Apex predators living near patches of residential housing switch from strong avoidance of these areas when hunting is good (well-fed) to no avoidance when they have not killed for some time (hungry), making them more likely to become involved in a human–carnivore conflict.

Ecologists are increasingly using image capture to bolster data collection. However, reviewing these images remains a bottleneck. Computer vision can increase the accuracy and efficiency of image review. The author outlines the goals, tools and applications of ecological computer vision to animal ecology.

Unique social network structures associated with species sociality mediate infectious disease risks. The authors perform a large-scale meta-analysis across social networks of 47 species, including mammals, birds, reptiles and fish to provide new perspectives on the disease costs of group living.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of dynamic, spatial models and how they have contributed to understanding pathogen transmission in wildlife. It highlights patterns in the literature, possible integration with other ecological disciplines, and shows how spatial models can contribute to understanding changes in transmission patterns resulting from anthropogenic activity.

The gypsy moth Slow the Spread programme has resulted in one of the most spatially and temporally detailed population datasets in existence. This paper reviews the profound opportunity this research has provided to the fields of population dynamics and invasion biology and appeals to a broad audience by showing the wide variety of research areas and ecological theory facilitated by a well-known invasive species. This synthesis also highlights how important ecological questions can be answered by thinking more broadly about monitoring data.

Dominance hierarchies are widespread in nature. However, there are no clear guidelines about the sampling effort necessary for inferring reliable hierarchies, nor are there established tools for quantifying their uncertainty. The authors fill this gap of knowledge and provide researchers with an easy step-by-step guide on how to analyse dominance hierarchies.

Generalities portrayed in risk-avoidance response studies indicate that large mammalian predators normally avoid residential development, but do not explain the occasional conflict event in which predators utilize backyards. The authors demonstrate that residential development presents a risk-reward trade-off to puma and that risk avoidance behavior declines as hunger level increases.

A cricket unable to call is like a peacock without a tail. Nonetheless a trait silencing males has spread rapidly in Hawai'i, abetted by pre-existing behavioural plasticity manifest as flexible responses to social (particularly acoustic) information in the environment. Differential success of the trait in turn alters the social environment itself. The authors thank Norman Lee for the photograph.

The authors use a broad temperature gradient provided by indirect geothermal heating of the soil to show that diversity of plant and invertebrate communities decreases with warming. Moreover, invertebrate mean body size decreases and abundance increases, mediated by changes in plant community composition and differences in thermal tolerances of individual populations.

The study uses long-term collections of museum specimens to demonstrate that decreases in ground beetle body size over time are linked to increases in autumn temperatures. Field-collected beetles have decreased in size at a faster rate than predicted by laboratory experiments.

Whether the behavioural attributes of an organism can mitigate the effects of climate warming is critical knowledge when predicting its impact. The authors highlight the importance of considering the extent to which activity phase and microclimate can buffer individuals against thermal extremes when assessing the direct impacts of climate warming.

This study compares for the first time systematically the strength of two major sources of density regulation in fish populations, recruitment and growth, revealing that density-dependent recruitment is dominating yet density-dependent growth is also common. These results are relevant for determining sustainable harvest and thus management of marine resources.

Changes in the timing of ecological events (phenology) are apparent in many systems. The role of stochastic factors in phenological processes, however, is often ignored. This study shows that breeding phenology varies over time in a colonial seabird, even in the absence of environmental variation.

This article provides an important contribution to metapopulation ecology because it is one of only a few studies that have validated dispersal distances inferred from occupancy data with direct measures of dispersal distance. Further, it presents methodology for a novel autoregressive occupancy modeling approach that accounts for imperfect detection and unsurveyed sites that could be used to improve estimates of occupancy, colonization, and extinction in future metapopulation studies.

The authors tested 10 candidate functions representing the transmission of trematode parasites to amphibian hosts using laboratory experiments varying the duration of exposure, numbers of parasites, numbers of hosts and parasite density. Nonlinear functions outperformed classical frequency- and density-dependent transmission functions and may provide more realistic predictions for infection.

