Over the next few weeks we will be welcoming three new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Susan Johnston (University of Edinburgh, UK) became a member of the Associate Editor Board on Monday 5 October. She will be joined on 19 October by Natalie Cooper (Natural History Museum, London, UK) and finally by Luísa Carvalheiro (University of Brasília, Brazil) on 2 November. You can find out more about all three of our new Associate Editors below.
Susan Johnston
“My research focuses on using genomic information to understand evolution in natural populations. I adapt mixed model approaches to determine the genetic architecture of interesting traits (e.g. estimating heritability, genome-wide association studies, outlier analyses) to examine its relationship with fitness or importance in local adaptation. I am interested in the potential of affordable genomics to answer evolutionary and ecological questions in wild systems, and how to deal with various statistical issues arising from such studies in small and/or structured populations.”
Susan’s most recently published article is ‘Low but significant genetic differentiation underlies biologically meaningful phenotypic divergence in a large Atlantic salmon population‘, co-authored with T. Aykanat, P. Orell, E. Niemelä, J. Erkinaro and C.R. Primmer. The findings suggest that different evolutionary processes affect sub-populations of Atlantic salmon and that hybridization and subsequent selection may maintain low genetic differentiation without hindering adaptive divergence. This article was published in Molecular Ecology.
Natalie Cooper
“I am an evolutionary biologist, focusing mainly on macroevolution and macroecology. My interests include phylogenetic comparative methods, morphological evolution, using museum specimens in research, and integrating neontological and palaeontological data and approaches for understanding broad-scale patterns of biodiversity.”
Natalie has recently been published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (‘Effects of missing data on topological inference using a Total Evidence approach‘ with T. Guillerme) and in Evolution (‘Investigating evolutionary lag using the species-pairs evolutionary lag test (SPELT)‘ with C.L. Nunn). She was also a speaker at the Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5th Anniversary Symposium. Her presentation, ‘Limitations of Phylogenetic Comparative Methods‘, is freely available on YouTube.
Luísa Carvalheiro
“My research focuses on community ecology & conservation. I have particular interest in the study of dynamics of biodiversity through time and space; and on the evaluation of how such biotic changes affect ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services, considering how the complex network of ecological interactions in which species are integrated mediates such changes.”
Earlier this year Luísa’s article ‘Susceptibility of pollinators to ongoing landscape changes depends on landscape history‘ (with J. Aguirre-Gutiérrez, J.C. Biesmeijer, E.E. van Loon, M. Reemer, and M.F. Wallis De Vries) was published in Diversity and Distributions. The article emphasizes the limited value of a one-size-fits-all biodiversity conservation measures and highlights the importance of considering landscape history when planning biodiversity conservation actions. This article is Open Access. Luísa was also the lead author of ‘The potential for indirect effects between co-flowering plants via shared pollinators depends on resource abundance, accessibility and relatedness‘ an Open Access article published in Ecology Letters last year.
We are thrilled to welcome Susan, Natalie and Luísa to the Associate Editor Board and we look forward to working with them over the coming years.
