News
16 June 2022: Our new paper led by Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher just came out in Elementa. It looks at the problems of discipline silos in relation to tipping points in social-ecological systems related to environmental management. Check it out here.
1 March 2022: Our new paper, led by Anne Pisor, just came out in Nature Climate Change. It argues that climate change adaptation requires self-authorised management from diverse communities. Check it out here.
15 February 2022: We have a four-year postdoc position available in our lab, exploring social-ecological networks. If you have an interest in bringing social justice elements into your complex systems research, this project would suit you well. Apply here.
We also have a PhD position available - see our Vacancies page.
We also have a PhD position available - see our Vacancies page.
12 February 2022: Welcome Hao Ran to the group! Hao Ran is beginning a postdoc with Jono Tonkin and Jason part time, while working on his own Marsden-funded project.
31 January 2022: Our paper led by Johanna Yletyinen and Phil Lyver is now available. It uses a network approach to demonstrate the deep connections between Indigenous Peoples' values and the environment. Check it out here!
22 December 2021: Sophie's paper from her Masters has just come online for early view in Ecology. It is a mega-analysis of restoration projects which tests whether aquatic and terrestrial restoration is effective at restoring functional diversity. Check it out here!
16 December 2021: Congratulations Mark for successfully defending your PhD!! We're very grateful to Cilla Wehi and Natalie Ban for examining the thesis, and Cilla for acting as the oral examiner!
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4 November 2021: Congratulations Lais for successfully defending your PhD!! Many thanks to Jan Hrcek and A. Randall Hughes for examining the thesis!
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16 July 2021: We have two positions currently available in the same project: (working with Jono Tonkin) one Postdoc and one PhD. If you're looking for a position, check out our vacancies page.
7 June 2021: Our new paper has just come out on social norms as a tool to promote pro-environmental behaviour. Check it out here.
3 June 2021: Our paper has just come online open at Conservation Letters. It's a perspective drawing attention to the inequity (even hypocrisy?) associated with calls to ban wild meat in response to covid. These measures disproportionately impact Indigenous Peoples and those in poverty, while ignoring other important causes of zoonosis (farming, habitat loss) that benefit wealthier consumers. In other words, it shifts the burden of pandemic prevention to a subset of humanity. Check it out here.
25 May 2021: Carla's paper has just come out as online early in Biological Reviews. It uses a national-scale meta-analysis to explore how land use influences trade-offs among a suite of ecosystem services. It also demonstrates that the strongest trade-offs occur when comparing native/natural with exotic/production systems, whereas differences between forested vs. unforested were less significant. Check it out here.
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21 May 2021: Jason gave a talk last night, in the BES Ecology Live series, about the link between species traits, interactions and ecosystem functioning. If you're interested, you can see it here (approx. 30 minutes).
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14 May 2021: Warwick's latest paper has just come out at Nature Communications. It explores how the high growth rates of exotic plants cause bottom-up changes in herbivore abundance and how that influences neighbouring plants in the community. Check it out here.
7 May 2021: Johanna's paper has just come out in Scientific Reports. It explores how social networks can drive spatial patterns in landscapes. Check it out here.
9 March 2021: Mark's latest paper has just come online early at People and Nature. In collaboration with Indigenous environmental guardians (tangata tiaki no Ngāi Tahu), it explores the population impact on black swans of customary egg harvests. Check it out here.
8 March 2021: Welcome Sophie to the group!
Jason will be giving an online talk in the #EcologyLive series in May. See this link for more information.
19 November 2020: Hsi-Cheng's new paper has just come out at Ecology Letters. It uses models and validation on a dataset of food webs to show that foraging strategies moderate the influence of body-size structure on food-web feasibility. Check it out here. It's Hsi-Cheng's second paper linking behaviour with food-web structure.
22 September 2020: Congratulations Hsi-Cheng on successfully defending your PhD thesis! We're incredibly proud of you and your work!
9 July 2020: Mark's new paper has just come out in Bioscience. It shows a scale mismatch between the current scale at which a game bird is managed and that at which its population responds to the environment. It also explains why co-management with indigenous peoples can help to alleviate such mismatches. Check it out here.
25 June 2020: Warwick's paper has just come out in Journal of Ecology. It shows how invasive species can have above and below ground indirect effects, the strength of which can differ for native vs. exotic members of the community. Check it out here.
