Functional traits and associated trait-based concepts have driven rapid innovation in ecology over recent years, with most progress based on insights from plants. However, plants are almost entirely restricted to a single trophic level, an over-reliance plant therefore neglects the complexity importance of biotic interactions across levels. The need expand focus account for has led upsurge atte...

Cognition, defined as the processes concerned with acquisition, retention and use of information, underlies animals’ abilities to navigate their local surroundings, embark on long-distance seasonal migrations, socially learn information relevant movement. Hence, in order fully understand predict animal movement, researchers must know cognitive mechanisms that generate such Work a few model syst...

Background There is concern in the academic publishing community that it is becoming more difficult to secure reviews for peer-reviewed manuscripts, but much of this concern stems from anecdotal and rhetorical evidence. Methods We examined the proportion of review requests that led to a completed review over a 6-year period (2009-2015) in a mid-tier biology journal (Molecular Ecology). We als...

*Correspondence: Sasha R. X. Dall, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, Biosciences, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Penryn TR10 9EZ, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] The study of animal personality variation promises to provide significant new insight into the way that behavior evolves in animals, along with its ecological and evolutio...

A wonderfully lucid framework for the ways to understand animal behaviour is that represented by the four 'whys' proposed by Tinbergen (1963). For much of the past three decades, however, these four avenues have been pursued more or less in parallel. Functional questions, for example, have been addressed by behavioural ecologists, mechanistic questions by psychologists and ethologists, ontogene...