropical tree species. He is especially interested in understanding interactions between seeds, predators, and soil-borne pathogens, and more broadly, the role of edaphic factors in shaping the habitat requirements of tree species. Website

Goggy Davidowitz

University of Arizona, USA

Goggy's broad area of interest is in ecological and evolutionary physiology: how organisms adjust growth and fitness in response to both short-term and long-term environmental variation. His lab places a strong emphasis on the whole organism. He combines field, greenhouse and lab experiments and use a diverse set of tools and conceptual frameworks to integrate the fields of physiology, ecology, behavior and evolutionary biology. Website

Katie Field

Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK

Katie is a plant ecophysiologist with a special interest in the functioning and evolution of below-ground mutualisms. Her background is in mycorrhizal symbiosis, genotype-phenotype-environment interactions and the use of environmental metabolomics in ecology. At present, her research is focussed on carbon and nutrient (N and P) fluxes between plants and their rhizospheric symbionts, utilising stable and radio-isotope tracer techniques. Website

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Craig Franklin

University of Queensland, Australia

Craig is a vertebrate physiological ecologist who is interested in how fish, amphibians and reptiles function in response to changing environmental conditions, including human-induced environmental change. He is a proponent of the emerging field of conservation physiology. Website

David Grémillet

Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, France

David Grémillet was educated as a biological oceanographer and developed a keen interest in animal ecophysiology and biotelemetry. After a PhD at the Institute of Marine Science in Kiel (Germany) and a Post Doc with NERC-CEH in Banchory, Scotland, he joined CNRS (France) in 2000. He is currently leading the spatial ecology research group at CEFE-CNRS in Montpellier. His research aims at understanding the responses of seabirds to global change, and focuses on the feeding behaviour, energetics and evolution of marine birds facing climate change, pollution and fisheries. Website

Jennifer Grindstaff

Oklahoma State University, USA

Jen investigates physiological and behavioral responses to stressors throughout the lifespan; current research focuses on the role of maternal and developmental environments in adult phenotype and the physiological and ecological basis of personality traits. Website

Dan Hare

University of California, Riverside, USA

Dan studies the interactions between plants, their herbivores and the herbivores' natural enemies. He is particularly interested in the chemical mediation and genetic basis of those interactions. His current research emphasizes the study of plant-herbivore and tritrophic interactions in undomesticated species in their native, field environments. Website

James Harwood

University of Kentucky, USA

James' research program seeks to understand mechanisms of foraging by generalist predators and identify their role in biological control through the integration of molecular techniques, behavioral studies in the laboratory and field experiments. He is using these approaches, in parallel, to delineate trophic connectivity and measure the intensity of specific predator-prey interactions. Website

Dana Hawley

Department of Biological Sciences, VirginiaTech, USA

Dana investigates the ecology and evolution of host–pathogen interactions in natural systems; specific interests include the interaction between animal behavior, physiology, and disease dynamics, and the role of abiotic factors in mediating host immunity and disease resistance over space and time. Website

Anthony Herrel

Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, France

Anthony uses comparative laboratory and field-based approaches to try to understand the evolution of complex, integrated systems. His is interested in the role of function (mechanics and performance) and trade-offs in driving phenotypic change.

Tim Higham

University of California Riverside, USA

Tim investigates locomotion and feeding in vertebrates by combining comparative biomechanics, functional morphology, ecology, and physiology. He is interested in determining what drives and constrains phenotypic diversity, and how this relates to organismal function. Website

Peeter Hõrak

University of Tartu, Estonia

Peeter mainly studies the covariation between animal colouration, parasite resistance, stress physiology and behaviour. He is particularly interested in the role of oxidative stress and antioxidants as mediators of physiological trade-offs and immunomodulators. His team tests and develops biomarkers for the assessment of various aspects of physiological condition and health state of small animals. Website

Marc Johnson

University of Toronto, Canada

Marc's research bridges the diverse questions and techniques from community ecology, genetics and evolution to understand the dynamic interplay between the ecology and evolution of species interactions, particularly as it relates to plants and herbivores. Website