4 June 2020: Lupe's new paper has just come online at Journal of Animal Ecology. It shows that our ability to use trait matching to predict interactions is poorer for generalists and interactions involving exotic species. Check it out here.
29 May 2020: Our new paper from the Bio-protection Centre project has just come out in Science. It shows how the impacts of exotic plants on carbon cycling depend on above and belowground interactions. Check it out here.
17 May 2020: Lupe's new paper has come online at Ecology Letters. It shows that the neutral and niche processes that generate interactions also determine the stability and functioning of those interactions. Check it out here.
1 May 2020: Our paper with the group of Shucun Sun just came online in Ecology. It shows that the asymmetric architecture of antagonistic networks (whereby specialists interact with generalists) produces a rare species advantage that facilitates biodiversity maintenance. Check it out here.
15 April 2020: Our paper with Lais just came out today in Nature Ecol Evol. It highlights recent work by Tony Ives and colleagues on spatial drivers of eco-evo dynamics. Check it out here.
10 March 2020: PhD position available to work with Jono Tonkin and Jason Tylianakis - details here.
24 February 2020: Congratulations Hannah on submitting your masters thesis!!
3 February 2020: Our new paper, led by Filipe França, has just come out in Phil Trans. Check it out here!
10 January 2020: Lucas' new commentary on the role of Brazilian scientists in politics just came online. Check it out here.
6 December 2019: The new paper led by Matthew Betts with Rob Ewers has just come out in Science. Check it out here and the New York Times article here.
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27 November 2019: Jason receives the University of Canterbury Research Medal on behalf of our group members, past and present.
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8 August 2019: Hsi-Cheng's new paper has just come online early at Ecology Letters. It shows that foraging decisions by species can better predict food-web structure when we recognise that consumers can also be resources for other species. Read about this extension of optimal foraging theory to incorporate predation risk here.
21 June 2019: Welcome Lucas to our lab group!!
20 June 2019: Our new paper, led by Talya and Alix from Jane Memmott's group, has just come online at Ecology Letters. It shows which species are important for connecting up different networks within a landscape. Check it out here.
15 May 2019: Our new paper, led by Johanna, has just come out in Bioscience. It reviews why production systems may be an important class of social-ecological system for understanding tipping points. You can find free access here.
8 May 2019: Our new paper, led by collaborator Phil Lyver, has just come online early in TREE. It synthesises a set of feedback mechanisms through which policies that prevent the engagement of indigenous peoples with their environments interfere with their future ability to engage and contribute to environmental management. Check it out here.
7 May 2019: Our new paper, led by David Orme and Cris Banks-Leite, just came out in Nature Ecology and Evolution. It shows that species' sensitivity to habitat fragmentation is greatest in populations near their range edge. This suggests that species-level characteristics (e.g. traits) are not likely to be a good indicator of vulnerability to drivers such as fragmentation, unless they are considered within the context of other environmental drivers that determine the boundaries of species' geographic range. Check it out here (paywalled) or free read-only version here.
We are disgusted and saddened by the recent violent attack on innocent members of our community last week. If you would like to donate to the families of those affected, there are several Givealittle campaigns, including this one.
20 Mar 2019: Matt's paper showing the effects of organic farming on food-borne pathogens, mediated via dung beetle communities, is now online. A read-only version is free to view here.
14 Mar 2019: Check out our new paper on the role of fungal pathogens in plant community assembly, free download here for 50 days.
25 Feb 2019: Our new paper, led by Karen Adair, has just come out showing that above- and below-ground communities become functionally de-coupled under experimental warming and N deposition. Check it out here.
12 Nov 2018: Congratulations Carla on defending your PhD! Thanks very much to Pita Verweij (overseas examiner) and Neville Crossman (oral examiner) for your valuable input, and well done Carla for such an excellent performance!
1 Nov 2018: Jason has just been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. See the news release here.
13 Oct 2018: Our new paper, led by Dominique Gravel, just came out in Ecography. It presents a quantitative framework for the turnover of network interactions in space and time. Check it out here!
4 Oct 2018: Congratulations Jono on receiving a highly prestigious Rutherford Discovery Fellowship! This is one of ten 5-year fellowships awarded each year to the top ten early-career researchers nationally.
