The Kaspari Lab
Category: Cool Papers
When it comes to invertebrate body size, it’s hard to go big toward the poles
Ecologists have long been fascinated with body size as the “one functional trait that rules them all”. An organism’s body size is just so good at helping us understand how it fits into the rest of the community. Thus an exhaustive dataset on how communities of organisms (e.g., all the birds that occupy a woodlot, all the spiders collected from a single tropical tree) vary as you move from place to place—we’re talking real Geographic Ecology here—has always been a grail for ecologists.
Read MoreAll that is green is not nutritious or, The importance of peeing earnestly
The quality of urine is not strain’d
It droppeth as the gentle rain from bison on the lawn beneath.
The Great Diverse North? Flipping the latitudinal gradient.
Every student of Ecology learns that the variety of species declines as you move north or south from the equator. In a new paper led by Dr. Michael Weiser @NEONAnts we show the truth is more delightfully complex. And we…
Read MoreGrasshopper Declines and the perils of Nutrient Dilution
Grasshopper numbers at a tall grass prairie have declined ca. 2% per year. Ellen Welti leads in identifying a likely culprit: increasing CO2 is diluting plant nutrients, making each bite less and less nutritious over the years. This open access…
Read MoreOne way to build a dietary generalist
Karl Roeder gives some background on the dietary diversity hidden in a population of red imported fire ants
Read MoreNot all male ants are “sperm missiles”
When your mating system calls for patience, male ants will stick around for a while.
Read MoreOn the salutary effect of the Kudos Email
If you like someone’s work, don’t just cite them, write them!
Read More10 Foundational Papers in Community Ecology
I suggest to students in Advanced EEB, our course for first semester Ph. D. students, that creativity is about fostering your ability to generate associations/ideas, and your judgement as to which ideas are worth pursuing. Toward that end, I also…
Read MoreA little known gem from the tropical ant/soil literature
A few days ago, a good friend wrote to ask what was known about the response of tropical soil invertebrates to drought. My first response was “precious little”, and then I remembered a cool article by Diana Wheeler and Sally Levings….
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