Expression of Concern: Trait variation across biological scales shapes community structure and ecosystem function.

Abstract

Start, D. and Gilbert, B., Trait variation across biological scales shapes community structure and ecosystem function. Ecology, 2019, (https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2769). This Expression of Concern is for the above article, published online on 3 September 2019 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and has been published by agreement between the journal Editor in Chief, Ecological Society of America, Benjamin Gilbert and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The decision to express concern involves Figure S10, for which the Editor in Chief and co-author have been unable to reconcile the description in the Methods (which suggests a integer response variable for the number of Daphnia eaten in an individual trial) with the decimal values that appear in this supplemental figure. We therefore cannot be certain in the finding reported in the first paragraph of the Results of a concave-down relationship between Daphnia consumption and Epitheca activity. Our attempts to seek clarification from the author (Dr. Start) went unanswered.