Registration Discounts End 7/9

Journals & Publications

• ESA's Journals and Publications

  

  The Ecological Society of America has over 100 years of journal publishing history and offers some of the most widely read and cited journals in the field of ecology. The seven journals in our portfolio encompass a wide range of paper types to include an array of aims and scope of study, making them an important and accessible outlet for scientists, researchers, practitioners, professionals, citizen scientists, and others seeking to publish their work. ESA staff provide editorial support with our publishing partner, John Wiley & Sons, and several discounts towards publication in ESA journals are available from our publisher and from ESA. Publishing in ESA journals contributes to ESA programs for students, early career researchers, and underrepresented groups, and we thank our editors, reviewers, authors, and readers for their support.

  Read more

• Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

  

  Frogs and toads—like the American toad (Anaxyrus [=Bufo] americanus) shown on the cover of the June issue of Frontiers—are ectotherms and attract mates using breeding calls. After recording the breeding calls of male frogs held at different temperatures, scientists showed that certain call characteristics, such as call duration and calling rate, not only affect male attractiveness to females but also are affected by temperature. In the June issue of Frontiers, Pekny et al. propose that, as a result, females may track temperature-dependent call characteristics to best time their arrival at breeding grounds where reproduction is constrained by temperature. The authors also provide further discussion and suggest tests of this hypothesis that may yield novel insights into amphibian reproduction and possibly uncover one of the mechanisms that allows frogs and toads to track changing climate more rapidly than most other organisms to date.

  Read more

• Ecosphere

  

  Yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer) are a prey species that can live in a variety of habitats, including near human settlements, making them an ideal system to study how anthropogenic disturbances may impact behavior. Using over 20 years of observational and experimental data, Adler and Blumstein's article in the June issue of Ecosphere investigated whether marmots altered their antipredator behaviors in disturbed versus natural environments. Marmots in disturbed environments with highly variable visibility increased their vigilance during foraging bouts, indicating that the built environment, when combined with changes in visibility, may increase individual perceptions of risk enough to outweigh the typical benefits of the human shield effect. However, other antipredator behaviors, such as flight initiation distance, were not impacted by disturbance, indicating that the built environment may selectively influence risk perceptions.

  Read more

• Ecology

  

  On the July cover of Ecology, the rodent-gnawed antler of a caribou (Rangifer tarandus) is pictured on the tundra of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, USA. Shed antlers and other bones are used as a nutritional resource by many mammal species, including the caribou themselves. Gaetano et al.'s "The Atlas of Arctic Bone Modification", published in the June issue of Ecology. highlights the different characteristics of gnawing damage made by rodents, carnivorans, and ruminants (caribou), providing resources for determining which group or groups modified a particular bone and the relative importance of bones as a nutritional resource for different components of local mammal communities.

  Read more

• Ecological Monographs

  

  A thorough understanding of the impacts of climate change on species requires integrating multiple lines of evidence across adult and juvenile stages. Although spiders are significant generalist predators, their responses to novel environments remain understudied. The study by Sheffer et al. in the February issue of Ecological Monographs focuses on the wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi, which has expanded its range northward in Europe over the course of just a few decades. The authors find that northern populations have diverged from southern populations through a combination of genetic and plastic responses resulting in accelerated development, smaller body sizes, and physiological adaptations in offspring that enhance low-temperature survival. The May cover image shows a female A. bruennichi on her web.

  Read more

• Ecological Applications

  

  The July cover of Ecological Applications features a whitespotted sawyer beetle, Monochamus scutellatus, perched on a floating mat of moss and lichen in open water on Iskwatikan Lake, northern Saskatchewan, Canada. In their article in the March issue of Ecological Applications, Bell et al. studied beetle, plant, and bird diversity across a boreal forest archipelago, highlighting wildfire history and natural disturbance as key drivers of island assemblages. Their study also showed that island isolation had little effect on diversity or species composition, suggesting that dispersal to the islands in their system is not limiting. The cover image was taken the day after a thunderstorm scattered debris into the lake, providing rafting opportunities for organisms suspended in drift.

  Read more

• The Bulletin

  

  The April issue of the ESA Bulletin highlights resources for ecological education, including an approach that combines acoustic bird monitoring with music-making, conveys the importance of environmental justice and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and shares society actions and summaries from regional meetings and ESA's annual meeting. The cover image depicts a donkey beside a grazing exclusion where vegetation has naturally recovered, illustrating ecological change.

  Read more

• Earth Stewardship

  

  We are delighted to announce a call for submissions for Earth Stewardship. This exciting new Open Access journal, launched with our publishing partner, John Wiley & Sons, calls for a broad spectrum of scientifically and technologically innovative and groundbreaking contributions including cross-cultural perspectives from leading researchers, policymakers, traditional custodians of land and sea and indigenous communities. Earth Stewardship publishes applied and theoretical articles to promote a broad, intercultural, and participatory foundation for earth stewardship.

  Read more