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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.

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• Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

  

  The August cover of Frontiers features a young black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris), center foreground with a dark bill, standing among breeding adults at the colony on Steeple Jason, Falkland Islands, in the South Atlantic Ocean. Despite often being unmonitored in the years before they start breeding, young birds can play key roles in the population regulation and conservation of imperiled seabird species. Using life-history calculations across 90 species, spanning every seabird lineage, Taylor and Gnam's article in the August issue shows that prebreeders can make up half of some populations. Although adult survival is most important for population trends, efforts that improve young birds' survival or promote earlier breeding offer new ways to stabilize populations. Much about the movement, behavior, lives, and deaths of young seabirds remains a mystery, but a better understanding will aid global seabird conservation.

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• 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.

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• Ecology

  

  The August cover of Ecology shows cryptobenthic reef fishes collected across shallow coral reef habitats of the Indian Ocean from aenesthetic stations, individually photographed in phototanks, and displayed in a composite picture. This group of small fishes plays a critical role in energy and nutrient transfer to larger predatory fishes in coral reefs. In their article in the July issue of Ecology, Jeannot et al. compares cryptofaunal communities and associated trophic dynamics across nutrient-rich islands with intact seabird populations and nutrient-poor, rat-infested islands and documents how cryptobenthic reef fishes biomass doubles in nutrient-rich environments. Life-history traits likely enable these fishes to capitalize efficiently on seabird subsidies, intensifying pressure on invertebrates in nutrient-rich environments and strengthening piscivorous pathways. Invasive rats overhaul the trophic configuration of these food webs by favoring invertebrates and invertivorous pathways instead.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• The Bulletin

  

  The July issue of the ESA Bulletin covers recent society actions, includes articles that foster student success and provide resources for education, and focuses on communicating science with a review of a workshop from ESA's 2025 annual meeting where ESA Editors-in-Chief and editorial office staff conveyed tips to prepare articles for submission and publication. On the July cover, jellyfish float through a dense eelgrass bed in Tomales Bay, California, USA, where Murphy et al. (Ecology, Volume 107, Issue 5) explored differences in predation risk among seagrass epifauna species.

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• 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.

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