Hefin Jones

School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, UK

Combines laboratory and field approaches to ask how organisms respond and adapt to changing and fluctuating environmental conditions. Study systems primarily involve fungus-soil fauna and insect-plant interactions. More recently, has taken this work into freshwater habitats. Website

Adam Kay

Biology Department, University of St. Thomas, USA

Adam's research focuses on how the nutritional composition of resource inputs influences ecological interactions for invertebrates. A common theme through his projects is the importance of nutrient balance and how particular nutrient scarcities or excesses affect ecological processes. Much of his focus is on nutritional and community ecology in ants. Website

Kaoru Kitajima

Department of Biology, University of Florida, U.S.A.

Kaoru investigates ecological and evolutionary significance of morphological, physiological and developmental traits of plants. She is particularly interested in trait syndromes associated with carbon-allocation strategies, life-history trade-offs and niche specialization in species-rich tropical forests. She works on seedling regeneration ecology, as well as canopy carbon balance of adult trees. Website

Marek Konarzewski

Institute of Biology, University of Bialystok, Poland

Marek’s research interests interface evolutionary ecology, eco-physiology and quantitative genetics of vertebrates. He uses both laboratory and natural settings to study physiological traits (mostly related to metabolism) from molecular to whole-animal levels. Website

Gaku Kudo

Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Japan

Major interests are in plant responses and adaptation to seasonality and biological interactions via phenological dynamics. Investigates flowering phenology responding to climate and environmental variations, plant reproductive strategies, plant-pollinator interaction, global change impacts on alpine ecosystem, and phenological structure and function of plant communities in northern ecosystems. Website

Kwang Pum Lee

Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Kwang Pum’s research is aimed at understanding physiological, behavioral, and evolutionary responses of insects when adapting to various forms of environmental challenge, such as food nutritional imbalance, parasitism, temperature changes, starvation, etc. He is particularly interested in exploring the nutritional basis of life-history trade-off and how nutrition mediates the relationships between hosts and parasites. His study organisms include caterpillars and Drosophila.

Sara Lewis

Department of Biology, Tufts University, USA

Research combines field and laboratory studies to test hypotheses about the interactions between sexual selection, foraging ecology, and life history traits. A particular interest is how nutrition and life history constraints affect traits related to both precopulatory and postcopulatory success. Current model systems are holometabolous insects, with additional work on hermit crabs and marine fishes. Website

Dustin Marshall

School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Australia

Dustin is a marine evolutionary ecologist with interests in quantitative genetics, maternal effects and complex life-histories. The unifying theme of his research is an attempt to understand the ecological and evolutionary consequences of intraspecific variation (be it phenotypic or genetic). He works primarily on sessile marine invertebrates in the shallow subtidal. Website

Marty Martin

University of South Florida, USA

Marty studies how vertebrates cope physiologically with parasites and other stressors. His research covers three areas: identifying physiological traits that promote animal invasions, understanding why and how stress steroids influence host resistance and tolerance of parasites, and developing tools and concepts for the field of ecological immunology. Website

Peter Mayhew

University of York, UK

Peter's main interest is the evolutionary ecology of insects, and his work combines field and laboratory studies, comparative biology and theory. One focus is the explanation of life history traits through ecological selection pressures and constraints, especially in parasitic wasps which are very species rich and have fascinating biology. He also has significant interests in macroevolution (understanding the diversification of insects) and the ecological basis of conservation biology (devising tools to conserve parasitoids). Website

Clare McArthur

University of Sydney, Australia

Clare is interested in the ecology of mammals - how they live and interact with individuals of their own species, with plants and other animals within their community and with the environment itself. Her specific research interest is the ecology and evolution of plant-herbivore interactions.Website

