Many congratulations to Professor Tim Clutton-Brock whose book Mammal Societies  has been awarded the 2017 Marsh Book of the Year prize by the British Ecological Society.

The Marsh Book of the Year Award acknowledges the important role that books have on ecology and its development. This prize is funded by the Marsh Christian Trust and is awarded to the book published in the last two years that has had the greatest influence on ecology or its application.

Mammal Societies provides the first synthesis of research on social behaviour, integrating comparative, observational and experimental studies within the explanatory framework of evolutionary and ecological theory.  The book shows how the distribution of resources and the foraging strategies of individuals affect the size of groups; how they interact with contrasts in reproductive behaviour and contrasts in breeding systems to affect patterns of kinship; and how contrasts in kinship affect social relationships, competitive interactions and cooperation.  It explains how similar principles apply in contrasting taxonomic groups, sometimes generating similar correlations between ecology and behaviour but sometimes interacting with contrasts in demographic parameters to generate contrasting patterns.  Read more.

The winners of the 2017 BES awards will be presented with their prizes during a ceremony held at our annual meeting in Ghent, Brussels next month, which will bring together 1,500 ecologists from around 60 countries to discuss the latest advances in ecological research across the whole discipline.