1 Oct 2018: Farewell Johanna! Today she begins a new position at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research.
3 Sep 2018: Welcome Jono Tonkin to the group! Learn more about what Jono does here.
31 Aug 2018: Congratulations Carla on submitting your PhD thesis!
18 Aug 2018: Johanna's latest paper has just come out - check it out here!
4 May 2018: Congratulations Sophie on submitting your masters thesis!
4 April 2018: Our new paper has just come online early at Ecology Letters (see it here). It shows that species that have few degrees of separation (i.e. short path lengths) from others are better able to attract interaction partners during community assembly, and also more likely to retain them during disassembly. These symmetrical assembly and disassembly processes are capable of producing important network structures such as nestedness. Our finding that short path lengths to all other species was more important than the number of direct interaction partners suggests that indirect effects may be important for network assembly and disassembly processes.
27 March 2018: Congratulations Melissa on successfully defending your PhD!
20 Feb 2018: We're very pleased to welcome Laís to the country and the group as she begins her PhD research.
4 Nov 2017: Our new paper, led by Isabel Donoso (who visited our group for several months) is out now at Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution (read it here). It shows that interactions among birds and fruits are primarily neutral (determined by species abundances) and influenced by the ecological neighbourhood.
7 Oct. 2017: Our new paper, led by Phillip Staniczenko, is now online at Nature Communications (read it here). It presents an approach for predicting changes to quantitative networks, and explores the amount of additional data required to improve these predictions.
25 Sep. 2017: Welcome to the group Mark! We look forward to working with you as you complete your PhD here in New Zealand.
25 Aug. 2017: We have a three-year funded PhD position in our research group in NZ to work within a larger project on co-evolution in host-parasitoid networks. Further details on the Vacancies page. The closing date for applications is 29 September 2017.
19 July 2017: Congratulations Zane on the submission of your masters thesis!
14 July 2017: Our letter has just been published in Science. It highlights the discrepancy between conservation ideology, which frequently argues for increased engagement with indigenous peoples, and conservation legislation, which frequently limits their engagement with their land. Read the article here. This is part of our work within the New Zealand's Biological Heritage National Science Challenge.
6 July 2017: Our review on Ecological networks along environmental gradients is now online early at Annual Reviews. Read it here.
3 July 2017: Melissa's new paper has just come out at PLoS One. It compares carrot varieties with different seed set and tests which mechanisms generate those differences. It also tests how pollination and the differences among varieties may change with changing temperature. Read it here.
28 June 2017: We have recently prepared a policy brief, led by Johanna, outlining the key themes for our National Science Challenge project on tipping points in social-ecological systems. See it here.
12 May 2017: A couple of articles have highlighted our recent PNAS paper on evolution of host resistance to parasitoid attack. See the one in Science and another in PNAS.
14 March 2017: Our new paper has just come out at PNAS (read it here). It shows heritable resistance of a pest weevil to its parasitoid biological control agent.
Congratulations to former lab member Etienne Laliberté, who was recently awarded the very prestigious Tansley medal. Well done Etienne!
PHD position available, working on spatial dispersal networks in a multidisciplinary project. Details here. Closing date 28 Feb 2017 (Now closed)
20 Dec 2016: Welcome to Hsi-Cheng, who recently began a PhD in our group!
9 Dec 2016: Welcome to Paula, who recently began a 2.5 year postdoc in our group!
9 Dec 2016: Our new paper with Tom Bell just came out at Proceedings B (read it here). It outlines a set of hypotheses regarding the impacts of landscape processes and agricultural intensification on microbial communities and functioning.
16 Nov 2016: Lupe's new paper is now online early at Ecology (read it here). In earlier work we found that food-web structure can differ systematically across habitats, but this raises the question of how food webs merge at the interface of two habitats. This paper uses empirical parasitoid-host networks from native and plantation forest edges to show that the edge web is not a mere blending of the webs from the two adjacent habitats. Rather, increases in generalist parasitoids at edges generated more highly-connected networks.
14 Oct 2016: Sophie has officially begun her masters in our group - welcome aboard Sophie!
4 Oct 2016: Welcome to our two new postdocs, Johanna and Warwick!
31 August 2016: Our new paper led by Carol Frost has just come out in Nature Communications (read it here). It shows that attack rates on hosts, and their consequent changes in population size, can be predicted by their sharing of natural enemies (parasitoids) with other hosts in the food web. Moreover, it shows that this apparent competition occurs across different habitats, such that the entire landscape functions as a single meta-network.
