Editors for Ecology

We aim to publish studies that provide new insights into the different types of interactions that shape the distribution and abundance of organisms on Earth, including everything from new natural history observations to genomic analyses conducted on landscape scales (see also “Ecology in the genomics era of a degraded planet”). We also welcome functional analyses of the traits that matter for an organism’s Darwinian fitness. Read the latest research in this subject area.
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Senior editors

  1. George H Perry

    Pennsylvania State University, United States

    George Perry received his PhD in 2008 from Arizona State University, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. In 2011, he began a faculty position at Penn State University, where he is now Associate Professor of Anthropology and Biology, Chair of the Bioinformatics and Genomics Graduate Degree Program, and member of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. His research interests focus on human evolution, evolutionary ecology, and evolutionary medicine, and how human behavior and biology have affected non-human evolutionary biology. Research methods and theory from anthropology, evolutionary biology, parasitology, and population, comparative, functional, and paleo (ancient DNA) genomics are integrated in this work. He has received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation, among others.

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Ecology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Research focus
    human evolution
    evolutionary ecology
    evolutionary biology
    population genomics
    comparative genomics
    functional genomics
    paleogenomics
    Experimental organism
    human
    primates
    parasites
    Competing interests statement
    George Perry has received research support from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. He is currently an Associate Editor of Evolutionary Anthropology.

  2. Christian Rutz

    University of St Andrews, United Kingdom

    Christian Rutz is Professor of Biology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he heads a research group studying animal tool behaviour. He combines observational, experimental and theoretical approaches, to investigate why tool use is so rare across the animal kingdom, and how rudimentary technologies advance and diversify. Since 2005, he has been leading a long-term field project on New Caledonian crows – tropical birds that have the remarkable ability to fashion complex foraging tools from plant materials. Rutz led the team that discovered in 2013 that the critically-endangered Hawaiian crow is also a highly skilled tool user, opening up exciting opportunities for comparative research. He has pioneered the use of miniature, animal-borne video-cameras and proximity loggers for studying wild birds, and currently serves as Founding President of the International Bio-Logging Society. With long-standing interests in conservation biology and science policy making, he is currently contributing to efforts to extend the scope of UNEP’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). Rutz obtained his doctorate as a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oxford, was subsequently awarded a ￡1.44-million David Phillips Research Fellowship to establish an independent research group (first at Oxford, and later at St Andrews), and held visiting appointments at the Universities of Oxford, Tokyo and New South Wales. His research has attracted a string of academic awards – including the 2014 Isambard–Kingdom–Brunel Award (British Science Association), the 2014 Hans L?hrl Prize (German Ornithologists’ Union), and the 2013 Marsh Award for Innovative Ornithology (British Trust for Ornithology) – and was showcased at the 2017 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London, UK. Rutz was elected in 2013 to the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland (YAS), and has recently been named the 2019–2020 Grass Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, USA. Christian Rutz's broad areas of expertise are behavioural ecology, evolutionary ecology, urban ecology, comparative cognition, field ornithology and bio-logging science.

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Research focus
    tool behaviour
    social learning and cultural evolution
    animal behaviour and cognition
    foraging ecology
    predator-prey systems
    urban ecology
    conservation biology
    policy making
    animal tracking (bio-logging/bio-telemetry)
    Experimental organism
    crow
    raptors
    birds
    human
    Competing interests statement
    Christian Rutz is employed by the University of St Andrews, UK, holds a Senior Visiting Fellowship at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and is the 2019–2020 Grass Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, USA. Most of his research was, and still is, funded by competitive grants from the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). He was an elected member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Young Academy of Scotland (YAS), and is presently serving as Founding President of the International Bio-Logging Society, Scientific Advisor for UNEP’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), and Editor of Ethology.

  3. Meredith C Schuman

    University of Zurich, Switzerland

    Meredith Schuman (Merry) is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich in the Department of Chemistry and the Remote Sensing Laboratories in the Department of Geography, and part of the University Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity. She works on projects combining direct analyses of plant tissue, and remote sensing techniques with the aim of developing remote sensing approaches to assess genetic and chemotypic variation, plasticity, and adaptive potential within plant species and their interactions in the context of global change. Before that, she was a Group Leader in the Department of Molecular Ecology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (MPICE) in Jena, Germany, and for part of that time she was also an affiliated Junior Group Leader at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). She conducted her PhD research based in the Department of Molecular Ecology, MPICE, for which she was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society, and obtained her degree (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. Prior to her PhD, she came as a Fulbright Research Scholar to the Department of Molecular Ecology of the MPICE after completing a Bachelors of Science in Molecular Biology (major) and Philosophy (minor) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including two semesters studying abroad at the University of Warwick, funded in part by a UW-Madison honors scholarship. Her background is in the chemical ecology and functional genetics of plant interactions, and plant ecophysiology.

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    chemical ecology
    spatial ecology
    plant interactions
    functional genetics
    intraspecific diversity
    Competing interests statement
    Merry's position and her research is currently supported by the NOMIS foundation (grant to Michael Schaepman, University of Zurich, project: Remotely Sensing Ecological Genomics) and the University of Zurich, including the Departments of Geography and Chemistry and the University Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity in which she is a PI. From November 2020 her work will also be funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 program (UPSCALE consortium, grant number 861998, co-PI and work package lead).