Kevin McGraw

Arizona State University, USA

Kevin is a behavioral ecologist specializing in the control and function of ornamental traits like bright colors in animals. Research interests generally cover integrative aspects of communication and sexual selection, especially including environmental, behavioral, and physiological mechanisms underlying signal expression. Website

Ignacio T. Moore

Virginia Tech, USA

Ignacio is interested in physiological and behavioural adaptations to unique environments, looking at the behavioural endocrinology, physiology, evolution and ecology of tropical birds, and interactions between stress and reproduction in birds, reptiles, and amphibians. He is particularly interested in individual variation and the mediation of life history trade-offs. Website

Nick Ostle

Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Lancaster Environment Centre , UK

Nick’s research aims to understand the effects of changing plant-soil biodiversity and their interactions on ecosystem biogeochemical functions. His work includes study of global change and land management effects in grasslands, wetlands and agricultural lands. Nick has experience in the quantitative measurement of plant-soil diversity, biogeochemistry, stable and radio isotopes, ecosystem greenhouse gas - CO2, CH4 and N2O - emissions, the determination of soil microbial diversity and predictive modeling. Website

Sheila Patek

Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, USA

Sheila received her A.B. with honors in Biology from Harvard University followed by a Ph.D. in Biology from Duke University. She was then awarded a Miller Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses upon evolutionary mechanics of movement and communication. Website

Mike Pfrender

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, USA

Mike's research is focused on evolutionary and ecological genomics. He is particularly interested in the relationship between short-term organismal responses to environmental stresses and adaptation to novel environments. He is trying to connect genome structure, quantitative genetic architecture, and patterns of gene expression, with the process of adaptation. Website

Theunis Piersma

University of Groningen and NIOZ-Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, The Netherlands

Theunis is a firm adherent of an integrative biology, in which the organism in its natural world takes centre stage in the search for evolutionary explanations. With a focus on habitat selection, distributional ecology and demography of a diversity of long-distance migrating shorebirds, I usually include physiological and sensory aspects in my work to ensure appropriate interpretations of ecological and behavioural data. My book with Jan van Gils (The flexible phenotype. A body-centred integration of physiology, ecology, and behaviour. OUP, 2011) sums it all up. Website

Lourens Poorter
Department of Forest Ecology and Forest Management, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Lourens is interested in Ecophysiology, phenotypic plant responses to light, seedling ecology, plant strategies, species distribution and tropical rain forest ecology. Website

David Raubenheimer

Institute of Natural Sciences, Massey University, New Zealand

David is a comparative nutritional ecologist, with a particular interest in the effects of nutrient balance on the behaviour, physiology, life history and fitness of animals. He is co-inventor of the geometric framework for nutrition, a multi-dimensional approach for modelling the interactive effects of nutrients on animals. His work spans insects, fish, birds, and a range of mammals including humans and non-human primates. Website

David Reznick

University of California, Riverside, US

David's general interest is in studying the process of evolution by natural selection from an experimental perspective and testing evolutionary theory in natural populations. He primarily works on guppies from the Caribbean Island of Trinidad. He participates in the Evolutionary Biology and Physiology graduate groups and serves as the UCR co-Associate Director of NERE, the Network for Experimental Research on Evolution. Website

Lawren Sack

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA, USA

Lawren is interested broadly in mechanisms underlying function and co-existence of plant species-- including responses to resources, tolerance of environmental challenges, and competition-- as well as the evolution and functional consequences of diversity in plant traits. He explores processes across scales ranging from molecules to ecosystems. Website

Jen Schweitzer

The Plant Research Center, University of Tennessee, USA

Jen’s research interests are focused on the role of plant-soil linkages and feedbacks to soil processes and the ecological and evolutionary importance of these linkages to both soils and plants. Specifically, her research focuses on the importance of functional plant traits on soil communities and processes, the role of plant-soil interactions on plant traits and the overall role of soils in determining species distributions, genetic variation, and genetic divergence. Website

Keith Sockman

Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

Keith is a physiological ecologist using endocrine and neurobiological techniques to investigate the ultimate and proximate factors controlling flexibility in reproductive decisions, such as timing of reproduction, reproductive effort, courtship effort, and mate-choice. Website

