Flump – The first animal, phytoplankton competition and food webs.
It’s Friday and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and other stuff) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments section!
Experts on deep-sea ecosystems put together “A Call for Deep-Ocean Stewardship,” detailing the biological, chemical, and geological importance of these regions. In the document, the authors outline plans for protection and mitigation, research, and collaborative governance of the biodiversity in this largely unexplored ecosystem.
You know how the only thing most of us know about sponges is that they were the first animals to evolve? Well now we can officially say we don’t know anything about them. An article published Wednesday in Nature gives evidence that ctenophores (comb-jellies) were the earliest metazoans based on their unique nervous system. More on this later.
Tomorrow is the 307th birthday of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish – turned Latin founder of modern day taxonomy. In honor of this occasion, taxonomists have released their list of the top 10 new species discovered this past year. The list includes four invertebrates (whaddup), a bacterium, a fungus, and even a new carnivorous mammal. Hopefully it’s only a matter of time before we get the not top 10 new species list.
Ireland is all ABOUT their national biodiversity this week. County Clare launched a three-year “Biodiversity Action Plan” to encourage proper management of local flora and fauna while raising awareness for biodiversity’s role in ecosystem services and climate change. – Nate Johnson
Sometimes, I read a paper and imagine the discussion at the beginning of the project: “Hmm, 216 pairwise species competition experiments? Totally doable.” This week in Ecology, Fritschie et al. published the results of their massive test of the Limiting Similarity Hypothesis: relatedness of 23 species of freshwater phytoplankton was a poor predictor of the competitive interaction strength between any two of those species. – Emily Grason
The Journal of Animal Ecology just released a special (and free) issue on Food Webs. This special issue contains papers that the journal has published over the years and that have played an important role in building our understanding about food webs. It covers many topics related to the field, and it includes some classic work , such as Paine’s paper on interaction strength and community infrastructure. – Vinicius Bastazini