Dr. Natalie Clay, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Louisiana Tech, has won the prestigious 2017 Elton Prize, awarded annually by the British Ecological Society for the best paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology written by an early career author at the start of their research career.

Her paper, “Towards a geography of omnivory: Omnivores increase carnivory when sodium is limiting,” was written in collaboration with Richard J. Lehrter and Michael Kaspari.
“This award is a humongous honor and I am humbled to be recognized by the British Ecological Society, and for an award named after Charles Elton,” said Clay, who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 2013 and her undergraduate degree from Colby College (Waterville, Maine) in 2008. “Charles Elton was a pioneering ecologist who recognized how what organisms ate impacted everything from their behavior to how food webs are structured.” Read more.

Brazilian farmers are working with nuclear scientists to utilize organic farming techniques to increase their productivity while at the same time reducing their carbon emissions in a project coordinated by the IAEA in cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). They use stable isotope techniques to verify the effectiveness of their organic farming practices, reducing their costs, while helping the environment.

Agriculture is a significant component of the Brazilian economy. The country is the world’s largest producer of coffee, orange juice and sugar and the second largest producer of soybeans and crop-based ethanol. Brazilian production of grain reached over 230 million tonnes in the 2016-17 growing season. Read more.

Leopards, top predators of the African savannah, are known to feed on a variety of prey species. It has been largely unknown, however, whether they specialize in certain prey animals and which factors might influence prey preferences. Scientists investigated these questions by studying the diet of leopards on commercial farmland in central Namibia. Read more.

If a 50-year-old snail could talk, it would probably have plenty of tall tales to tell. Now, thanks to modern isotope testing technology, those snails can tell us stories without speaking.

Researchers at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia have found that oceanic mudsnails preserve information about nitrogen levels in the water where they are captured. Comparing isotope analysis of 2018 mudsnails to isotope analysis of dead snails captured more than a century ago lets scientists chart nitrogen levels down to a specific decade. It’s the snail version of counting rings on a newly felled giant redwood tree. Read more.