Over the past year, Population Ecology has continued to serve as an international platform for disseminating high-quality research that advances population ecology across a wide range of ecological systems. The journal has benefited from steady submissions across diverse geographic regions and research fields, reflecting the broad and evolving scope of population ecology. At the same time, several developments within the editorial team underscore our ongoing commitment to maintaining rigorous editorial standards while fostering a diverse and inclusive scientific community that supports both methodological advances and applied ecological research. Looking ahead, Population Ecology aims to further enhance its appeal and impact by actively promoting the organization of special features. To date, many special features have been developed primarily by organizers of symposia at the annual meetings of the Society of Population Ecology in Japan. While this approach has produced numerous high-quality collections, we plan to broaden the framework for proposing special features. In the future, we plan to invite proposals not only from symposium organizers but also from the wider research community. To facilitate this process, we will develop dedicated webpages and provide clear guidelines to encourage the submission of innovative and timely proposals. Through these efforts, we hope to attract a broader range of topics and perspectives, thereby strengthening the role of Population Ecology as an engaging and influential journal for population ecologists worldwide. We would like to acknowledge the recent changes to the editorial team over the past year. Dr. Dorothee Ehrich (UiT—The Arctic University of Norway) has concluded her service as a Handling Editor. We sincerely appreciate Dr. Ehrich's dedicated service and significant contributions, which have played an important role in the continued development of the journal. At the same time, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Hugo Cayuela (University of Rennes) as a new Handling Editor. We anticipate that the participation of new members on the editorial board will further broaden the perspectives and enhance the diversity of Population Ecology. In 2025, Population Ecology published a special feature entitled Ecological Perspectives of Pedigree Reconstruction with Genome-wide Data, organized by Tetsuya Akita and Jinliang Wang (Akita and Wang 2025). This feature included three papers, which were handled by Dr. Shunsuke Utsumi as Associate Editor. This special feature highlights recent advances in using genome-wide genetic markers for ecological inference in wild populations. Rapid developments in genotyping technologies have made it possible to reconstruct pedigrees and identify close-kin relationships with unprecedented resolution, even in large or complex populations. Kinship information provides a powerful link between genetic data and key ecological processes, including reproductive success, effective population size, dispersal, and population dynamics. The articles in this special feature span a wide range of approaches, from simulation-based evaluations of kinship-derived estimators of effective population size (Wang 2025) to empirical applications in freshwater fishes focusing on reproductive success and pedigree reconstruction (Mizuno et al. 2025; Noda et al. 2025), as well as a marine application using close-kin mark–recapture data for stock assessment (Tsukahara et al. 2025). Together, these studies demonstrate how genome-wide SNP data can be used not only to improve the accuracy of kinship inference but also to address practical ecological and management questions. By integrating methodological developments with real-world applications, this special feature illustrates the growing potential of pedigree-based approaches to advance population ecology. We hope that the studies presented here will stimulate further research on the ecological applications of genome-wide pedigree reconstruction. The journal's citation impact factor declined slightly, from 1.1 in 2023 to 1.0 in 2024. In 2024, Population Ecology received 86 manuscript submissions from authors in 30 countries. Of these, 26.1% originated from Japan, whereas 22.8% came from other Asian countries. The overall acceptance rate was 27.3%, compared with 32.9% in 2023. We continue to encourage submissions across all article categories, including Original Articles, Reviews, Notes and Comments, Forum articles, Perspectives, and Special Features. Four photos and figures from articles published in 2025 and 2026 were selected for the cover pages of the 2026 issues of Population Ecology. The top image shows a female sika deer wearing ear tags and a radio transmitter, accompanied by a fawn. The authors found that sika deer maintained high densities through pronounced life-history plasticity, balancing trade-offs among survival, body growth, and reproduction in response to declining food quality. Survival monitoring of deer with radio collars and ear tags revealed that adult females had high survival rates despite poor habitat, thereby sustaining a high population density. Increased density led to reduced body mass across all age groups and dietary shifts; however, the mean body mass of adult females remained just above the threshold for a 50% pregnancy rate (Kaji et al. 2025). The second image presents stochastic nonlinear recruitment as a driver of sudden, yet deceptively periodic, spruce budworm outbreaks. If spruce budworm populations are eruptive, then the recruitment function R(N) should be nonlinear, with multiple equilibria. There is sufficient environmental and demographic stochasticity in nonlinear recruitment that the timing of eruptions is unpredictable (Cooke and Régnière 2025). The third image features an adult candy barrel cactus (Echinocactus platyacanthus) in a scrubland habitat in Querétaro, Mexico. This image represents part of a long-term demographic monitoring study, which integrates field data and population models to identify conservation strategies for this threatened species under changing environmental conditions (Vázquez-Díaz et al. 2026). The bottom image illustrates an integral projection model for Liatris helleri, with transitions among stages indicated via a heat map. The authors analyzed demographic data for this endangered Blue Ridge endemic species, recording survival, growth, flowering, and recruitment, and evaluating the effects of poaching, trampling, browsing, and fire as potential population drivers. Population size exhibited quasi-stable trends, with some population changes attributable to fire or browsing. The models suggested that Liatris helleri populations are likely to persist in the near term under current conditions. However, given population growth rates close to one and poor recruitment, any drivers that reduce survival pose a threat to this species (Quintana-Ascencio et al. 2025). The author declares no conflicts of interest.
Hiroyuki Yokomizo (Fri,) studied this question.