Advisory Board and Editors Ecology
Piotr Tryjanowski
Professor of Biology and Director of the Institute of Zoology PULS. Previously at Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan.
Research interests: behavioural ecology, climate impact, farmland birds, urban ecology.
Eeva-Stiina Tuittila
I research the carbon dynamics of peatlands. Specifically this addresses the impact of climate change on the functioning of the ecosystem, greenhouse gas emissions and vegetation.
Jana M U'Ren
Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University. PhD in Plant Pathology and Microbiology from The University of Arizona. Research focus on the ecology and evolution of fungal endophytes.
Jana Vamosi
I am a biodiversity scientist examining the macroevolution, macroecology, community ecology, and conservation biology of plants. I often incorporate phylogenetic approaches to questions pertaining to the evolutionary ecology of plant-insect interactions.
Yolanda van Heezik
Professor in the Zoology Department at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, with an interest in urban ecology. Worked as a wildlife biologist in the Middle East and Southern Africa.
Sara Varela
I am working on Pleistocene mammal extinctions. Co-developer of R packages to download data from open access databases (rAvis and paleobioDB), and team member of www.ecoClimate.org, an open access repository to access climatic data for the past, present and future.
Claudio Vasapollo
I am a marine biologist working as a fishery and benthic researcher at the Institute for Marine Resources and Biotechnologies (IRBIM) of the National Researche Council (CNR) in Ancona, Italy. I held my PhD in 2010 at the The Open University (Milton Keynes, UK) working at the Stazione Zoologica A. Dohrn of Naples (Italy) where I conducted a study on the spatial and temporal distribution of macro benthic assemblages associated to Posidonia oceanica seagrass and on several features of the plant itself. I got a Master degree in 2005 at the Polytechnic University of Marche after the Bachelor's degree in Marine Biology at the same university in 2004. I participated in several surveys at sea in the last years as well as to several diving expeditions in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.
Scott Veirs
Oceanographer and bioacoustician facilitating the recovery of endangered regional icons of the Pacific Northwest (U.S.), particularly southern resident killer whales and Pacific salmon. I helped design and was the first major in the Earth Systems program at Stanford University, then earned a M.S. and PhD in Oceanography at the University of Washington. In 2003 I founded Beam Reach and taught ~50 undergraduates and recent graduates to ask and answer their own marine field science questions during 10-week field courses from 2005-2012. During the same period I helped create the Salish Sea Hydrophone Network -- orcasound.net -- which I continue to administer.
Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran
Dr. Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Japan
Dr. Balu Alagar Venmathi Maran is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Nagasaki University, Japan. He previously served as an Associate Professor at the Borneo Marine Research Institute, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Malaysia, from 2017 to 2023. Before that, he was a Research Professor at Chonnam National University, Pukyong National University, and Kyungpook National University, South Korea (2015–2017) and a Scientist at the Korean Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, Busan, South Korea (2011–2015).
Dr. Venmathi Maran earned his Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Hiroshima University, Japan, and has 25 years of research experience in marine science and aquaculture. His expertise includes the taxonomy of marine fish parasites and the application of natural products for parasite control in aquaculture. Additionally, his research focuses on jellyfish biodiversity, harmful jellyfish toxins, and the potential of jellyfish collagen in cosmetics.
Currently, he is engaged in a marine science and technology project utilizing artificial intelligence in biological imaging. His significant contributions to research and innovation have been recognized with multiple awards and gold medals from UMS.
Dr. Venmathi Maran has authored over 100 research articles, 10 book chapters, and has edited three books published by Springer and UMS Press. As the principal investigator of several research projects, including an international project on marine biodiversity, he plays a key role in advancing marine research.
Additionally, he serves as an Academic Editor for PeerJ (Q1), International Journal of Microbiology (Wiley), and Diversity (MDPI) as a Guest Editor, along with several other scientific journals.
Olja Vidjak
Dr. Olja Vidjak's educational background includes an MSc in Oceanology (1998) and a PhD in Biology (2004) from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She is a researcher at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries (Croatia), with primary specialization in the ecology and taxonomy of marine zooplankton. Her research interests include the spread and management of aquatic non-native species and marine biodiversity conservation.
Martha Vives
Full professor, Biological Sciences Department, Los Andes University. Vice dean for Research Affairs, School of Sciences. Past coordinator for the Microbiology program.
Jianjun Wang
Dr. Jianjun Wang is Professor of Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He studies microbial biogeography and global change. His main topics are related to the questions on how microbial diversity and community composition varied within Earth’s surface and subsurface, especially aquatic environments. He is using self-obtained large microbial data sets, in-situ experiments, as well as modeling methods to achieve these answers.