Wojciech Uszko

In Defense of Type I Functional Responses: The Frequency and Population Dynamic Effects of Feeding on Multiple Prey at a Time | The American Naturalist Abstract Ecologists differ in the degree to which they consider the linear type I functional response to be an unrealistic versus sufficient representation of predator feeding rates. Empiricists tend ...

Novak et al. derive a functional response model that unifies Holling’s classical forms. The model clarifies when linearity can be a mechanistically-reasoned description of predator feeding rates and the impact it has on predator-prey dynamics.

Read now!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Open postdoc position in a great research group in Uppsala, Sweden!
www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

Stronger effect of temperature on body growth in cool than in warm populations suggests lack of local adaptation Body size is a key functional trait that has declined in many biological communities, partly due to changes in individual growth rates in response to climate warming. However, our understanding of gr....

New research from #SLUAqua - Stronger effect of temperature on body growth in cool than in warm populations suggests lack of local adaptation🦑 🧪🌎
Max Lindmark et al. 2025 doi.org/10.1002/ecog...

📣Attending @esa.int's #LPS25 next week?
Make sure to catch the 𝐂.𝟎𝟓.𝟎𝟒 session (𝐓𝐮𝐞 𝟐𝟒𝐭𝐡 | 𝟏𝟔:𝟏𝟓-𝟏𝟕:𝟒𝟓 | 𝐇𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐋𝟏/𝐋𝟐), during which I will talk about 🌍 global 🛰️ #Landsat and #Sentinel-2 data availability and how it shapes feasibility of long-term analyses.
See you in Vienna!

‼️New potential ant communication just dropped! ‼️
First reported sounds produced by Red Wood ants
doi.org/10.1080/0952...
We published in #OpenAccess! #acoustics #animalbehaviour #entomology
Brought to you by @umeauniversitet.bsky.social

Habitat structural complexity increases age-class coexistence and population growth rate through relaxed cannibalism in a freshwater fish Edeline, Eric1  ; Bennevault, Yoann2; Rozen-Rechels, David3 1 DECOD (Ecosystem Dynamics and Sustainability), INRAE, IFREMER, Institut Agro, Rennes, France 2 U3E, INRAE, Agrocampus Ouest, Rennes,…

Now published in Peer Community Journal, #ecology section: Habitat structural complexity increases age-class coexistence and population growth rate through relaxed cannibalism in a freshwater fish

PhD student in Ecology (up to 4 years) The position is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation project “A mechanistic theory of functional responses: zooming into movement behaviour to understand and predict predator prey interacti...

Are you interested in predator-prey interactions and movement ecology?

I am looking for a PhD student to work on the project "A mechanistic theory of functional responses: zooming into movement behaviour to understand and predict predator-prey interactions"
euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/342402.

One more week to apply for this Leverhulme PhD studentship on wildlife harvests and the social licence of hunting in the UK #ecology #people www.essex.ac.uk/postgraduate...

Postdoc on annelid taxonomy at Gothenburg University, Sweden
web103.reachmee.com/ext/I005/103...

A press release about our recent article at @asn-amnat.bsky.social!
amnat.org/an/newpapers...

We offer a 5-year research position in the #PlanktonEcology lab in Wilhelmshaven. Are you interested in empirically testing ecological concepts? We offer a stimulating scientific environment, experimental facilities & support to establish an independent research profile
uol.de/en/job/postd...

Are functional response types statistical apparitions? They certainly can be, especially given typically noisy data from foraging trails. This article gives a fresh perspective on how to approach type 2 vs. 3 distinction in FR experiments.

Simple, Universal Rules Predict Trophic Interaction Strengths Two simple, universal rules derived from energetic arguments predict the parameters of predator functional responses that underlie the strengths of trophic interactions. Furthermore, theory developed....

New paper 'Simple, universal rules predict trophic interaction strengths' out in Ecology Letters with Mark Novak and John DeLong: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A photo collage of the 2025 class of ESA's fellows and early career fellows. Click through the link for a full list of fellows and their individual bona fides.

🌟Announcing the 2025 ESA Fellows and Early Career Fellows!🌟ESA's fellowship program recognizes the many ways in which our members contribute to ecological research, communication, education, management & policy. Learn more about this year's cohort: esa.org/blog/2025/04...

Macroecological rules predict how biomass scales with species richness in nature Despite advances in theory and experiments, how biodiversity influences the structure and functioning of natural ecosystems remains debated. By applying new theory to data on 84,695 plant, animal, and...

