BMC Ecology and Evolution is calling for submissions on the paleoecology of extinct species.

Paleoecological studies offer captivating glimpses into long-lost worlds. With recent technological advances, including new imaging and DNA sequencing techniques, researchers are providing an increasingly clear window to the past. BMC Ecology and Evolution has launched this Collection to attract papers from this multidisciplinary field. The Collection welcomes research:

• using micro- and macro fossils to study the paleoecology and palaeontology,
• on the interactions between extinct organisms and their environment over a variety of spatial and temporal scales,
• using histology, imaging, chemical analysis, biomechanical modeling techniques and other relevant approaches to unlock information within fossils,
• using sedimentary ancient DNA (e.g. metabarcoding, metagenomics, and target genome capturing) to gain paleoenvironmental/ paleoecological insights
• applying niche modeling, species distribution modeling, and spatiotemporal modeling to investigate the distribution ranges and population sizes for extinct species.

Meet the Guest Editors

Michael Pittman: School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China.

Dr. Pittman is an integrative, multi-disciplinary palaeobiologist at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He earned a BSc in Geology, MSc in Geoscience and PhD in Palaeobiology from UCL. His research in dinosaur palaeobiology covers anatomy, systematics, biomechanics, ecology and macroevolution. It is focused on the dinosaur-to-bird transition, including flight origins. He studies exceptionally preserved fossils with multiple methods, including laser-stimulated fluorescence. In addition to the journal’s Editorial Board, Dr. Pittman is an Associate Editor of the systematics journal Cladistics and edited the special volume Pennaraptoran Theropod Dinosaurs: Past Progress and New Frontiers.

Yucheng Wang: Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Dr. Wang is an evolutionary bio-ecologist interested in applying ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) to understand how ecosystems and species respond and adapt to variable climate, environment, and human activities. His work involves using and developing eDNA metabarcoding, ddPCR, shotgun metagenomics, and target genome capturing, both in wet-lab and bioinformatics, to reconstruct the ecological evolutions, successions, and interactions, as well as the domesticating and evolutionary histories of key species. In addition to his work at the University of Cambridge, he is also a guest researcher at ALPHA, State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System Science, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITPCAS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, China and associated with the Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Submission guidelines

This Collection will consider research, database and software articles. Review articles will be considered at the discretion of the Journal’s Editor. If you would like to submit a review article, please first email Jennifer Harman <jennifer.harman@springernature.com> - the Editor of BMC Ecology and Evolution. Please note that unsolicited reviews will not be considered as per our submission guidelines.

Datasets, descriptions and short reports relevant to the Collection will be considered by BMC Research Notes as data or research notes. This type of content will be published in BMC Research Notes and included in the final collection.

Articles under consideration for publication within the collection will be assessed according to the standard BMC Ecology and Evolution editorial criteria and will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process overseen by Guest Editors Dr Michael Pittman (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China) and Dr Yucheng Wang (The University of Cambridge, UK).

Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Paleoecology of extinct species" from the dropdown menu.

If accepted for publication, an article processing charge applies. Please click here to find out about our standard waiver policy.

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 6 December 2023