Reviewing editors

  1. Yuxin Chen

    Xiamen University, China

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Research focus
    community ecology
    forest
    demography
    biodiversity

  2. Jon Clardy

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Ecology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    microbial secondary metabolism
    chemical communications
    biosynthesis
    chemical biology
    microbial chemical ecology
    gut microbiome

  3. Vaughn S Cooper

    University of Pittsburgh, United States

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Genetics and Genomics
    Ecology
    Research focus
    evolution of bacteria
    antimicrobial resistance

  4. Barnabas Daru

    Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi, United States

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    evolutionary biogeography
    herbarium records
    phylogeny
    phyloregions
    vascular plants

  5. Marcel Dicke

    Wageningen University, Netherlands

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Plant Biology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Research focus
    chemical ecology
    behavioral ecology
    molecular ecology
    multitrophic interactions
    Experimental organism
    B. nigra
    C. glomerata
    H. illucens

  6. Michael Doebeli

    University of British Columbia, Canada

    Expertise
    Computational and Systems Biology
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    mathematical modelling
    evolution of diversity
    social insects
    ecology and evolution of microbial communities

  7. David Donoso

    Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    biodiversity
    ecosystem ecology
    community ecology
    global warming
    soil organisms
    tropical forests

  8. Tatiana Giraud

    Université Paris-Sud, France

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Ecology
    Research focus
    evolution
    pathogenesis
    fungi

  9. Rosalyn Gloag

    University of Sidney, Australia

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Ecology
    Research focus
    invasive species
    population genetics
    brood parasitism
    social parasitism
    eusociality
    Experimental organism
    birds
    bees

  10. Ammie K Kalan

    Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    acoustic monitoring
    animal communication
    animal behaviour
    conservation
    primatology

  11. Merijn R Kant

    University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    plant-herbivore interactions
    tritrophic interactions
    plant defense
    herbivore offense
    transcript analysis
    biological control
    crop protection
    Experimental organism
    tomato
    spider mite
    predatory mite

  12. Laurent Keller

    University of Lausanne, Switzerland

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    evolution
    social behaviour
    ants
    genetics
    social networks
    Experimental organism
    ants
    social insects
    D. melanogaster

  13. Sang-Gyu Kim

    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    chemical ecology
    CRISPR-based genome editing
    plant molecular biology

  14. Daniel J Kliebenstein

    University of California, Davis, United States

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    plant-microbe interactions
    quantitative biology
    genome-wide association studies
    plant genomics
    ecological genomics
    fungal cell cycle and morphogenesis
    secondary metabolism
    plant-insect interactions
    Experimental organism
    Arabidopsis
    Botrytis
    plants

  15. David Lentink

    Stanford University, United States

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    comparative biomechanics of flight
    evolutionary biology
    bio-fluid dynamics
    bio-inspired design
    Experimental organism
    birds
    insects
    bats
    plant seeds

  16. Chima Nwaogu

    University of Cape Town, South Africa

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Research focus
    animal ecology
    birds
    eco-immunology
    life history variation

  17. Lauren O'Connell

    Stanford University, United States

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    behaviour and toxicity in poison frogs
    behavior
    physiology
    evolution
    Experimental organism
    amphibians

  18. Paul Rainey

    Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    adaptive radiation
    evolution of individuality
    evolutionary genetics
    ecological genetics
    emergence of infectious diseases
    forecasting evolution

  19. Bernhard Schmid

    University of Zurich, Switzerland

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    plant ecology
    evolutionary ecology
    biodiversity
    ecosystem functioning
    traits
    Experimental organism
    seed plants
    grassland
    forest

  20. Wenying Shou

    Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

    Expertise
    Computational and Systems Biology
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Research focus
    quantitative biology
    mathematical biology
    evolutionary biology
    synthetic biology
    molecular genetics
    evolution of cooperation
    computer simulations
    Experimental organism
    S. cerevisiae

  21. Kristin Tessmar-Raible

    University of Vienna, Austria

    Expertise
    Genetics and Genomics
    Neuroscience
    Evolutionary Biology
    Ecology
    Research focus
    chronobiology
    marine biology
    photobiology
    behavior
    reproductive timing
    seasons
    lunar rhythms
    tool establishment for "non-conventional animal models”
    Experimental organism
    P. dumerilii
    C. marinus
    zebrafish
    medakafish

  22. Jessica Thompson

    Yale University, United States

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    zooarchaeology
    human evolution
    human origins
    taphonomy
    paleontology

  23. Yuuki Y Watanabe

    National Institute of Polar Research, Japan

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Research focus
    biologging
    behavioral ecology
    marine biology
    Experimental organism
    fish
    seabird
    marine mammal

  24. Min Zhu

    Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Research focus
    paleobiology
    vertebrate paleontology
    evolutionary biology
    systematics
    morphology
    paleobiogeography
    ichthyology
    Experimental organism
    E. primordialis
    G. oneiros
    Q. rostrata

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