Journal of Animal Ecology

This study shows, for the first time, that the effects hosts and parasites exert on each other (e.g. hosts providing resources to parasites and parasites exploiting the resources of hosts) are driven by temporally-persistent species. However, effects of some species vary greatly with time while those of others are temporally-stable.

This study provides the first evidence of Allee effects in ants. The results demonstrate the differential effect of queens and workers on survival and productivity. A potential positive feedback between worker and queen abundance may have contributed to the evolution of large colony sizes.

Using Dynamic Energy Budget theory, the authors consider universal constraints on the storage and use of assimilated nutrients and derive an equation for the body-size scaling of metabolic rate without relying on optimisation arguments. The mechanism offers an explanation for differences between the intra- and inter-specific scaling of biological rates with mass.

Here the authors document clinal variation in body size, but only modest variation in thermal tolerances and metabolic rates along the elevation gradient. These results show that quantifying energy balances and allocation offers a viable approach for predicting how populations will respond to climate change.

This paper provides rare empirical tests of competing models of patch-departure decisions in natural and field-experimental foraging conditions. It shows that foragers' patch-departure decisions may depend on the characteristics of the environment, and that in some environments simpler models can provide a good description of this behaviour. Photo by Harry Marshall/ZSL Tsaobis Baboon Project.