Ecology Podcast

As part of our 'Community' series, we’re launching the Emerging Leadership Management (ELM) Network, hosted by Rob Brooker, Thorunn Helgason, and Pen Holland. This is the podcast for people who love to lead or one day might emerge as a leader.

In this episode, Professor Sue Hartley OBE talks about the necessity of being challenged, listening to others in leadership, and leading with noble intent.

We talk about everything from Sue’s leadership journey to early lessons in letting go of control and the need for delegation, to the importance of recognising your own limitations and making space for rest.

In the latest BES podcast, alumni committee member of the EDGE network Dr Trisha Gopalakrishna chats with Dr Robyn James about the challenges and strategies to tackle gender (in)equity in environmental conservation at the project or program level across multiple sectors.

We thank Robyn for taking the time out to discuss these issues and direct everyone to her rich research that spans gender and environmental conservation: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HL-gu8MAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao. Robyn is open to being contacted about new research, opportunities, advice and guidance on all things gender and environmental conservation!

Have further thoughts? Like the episode? Engage with the EDGE network by:
following their LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bes-edge-network/posts/?feedView=all
signing up to their newsletter: https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/content/join-the-edge-network/
emailing them at: edge@britishecologicalsociety.org

For today's episode, Ivy is joined by Shahar Chaikin, author of "Native habitat affinities predict fish invasions with post-invasion habitat shifts". We discussed the story behind the paper and his experience as an ecologist.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70293
Read Shahar's blog post here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/07/06/who-is-next-in-line-predicting-which-red-sea-fish-will-invade-the-mediterranean-sea/
Watch the video teaser here: https://youtu.be/_OI8w4ZsDDs

For today's episode, Ivy spoke with Dr David Fisher about his recently published Special Feature titled "Flexible friends: Plastic social buffering of environmental variation", co-edited by Natalie Pilakouta.

The Special Feature aimed to explore how organisms plasticly alter their social behaviour in response to environmental variation, how these changes affect fitness, and whether plasticity in social behaviour allows populations to cope with current human-induced rapid environmental change.

Read the full Special Feature here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2656.flexible-friends

For today's episode, Ivy is joined by Shahar Chaikin, author of "native habitat affinities predict fish invasions with post-invasion habitat shifts". We discussed the story behind the paper and his experience as an ecologist.

Read the full paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.70293
Read Shahar's blog post here: https://animalecologyinfocus.com/2026/07/06/who-is-next-in-line-predicting-which-red-sea-fish-will-invade-the-mediterranean-sea/
Watch the video teaser here: https://youtu.be/_OI8w4ZsDDs