The process of invasion is expected to alter the immune system of introduced species. The authors used a combination of field and laboratory experiments to compare the effect of immune system activation on dispersal of cane toads from range-edge and range-core populations.

Vector, host community and habitat characteristics have important but different impacts on the prevalence, richness and evenness of vector-borne parasites. However, the joint impact of these factors has been neglected. The authors’ results highlight the key role of biotic and abiotic variables in explaining the transmission dynamics of these pathogens.

Janzen's Rule predicts restricted elevational ranges for tropical montane species. On the west slope of the Peruvian Andes, a handful of songbird species defy this prediction. Tests of recent expansion, elevational movement and genetic divergence reveal that elevational generalism is unstable and fleeting. The exceptions prove Janzen's Rule. (Photo credits: Tom Kennedy, Troglodytes aedon; Dario Sanches, Zonotrichia capensis).

This paper shows a strong spring warming (+2°C) in a wild Mediterranean passerine bird population. This warming strengthens the selection to breed earlier, which could favour an adaptive response in avian breeding phenology since laying date is a heritable trait.

The authors showed that more generalist brood parasites occupied very different positions in a phylogenetic tree, suggesting that they have evolved independently within the Cuculiformes order. They provided new evidence that generalist species tend to occupy larger distribution ranges than more specialist species and also demonstrated that specialist cuckoo species represent more evolutionary heritage in the Cuculiformes order. The present study results highlight how species, which represent a larger evolutionary heritage within the order Cuculiformes, are also potentially more subject to conservation threats.

By exploiting a unique dataset on bird abundances combining large spatial coverage and fine resolution, the study using two sibling passerine species, the Thrush Nightingale (left) and the Common Nightingale (right), as a model system provides important insights into the role of interspecific competition in shaping species’ habitat preferences and hence distribution patterns and rules governing species’ coexistence.

Arranging species into groups based on the similarity of their interactions yields a surprising overlap with classifications of trophic strategy. Remarkably, this level of similarity is not attainable by using any of the commonly appreciated local structural differences between parasites and species employing other trophic strategies, but instead requires incorporation of the global network structure.

In this article, the authors show that more closely related insect species have more similar temporal dynamics. Surprisingly, shared natural enemies and shared life-history traits did not explain similarity in the temporal dynamics. This finding has important implications for predicting insect outbreaks and for informing insect conservation.

Interspecific interactions among small carnivores are rarely studied, despite these animals being some of the most numerous carnivores in many ecosystems. The authors identified that small carnivores exhibit some degree of spatial partitioning and organize themselves in a hierarchy within their guild. Photo by Cale Myers.

The authors demonstrate from a theoretical perspective that the average number of animals counted per frame in a video recording survey is itself an unbiased estimate of animal density in the case of animals displaying home range behaviour, by overcoming the scepticism that recounting the same individuals could bias the estimates.

After leaving their natal territory, dispersing meerkats selectively use areas where they are less likely to encounter unrelated resident groups. This result stresses the importance of social circumstances for decision-making during dispersal, particularly in species where encounters with resident conspecifics are antagonistic.

This paper represents a novel and important contribution to the ecological literature because it is the first to test the combined effects of two global invaders with different trophic positions on other native species by linking long-term field data in China and global trophic niche analyses.

This study provided experimental evidence that diverse associational effects of focal plants can result from the multiple-scale foraging decisions by large herbivores in response to plant within-patch distributions and can operate at plant individual and population scales. These results have important implications for understanding species coexistence and plant–herbivore interactions.

The authors provide evidence that predators can dynamically adjust their foraging tactics in response to changing prey abundance and vulnerability. Their work demonstrates the utility of integrating temporal dynamics of prey availability into investigations of predator–prey interactions, and moves towards a mechanistic understanding of the foraging tactics of an omnivore.