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In 1963, Price analysed authorship patterns in chemical science and identified that “…the proportion of multi‐author papers has accelerated steadily and powerfully, and it is now so large that if it continues at the present rate, by 1980 the single‐author paper will be extinct” (Price, 1963). An analysis of all research papers published in Journal of Applied Ecology since 1966 shows that the trends identified by Price also apply to our field: an exponential increase in the mean number of authors per published article has been mirrored by a sharp decline in the proportion of single‐authored papers (Figure 1). From over 60% of all publications in the 1960s, single‐author papers now make up less than 4% (averaged over the past 10 years). Although the single‐author paper has hung on well beyond 1980 in Journal of Applied Ecology, their extinction now appears imminent. Fil: Barlow, Jos. Lancaster University; Reino Unido Fil: Stephens, Philip A.. University of Durham; Reino Unido Fil: Bode, Michael. James Cook University; Australia Fil: Cadotte, Marc W.. University of Toronto; Canadá Fil: Lucas, Kirsty. British Ecological Society; Reino Unido Fil: Newton, Erika. British Ecological Society; Reino Unido Fil: Nuñez, Martin Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina Fil: Pettorelli, Nathalie. The Zoological Society of London; Reino Unido

What do Colombia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea have in common? Not only are they among the most biodiverse countries in the world, they also face a suite of environmental problems relating to land‐use intensification, climate change, and wildlife management. Yet, at the same time, their capacity to respond to these issues remains weak; a weakness that is exacerbated by a deficit of the scientific research needed to guide policy and application (Barlow et al., 2018). Fil: Nuñez, Martin Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina Fil: Barlow, Jos. Lancaster University; Estados Unidos Fil: Cadotte, Marc. University of Toronto; Canadá Fil: Lucas, Kirsty. British Ecological Society; Reino Unido Fil: Newton, Erika. British Ecological Society; Reino Unido Fil: Pettorelli, Nathalie. The Zoological Society of London; Reino Unido Fil: Stephens, Philip. University of Durham; Reino Unido

Transparency in science is an increasingly important topic and it is clear that this is also important to our readers. Taking inspiration from the 2017 Peer Review Week (https://peerreviewweek.wordpress.com/) theme of transparency, in this editorial, we look at the different ways that we have introduced openness and transparency in the publication process and more widely in journal practices. In 2016, we introduced author contribution statements in all published papers and offered a new data sources section for papers containing meta-analyses to enable the data sources to receive proper citation credit within the main article. Our efforts in 2017 range from giving a clear and transparent breakdown of the peer review process for the Journal (http://bit.ly/BESReviewProcess) to larger initiatives such as an open call for new Associate Editors, more on this below.

International audience

Hutchings, Michael J. Gibson, David J. Bardgett, Richard D. Rees, Mark Newton, Erika Baier, Andrea Sandhu, Lauren

Natural populations of wild cabbage (Brassica oleracea) show significant qualitative diversity in heritable aliphatic glucosinolates, a class of secondary metabolites involved in defence against herbivore attack. One candidate mechanism for the maintenance of this diversity is that differential responses among herbivore species result in a net fitness balance across plant chemotypes. Such top-down differential selection would be promoted by consistent responses of herbivores to glucosinolates, temporal variation in herbivore abundance, and fitness impacts of herbivore attack on plants varying in glucosinolate profile. A 1-year survey across 12 wild cabbage populations demonstrated differential responses of herbivores to glucosinolates. We extended this survey to investigate the temporal consistency of these responses, and the extent of variation in abundance of key herbivores. Within plant populations, the aphid Brevicoryne brassicae consistently preferred plants producing the glucosinolate progoitrin. Among populations, increasing frequencies of sinigrin production correlated positively with herbivory by whitefly Aleyrodes proletella and negatively with herbivory by snails. Two Pieris butterfly species showed no consistent response to glucosinolates among years. Rates of herbivory varied significantly among years within populations, but the frequency of herbivory at the population scale varied only for B. brassicae. B. brassicae emerges as a strong candidate herbivore to impose differential selection on glucosinolates, as it satisfies the key assumptions of consistent preferences and heterogeneity in abundance. We show that variation in plant secondary metabolites structures the local herbivore community and that, for some key species, this structuring is consistent over time. We discuss the implications of these patterns for the maintenance of diversity in plant defence chemistry.

Natural plant populations often show substantial heritable variation in chemical structure of secondary metabolites. Despite a great deal of evidence from laboratory studies that these chemicals influence herbivore behaviour and life history, there exists little evidence for the structuring of natural herbivore communities according to plant chemical profiles. Brassica oleracea (Brassicaceae) produces aliphatic glucosinolates, which break down into toxins when leaf tissue is damaged. Structural diversity in these glucosinolates is heritable, and varies considerably at two ecological scales in the UK: both within and between populations. We surveyed herbivore attack on plants producing different glucosinolates, using 12 natural B. oleracea populations. In contrast to the results of previous studies in this system, which suffered low statistical power, we found significant differential responses of herbivore species to heritable glucosinolates, both within and between plant populations. We found significant correlations between herbivore infestation rates and the presence or absence of two heritable glucosinolates: sinigrin and progoitrin. There was variation between herbivore species in the direction of response, the ecological scale at which responses were identified, and the correlations for some herbivore species changed at different times of the year. We conclude that variation in plant secondary metabolites can structure the community of herbivores that attack them, and propose that herbivore-mediated differential selection deserves further investigation as a mechanism maintaining the observed diversity of glucosinolates in wild Brassica.