Chemoecology

Edited by:
  • Désiré Dalose &
  • Jacques M. Pasteels
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Frogs whose skin secretions are used to make poison arrows; chemical battles for niches on coral reefs; arms races by plants against herbivores and each other; the use of pheromones to attract mates — these are all aspects of chemical ecology, an important topic that is coming of age.

Researchers now have a much greater understanding than in the past of the importance of chemically mediated interactions, including those of taste and smell, throughout the field of biology. This has happened in part because techniques of chemical analysis and synthesis have improved, but it is also because more biologists are now linking chemical ecology to interesting and more fundamental behavioural, ecological and evolutionary interactions.

Chemoecology aims to cover these interactions. It was relaunched in 1998, with new editors but an unbroken series of volume numbers. The first new volume covers a wide range of organisms, with a good balance between those of land and sea, but there is a preponderance of insects and plants (only one vertebrate paper out of 25). I imagine that this will change over future issues. The journal publishes a relatively small number of pages (200) per year, compared with about 10 times more than this published by the other main journal in the field, Journal of Chemical Ecology.

There is room for two journals in the field as it continues to grow. Chemoecology could have its greatest influence if it can increase the number of mini-reviews it carries, particularly if these integrate studies of diverse taxa, vertebrate and invertebrate and if, as the editors intend, the journal becomes a forum for current debates.

Chemically mediated systems can offer unique opportunities for researchers to investigate hot evolutionary topics, for example in sexual selection and the evolution of mate communication.

Paradoxically, as chemical ecology becomes more mainstream, the challenge for journals like Chemoecology is to attract authors from higher-impact evolution and ecology journals. An important factor will be the likelihood of articles being found by online electronic searches. Chemoecology appears in many abstracting services but is not yet in Current Contents, so in this area it still has some way to go.