New 🗒️led by Alex Pigot - Macroecological rules predict how biomass scales with species richness in nature -Standing biomass increases with richness when large-bodied spp are numerically rare but independent when spp size & abundance are uncoupled. @ucl.ac.uk - Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Postdoktorstipendium (2 år): Globala förändringar påverkar de nordliga sjöarna Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap vid Umeå universitet söker en motiverad postdoktorkandidat för att undersöka effekterna av globala förändringar på norra sjöekosystem, med s

A postdoc job at Umeå University
Global Change Impacts on Northern Lakes
umustipendie.varbi.com/what:job/job...

Differential effects of Daphnia genotype composition on spatial environmental heterogeneity in experimental metacommunities Spatial environmental heterogeneity is an important driver of aquatic biodiversity. Ecological and evolutionary theory often consider spatial heterogeneity as being driven by exogenous factors, yet h...

aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Here, we show how the genetic composition of communities can affect the build-up of environmental heterogeneity over time. Environmental heterogeneity is not always external to organisms. Evolving organisms can shape it through local effects.

New study reveals elephants' energy-saving strategies Data from over 150 elephants demonstrated that these giants plan their journeys based on energy costs and resource availability.

Read the press release here: www.idiv.de/how-elephant...

Does availability of juvenile refuge affect size structure of adults? Uszko et al. show that size of streams used as nurseries impacts growth and size structure of lake trout by controlling the strength of cannibalistic mortality and resource competition.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

In this short news piece @leibnizigb.bsky.social 6 experts and myself share recent insights on the multitude of negative effects of climate change on aquatic ecosystems

🧪🌡️📈🌍💧🐟🦞🐌🦠

The effects of trade-off shape and dimensionality on eco-evolutionary dynamics in resource competition Organisms invariably experience trade-offs in their capacities for interacting with their environments. In resource competition, this often means that…

No more competing consumers than there are resources can coexist in equilibrium, but have you ever wondered how many consumers actually evolve as resource diversity increases? In our new paper, @chrisklausmeier.bsky.social and I investigate. (1/3)

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Vertical Niche Partitioning and the Performance of Mixotrophic Generalists against Autotrophic and Heterotrophic Specialists under Contrasting Light-Nutrient Supply Regimes | The American Naturalist Abstract A vertical separation in light and nutrient availability is observed in many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In lakes and oceans, the opposing vertical gradients of light and nutrients ty...

Le Noac'h et al. investigate competition between nanoplankton nutritional strategies. Their modelling approach highlights the viability of a phago-mixotrophic strategy and the intricate network of facilitative and competitive interactions. Read now!
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Warming can affect many physiological processes. But any attempt to scale up individual-level processes to population-level consequences must assume a relationship between temperature & the strength of density dependence. But what does it look like? In our new paper, we tried to find out.

GitHub - benjamin-rosenbaum/bayesian-intro: Introduction to Bayesian statistics Introduction to Bayesian statistics. Contribute to benjamin-rosenbaum/bayesian-intro development by creating an account on GitHub.

I completely re-worked my course "Introduction to Bayesian statistics with brms" and taught it for the 1st time this week. It is meant as a tutorial for ecologists, but should be general enough for other sciences as well
github.com/benjamin-ros...
#stats #Rstats #brms #Stan #Bayesian

I haven't heard about this one before. Sounds really interesting! I wonder how "strong" the science part is. Let me know what you think afterwards! 😀

3/3 After a longer hiatus in reading SF, I got a feeling I won’t like it anymore in a pure literary sense. I haven’t made up my mind on that yet.

2/3 Then, a re-read of a Polish SF classic: Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanisław Lem. I was surprised to (re)discover how good writer Lem was, although his character set is painfully male-biased.

1/3 #Booksky I temporarily returned to my older habit of reading SF. First, I tried Alastair Reynold's Pushing Ice. Almost DNFed it twice, somewhere around 30-40% through the book. Plain characters, weird plot development pacing. But it paid off to continue, and at the end it delivered good SF fun.

I completely missed that one! What a delightful read!

Frontiers | Empirical evidence of type III functional responses and why it remains rare More than 70 years after its introduction, the framework of resource density-dependent consumption rates, also known as predator-prey functional responses, r...

Note that in around 20% of the analyzed datasets from the FoRAGE database, Holling's type III was the best-performing model. Not that rare after all, @gkalinkat.bsky.social !