12 August 2016: A new paper led by Adriana De Palma and Andy Purvis from Imperial has just come out in Scientific Reports (read it here). It shows that the impact of land use on pollinator diversity changes across regions.
9 August 2016: Our new paper led by Rudolf Rohr has just come online early at American Naturalist. It looks at the three-way relationship between species evenness, productivity and species persistence. Link to the journal page here.
5 August 2016: Congratulations Camille on an excellent thesis defense!! Many thanks also to K.C. Burns and Pedro Jordano for examining the thesis.
2 July 2016: Our new paper led by Carine Emer has recently come online at Diversity and Distributions. It shows that the role of exotic species in pollination networks can be predicted by their role in their native range. Check it out here.
12 May 2016: TWO POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONS CURRENTLY ADVERTISED IN OUR GROUP: Please check our vacancies page. Sorry, this position is now closed.
12 May 2016: Camille's new paper has just come online early at Ecology Letters. It shows that species roles in pollination networks relate to their contribution to functional diversity.
5 Apr 2016: In case you're interested in trait matching or predicting network structure, this paper led by Nacho Bartomeus just came online at Functional Ecology.
9 Mar 2016: Jason is currently visiting the entomology department at Cornell.
30 Jan 2016: Matt Jones has just arrived on a Fulbright Fellowship - welcome Matt!
27 Jan 2016: Marilia is heading back to Brasil - we'll all miss you and we really enjoyed your visit!
11 Jan 2016: Farewell Karen, we'll all miss you and wish you all the best at Cornell!
1 Dec 2015: Jason's keynote talk at the Ecological Society of Australia conference made the news for all the wrong reasons... one story, another story
5 Nov 2015: Postdoc position going at the Bioprotection centre at Lincoln University. The project is led by Ian Dickie, and myself and others are collaborating. It will involve generating and working with below ground plant-microbe networks. http://bioprotection.org.nz/vacancies/postdoctoral-fellow-plant-soil-interaction-networks
27 March 2015: Congratulations Michelle on submitting your MSc thesis!
16 Jan 2015: Welcome Marilia! She is visiting our and Daniel Stouffer's group for a year.
9 Dec 2014: Congratulations Christie on submitting your MSc thesis!!
18 Nov 2014: Jason receives the 'Te Tohu Taiao' award for excellence in ecology from the New Zealand Ecological Society.
28 Oct 2014: Lupe's new paper in Journal of Animal Ecology is now online early. It shows how phylogenetic diversity across trophic levels and consumer-resource phylogenetic matching change across a habitat edge from native to plantation forest. Check it out here.
22 Jul 2014: Carol's new Ecology paper has just come online early. It uses a large-scale field experiment to show that cross-habitat spillover of predators depends on habitat productivity, and is stronger in generalist than specialist predators - check it out here.
17 Jul 2014: Lupe's new Ecology paper has just come out. It links food-web structure to ecosystem functioning and stability via network-wide measures of complementarity and redundancy. Read it here.
28 May 2014: Welcome Melissa and Carla to the group!
23 May 2014: New paper by Rader et al. is now online early at Diversity and Distributions.
19 May 2014: Welcome Carla to the group! Carla has just arrived to begin her PhD in the group.
10 Jan 2014: Congratulations Carol on an excellent PhD defense! Many thanks to Jacqueline Beggs and Kevin McCann for acting as examiners!
15 Nov 2013: Very well done Liz, for defending your thesis like a pro! Thanks also to Bruce Burns for doing the oral exam via video conference.
24 Oct 2013: Congratulations Lupe on an excellent performance during your PhD oral exam!!! Thanks also to Sarina MacFadyen for coming to be the examiner, and Ulrich Brose for examining the thesis!
20 Jun 2013: Congratulations Simon on your MSc submission!!
24 May 2013: Read response to recent Perspectives paper and my reply here
5 Mar 2013: Ceci's new paper just came out in PLoS One - read it here
1 Mar 2013: Check out the interview on BBC news about pollinator decline
19 Feb 2013: Welcome to our new homepage!