Ecology Podcast

For today's episode, Ivy is joined by Nicolas Bekka, author of a recently published paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology, "paler within the city: Carotenoid-based colouration covaries negatively with the proportion of impervious surface in great tit (Parus major) territories across Europe". Nicolas tells us how he got into animal ecology, the process of writing the paper, and what's next for him and his research area.

You can read the paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70355
You can read Nicolas' blog here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/09/25/paler-within-the-city-across-europe-great-tits-parus-major-are-paler-in-more-impervious-neighbourhoods/

In this episode of the Ecology Podcast, our host, Rob Booth, Senior Policy Officer at the BES, sits down with Tim Christophersen, author of Generation Restoration.

We explore everything from Tim’s role in shaping the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to the role of business in nature recovery and how we turn despair into action.

For today's episode, Publishing Assistant Hannah Ugboma sat down with Dr Nevo Sagi to discuss the story behind his paper, "Carbon flow to generalist predators shifts between plant- and fungal-derived resources in highly seasonal ecosystems", recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. He also spoke of his experience being an ecologist.

Nevo's paper is part of an upcoming Special Feature, "The Mechanisms Underpinning Zoogeochemistry".

You can read his paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70362
You can read his blog post here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/10/26/arctic-generalist-predators-rely-more-on-plant-derived-carbon-as-the-tundra-greens/
You can read more about the Special Feature here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)9999-0033.zoogeochemistry

When it comes to conservation, forests dominate the conversation — in policy, in research, and in the public imagination. But what about the ecosystems that rarely make headlines?

In this episode of the Ecology Podcast, we sit down with Dr Kimberley Simpson, a plant and fire ecologist and Fellow in Nature-based Climate Solutions at the University of Sheffield.

This episode is a teaser for an upcoming talk Kimberley is co-organising at the BES Annual Meeting 2026. Find out more at www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/…ing-2026

In this episode, Associate Blog Editor Laura Hemmingham spoke with Dr Kathleen Petersen about her paper, "Understanding natal emigration in group-living carnivores", recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

Dispersal is a critical ecological and evolutionary process, yet the drivers of individual variation in natal emigration, particularly under human-modified conditions, remain relatively understudied.

The podcast deep dives into the paper and how it investigated the determinants and patterns of emigration in a managed population of cooperative breeders using genetic samples from harvested individuals