In this blog post, we hear from Associate Editor Eric Riddell, Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina.
Why did you choose to study your particular research area?
I often say that ecophysiology chose me rather than the other way around. I have always been drawn to questions about how organisms respond to environmental change, and answering those questions requires studying how organisms function in their environment.
Ecophysiology is exciting to me because it demands an integrative perspective — linking processes across scales, from genes and tissues to whole organisms, populations, and their ecology and evolution. This integrative approach is essential if we want to understand one of the central questions in ecology today: what are the mechanisms that determine species’ geographic ranges, and how do these mechanisms influence population responses to environmental change.
Correlative approaches can give us a good starting point for predictions, but to improve them, we need to connect ecological patterns to organismal processes like physiology and behaviour. I find it particularly interesting to think about how evolutionary constraints and trade-offs shape phenotypic diversity in traits that influence range boundaries, because these constraints often set limits on how species can adapt.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face in this research?
One of the challenges of pursuing these questions is that they are inherently interdisciplinary, requiring me to move across fields and tools and to learn from different perspectives. But that challenge is also what I enjoy most: ecophysiology gives me the freedom to draw from physiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology to develop a more mechanistic understanding of the niche and to improve forecasts of how biodiversity will respond to global change. Looking forward, I see this integrative approach as essential for linking individual physiology to large-scale ecological and evolutionary outcomes.
Why Functional Ecology and how do you find being an Associate Editor?
I have really enjoyed my time as an Associate Editor with Functional Ecology. One of the greatest benefits is the opportunity to see the entire life cycle of a manuscript as it moves through the review process — from initial submission, through peer review, to final decision. It’s fascinating to see how different reviewers and editors think about a study and how critical it is for authors to articulate a clear and broadly important message.
I also enjoy seeing science “in real time,” as researchers work to publish new ideas or revisit long-standing questions, which makes the role both exciting and intellectually rewarding. Serving as an editor has also taught me a great deal about how to successfully publish my own work and has helped me guide my graduate students in understanding the process from the other side of manuscript submission.
Any common mistakes you see? How might these be addressed?
One of the most common pitfalls I see is that authors sometimes fail to place their experiments into a broader context that would engage the wide readership of ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Because Functional Ecology is an integrative journal, it is essential that submissions connect mechanistic findings to fundamental ecological or evolutionary questions. This emphasis on integration is precisely what makes the journal unique and impactful, both for my own research and in the field more broadly. There are few journals that so directly encourage authors to link physiology, behavior, and other mechanisms to larger-scale ecological processes, and that focus is what gives Functional Ecology such a special place in the discipline.
What do you think are some of the biggest challenges in the field of ecology?
One of the biggest challenges in ecology is the sheer complexity of the questions we are trying to answer and the breadth of expertise required to address them. Understanding ecological processes often means grappling with interactions that span physiology, behaviour, evolution, and environmental context. For example, identifying the mechanisms that shape geographic ranges demands insights across multiple fields, and it can take years for students to piece together how these components fit. This can make it difficult for early-career researchers to engage with the broader, more fundamental questions in ecology, because it takes time to build the interdisciplinary perspective that the field requires. Many scientists, myself included, dedicate our careers to navigating these intersections, and it is both the challenge and the beauty of ecology that its questions rarely fit neatly within a single discipline.
Advice for early career researchers
The best advice I would give to early career researchers is to engage with the big questions as early as possible. Learn to recognize them, design experiments or observational studies that speak to them, and seek out conversations that challenge your thinking. Be willing to be vulnerable with your ideas and open to feedback, knowing that your questions and approaches will evolve over time. Rejection and critique are not failures but essential steps toward making a meaningful contribution. I often remind myself and my students that science works through us, not by us. We are cogs in a much larger machine, one that advances through the sharing and reshaping of ideas. If you can begin to see your work as part of this broader process and as something distinct from yourself, it becomes easier to let your ideas grow and adapt in response to new insights and perspectives.
