Movement
characterizes our world in a fundamental and comprehensive manner, encompassing
living and non-living entities that move in numerous ways. In particular, the
movement of living organisms is incredibly frequent and diverse, taking a
central part in many ecological and evolutionary processes that have shaped
life on Earth. It is therefore not surprising that the scientific study of the
movement of organisms is so rich, insightful and long-lasting [1–3]. In light
of this favourable background, recent advances in quantifying and analyzing
movements of organisms, their environments and internal (e.g. physiological and
neurological) states [4–8], have led to a drastic upsurge of research on how,
why, when and where animals, plants and microorganisms move. Over the last
decade this surge has been interlinked with a quest to develop a general theory
of organismal movements by means of new conceptual, methodological and
empirical frameworks facilitating the desired integration [9–14]. This emerging
transdisciplinary scientific paradigm was termed “movement ecology”,
emphasizing the need to understand the movement of living organisms of all
kinds in the context of their internal states, traits, constraints, and
interactions among themselves and with the environment [9]. Progress in science
is best achieved by a dynamic dialogue between new ideas and tools [15], often
facilitated by transdisciplinary efforts putting together concepts, skills and
tools developed in different disciplines to advance a new way of thinking on
complex challenges [16] such as the conceptual integration of highly diverse
movement phenomena. The movement ecology framework was proposed in this spirit
[9], and the Movement Ecology journal is envisioned to endorse and bolster such
a transdisciplinary approach. We thus invite innovative contributions to
movement ecology research from a diverse range of specialists – ranging from
ecologists and other biologists through mathematicians and physicists to
computer scientists and engineers – and especially from transdisciplinary
teams. Our transdisciplinary approach is reflected in the breath of the topics
we wish to cover (e.g., cognitive sciences, climate change, epidemiology,
population genetics, evolutionary biology and theoretical ecology; for more
details, see the journal’s webpage), without limitation to specific
methodologies, ecosystems, geographical regions, taxonomic groups, life forms
or movement phenomena. It is also manifested in the breath and excellence of
our editorial board, combining leading scientists from 18 different countries
with diverse expertise and at different stages of their academic career. The
common motivation of our team is to contribute to our understanding of the patterns,
mechanisms, causes and consequences of movements of organisms. Accordingly, we
invite manuscripts describing innovative insights into important questions in
movement ecology research, and call our authors to put their findings within
the broad perspective of movement ecology research. Efficient communication is
a crucial necessity for ambitious transdisciplinary efforts to succeed [16].
Indeed, movement ecology research has recently been advanced by many workshops
and meetings putting together scholars of different expertise, as well as
research centres such as CAnMove (Lund University, Sweden) and Minerva Center
for Movement Ecology (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), and large
projects such as ICARUS and MoveBank of Max Planck Institute of Ornithology
(Germany). We consider the establishment of the new Movement Ecology journal an
important milestone within a series of stepping-stones facilitating the
progress towards refining the key concepts and building blocks of movement
ecology research. The open-access publication policy of BioMed Central is
highly beneficial for this purpose, making all articles freely and universally
accessible online, fostering rigorous, constructive and efficient peer-review
process, rapid publication in a continuous mode immediately after acceptance,
archival in a number of freely accessible full text repositories, higher rates
of download and citations than equivalent subscription-based journals, and
hence higher visibility and scientific impact. A member of our editorial board
with relevant expertise is assigned to each submitted article, leading the
peer-review process all the way from the first assessment, through the
selection of reviewers to the evaluation of their reports, guiding the authors
on how to improve their manuscript towards publication of innovative and
important contributions in Movement Ecology. Authors are expected to carefully
prepare their manuscript to include an informative introduction to the
theoretical and empirical background, a clear definition of the research
questions, objectives and hypotheses, a sufficiently detailed description of
the methods allowing replication, and clear and concise illustrations of the
main results and (if relevant) their statistical significance. These should be followed
by a discussion summarizing the main findings, putting them in context of
previous findings and broader movement ecology concepts (e.g. comparison to
different organisms, different environments, different movement phenomena), as
well discussion of the main pros and cons of the research approach, with
concluding remarks on key implications and future research directions. We aim
for a rapid submission-to-first-decision cycle, and require proficient and
rapid handling from our reviewers, editors and editorial office. We invite
research articles (both theoretical and empirical), reviews and perspectives of
major and emerging topics, meeting reports, and database and methodological
articles—all should focus on the movement of the whole organism, across any
spatial and temporal scale, organizational level and theme. We anticipate a
growing flow of independent submissions, alongside solicited reviews and
perspectives, and Special Features resulting from designated workshops and
symposia. Articles published at the launch of Movement Ecology provide a
flavour of the broad scope designated for this journal. Lyons et al. [17]
developed an algorithm incorporating time in movement-based home range
estimation methods, and illustrated its application for springbok dataset from
Namibia. Dodge et al. [18] introduced the Env-DATA path annotation system of
MoveBank enabling researchers to couple tracks of any movement type with data
on a plethora of environmental variables matching each individual track. This
long-desired tool would facilitate a comprehensive assessment of the basic
question how movements are shaped by the environment. Safi et al. [19] used
this environmental path annotation of MoveBank to assess wind effects on flight
of migrating birds of 8 waterfowl species, highlighting the requirement to
quantify bird and wind conditions in short time intervals due to
scale-dependent biases. Other manuscripts submitted to date to Movement Ecology
that have not yet completed a full peer-review process have applied a variety
of research approaches to investigate many other aspects of movement ecology
across diverse taxonomic groups, spatiotemporal scales and levels of
organization. Finally, on behalf of the whole journal team – the publisher, the
editors-in-chief, the editorial board members and the editorial office – we
would like to reemphasize our commitment to provide a proficient, constructive
and efficient peer-review and editorial work, to accomplish the important
milestone of making Movement Ecology the primary forum for innovative and
influential publications to better understand the movements of organisms. Yet,
having a successful journal is a community goal, requiring, first and foremost,
that you – the large and rapidly increasing community of movement ecologists –
will indeed prioritize submission of your most innovative and exciting movement
ecology work to this new journal.