Carly Stevens

The Lancaster Environment Centre, University of Lancaster, UK

Carly is a plant ecologist and soil biogeochemist who is interested in how plant communities and soils respond to global environmental change, especially atmospheric nitrogen deposition. She uses a variety of approaches to address her research questions from international gradients to pot experiments. She works primarily in grassland ecosystems and has a strong interest in grassland management and conservation. Website

Mark Tjoelker

Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, University of Western Sydney, Australia

Mark’s research interests center on the impacts of global environmental change on forest and savanna ecosystems, particularly the effects on respiration and carbon cycling, climatic adaptation in plant traits, and the biogeography of forest trees. As a plant physiological ecologist, his work explores the linkages between plant traits and processes at the individual, community, and ecosystem scales. Website

Kathleen K. Treseder

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, USA

Kathleen, Professor of Biology, combines molecular biology, isotopes, nanotechnology and modeling to examine the role of fungi in biogeochemical processes, especially in response to global change. Her field research is based primarily in the boreal forests of Alaska and the native ecosystems of Southern California. Website

Barbara Tschirren

Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland

Barbara combines approaches from behavioural and evolutionary ecology, physiology and genetics to understand how environmental factors shape the evolution of life histories and life strategies in wild vertebrates; current projects focus on the immunoecology and -genetics of natural populations and the role of transgenerational effects in evolution. Website

Mathew Turnbull

School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Matthew is a plant physiological ecologist with broad interests in the ecophysiology of resource acquisition in natural and managed ecosystems. His specific interests include the determinants of photosynthesis and respiration, the use of stable isotopes in plant physiology and ecology and global change biology. Website

Raoul Van Damme

Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Raoul's research covers a wide range of topics in organismal biology, featuring lizards as main study organisms. He has published over 100 papers on the ecology, morphology, physiological ecology, behavior and evolution of reptiles and amphibians in international journals. He is member of the editorial boards of Functional Ecology and Oecologia. He teaches courses in evolutionary biology, phylogeny, ecological morphology and herpetology at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Website

Jenny Watling

School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, Australia

Jenny is a plant ecophysiologist with interests across a wide range of systems. At present her group work on the physiology of parasitic plants and their hosts, heating mechanisms in thermogenic plants, leaf form and function, and the effects of climate change on plants in extreme environments such as deserts and polar regions. Website

David Whitehead

Landcare Research, Global Change Processes, New Zealand

Early work on carbon, water and energy exchange in Pinus radiata forest led to investigating the response of forests to elevated carbon dioxide concentration and carbon balance in mature indigenous forests. Most recently, David works in greenhouse gas exchange from grazed grasslands with an increasing focus on soil carbon dynamics. Website

Tony Williams

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Tony's research integrates physiology and evolutionary biology, mainly focusing on avian life-histories and reproduction (though he also dabbles with eco-toxicology and migration physiology). His current main interests are in the hormonal control of phenotypic variation in timing of breeding, clutch size and parental care. Website

Robbie Wilson

University of Queensland, Australia

Robbie is generally interested in performance. Sometimes this relates to behaviour, sometimes to physiology. He doesn't like pigeon-hole himself as one type of scientist or the other. He asks ecological and evolutionary questions in such varied systems as human skill, crustacean signalling, and climate change. Website

Scott Wilson

Department of Biology, University of Regina, Canada

Our lab studies plant interactions, primarily using field experiments in established vegetation. We work to understand how interactions control resources and species distributions, and thus the composition and diversity of communities. Website

Art Woods

Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, USA

Art uses mathematical modeling and physiological experiments to examine the physiological ecology of insect-plant interactions, asking how conditions on leaf surfaces affect tritrophic interactions between leaves, insect herbivores, and their predators and parasitoids. Also interested in thermal biology, insect respiratory biology, marine larval ecology, and the evolution of physiological homeostasis. Website