On December 8, 2020, members of Mordecai, Peay, and Fukami Labs met (virutally, of course) to talk about the papers published in 2020 that each of us liked the most. These papers, the best papers of 2020 according to us, are listed below. (If you are curious about the papers we picked before, check out our 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 lists.)

Best papers of 2020


Bowman M, Rebolleda-Gómez M. 2020. Uprooting narratives: legacies of colonialism in the neoliberal university. Hypatia 35: 18-40. Link

Boyle WA, Shogren EH, Brawn JD. 2020. Hygric niches for tropical endotherms. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 35: 938-952. Link

Brett TS, Rohani P. 2020. Transmission dynamics reveal the impracticality of COVID-19 herd immunity strategies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117: 25897-25903. Link

Chang C-W, Ye H, Miki T, Deyle ER, Souissi S, Anneville O, Adrian R, Chiang Y-R, Ichise S, Kumagai M, Matsuzaki S-IS, Shiah F-K, Wu J-T, Hsieh C-H, Sugihara G. 2020. Long-term warming destabilizes aquatic ecosystems through weakening biodiversity-mediated causal networks. Global Change Biology Link

Chomicki G, Werner GDA, West SA, Kiers ET. 2020. Compartmentalization drives the evolution of symbiotic cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological sciences 375: 20190602. Link

Clark TJ, Luis AD. 2020. Nonlinear population dynamics are ubiquitous in animals. Nature Ecology & Evolution 4: 75-81. Link

Clay PA, Duffy MA, Rudolf VHW. 2020. Within-host priority effects and epidemic timing determine outbreak severity in co-infected populations. Proceedings of The Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 287: 20200046. Link

Cohen JM, Sauer EL, Santiago O, Spencer S, Rohr JR. 2020. Divergent impacts of warming weather on wildlife disease risk across climates. Science 370. Link

Ebrahimi M, Sadeghi A, Rahimi D, Purabdolah H, Shahryari S. 2020. Postbiotic and anti-aflatoxigenic capabilities of Lactobacillus kunkeei as the potential probiotic LAB isolated from the natural honey. Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins Link

Erktan A, Or D, Scheu S. 2020. The physical structure of soil: determinant and consequence of trophic interactions. Soil Biology & Biochemistry 148: 107876. Link

Freedman MG, Dingle H, Strauss SY, Ramírez SR. 2020. Two centuries of monarch butterfly collections reveal contrasting effects of range expansion and migration loss on wing traits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117: 28887-28893. Link

Gelman A, Vehtari A, Simpson D, Margossian CC, Carpenter B, Yao Y, Kennedy L, Gabry J, Bürkner P-C, Modrák M. 2020. Bayesian workflow. arXiv Link

Gibb R, Redding DW, Chin KQ, Donnelly CA, Blackburn TM, Newbold T, Jones KE. 2020. Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems. Nature 584: 398-402. Link

Gómez-Llano M, Narasimhan A, Svensson EI. 2020. Male-male competition causes parasite-mediated sexual selection for local adaptation. American Naturalist 196: 344-354. Link

Greenspan SE, Migliorini GH, Lyra ML, Pontes MR, Carvalho T, Ribeiro LP, Moura-Campos D, Haddad CFB, Toledo LF, Romero GQ, Becker CG. 2020. Warming drives ecological community changes linked to host-associated microbiome dysbiosis. Nature Climate Change 10: 1057-1061. Link

Herse MR, Lyver PO, Scott N, McIntosh AR, Coats SC, Gormley AM, Tylianakis JM. 2020. Engaging indigenous peoples and local communities in environmental management could alleviate scale mismatches in social-ecological systems. BioScience 70: 699-707. Link

Mennicken S, Kondratow F, Buralli F, Manzi S, Andrieu E, Roy M, Brin A. 2020. Effects of past and present-day landscape structure on forest soil microorganisms. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 8: 118. Link

Polk E, Diver S. 2020. Situating the scientist: creating inclusive science communication through equity framing and environmental justice. Frontiers in Communication 5: 330. Link

Román-Palacios C, Wiens JJ. 2020. Recent responses to climate change reveal the drivers of species extinction and survival. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117: 4211-4217. Link

Schell CJ, Dyson K, Fuentes TL, Des Roches S, Harris NC, Miller DS, Woelfle-Erskine CA, Lambert MR. 2020. The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments. Science 369. Link

Shoemaker LG, Sullivan LL, Donohue I, Cabral JS, Williams RJ, Mayfield MM, Chase JM, Chu C, Harpole WS, Huth A, HilleRisLambers J, James ARM, Kraft NJB, May F, Muthukrishnan R, Satterlee S, Taubert F, Wang X, Wiegand T, Yang Q, Abbott KC. 2020. Integrating the underlying structure of stochasticity into community ecology. Ecology 101: e02922. Link

Skaff NK, Cheng Q, Clemesha RES, Collender PA, Gershunov A, Head JR, Hoover CM, Lettenmaier DP, Rohr JR, Snyder RE, Remais JV. 2020. Thermal thresholds heighten sensitivity of West Nile virus transmission to changing temperatures in coastal California. Proceedings of The Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 287: 20201065. Link

Thoen E, Harder CB, Kauserud H, Botnen SS, Vik U, Taylor AFS, Menkis A, Skrede I. 2020. In vitro evidence of root colonization suggests ecological versatility in the genus Mycena. New Phytologist 227: 601-612. Link

Towers IR, Bowler CH, Mayfield MM, Dwyer JM. 2020. Requirements for the spatial storage effect are weakly evident for common species in natural annual plant assemblages. Ecology 101: e03185. Link

Ward M, Tulloch AIT, Radford JQ, Williams BA, Reside AE, Macdonald SL, Mayfield HJ, Maron M, Possingham HP, Vine SJ, O'Connor JL, Massingham EJ, Greenville AC, Woinarski JCZ, Garnett ST, Lintermans M, Scheele BC, Carwardine J, Nimmo DG, Lindenmayer DB, Kooyman RM, Simmonds JS, Sonter LJ, Watson JEM. 2020. Impact of 2019-2020 mega-fires on Australian fauna habitat. Nature Ecology & Evolution 4: 1321-1326. Link