With an ever-growing number of journals, the growing trend of early on-line publication, and the appearance of new research and commentaries in blogs and other informal sources, keeping up on all the latest research is one of the biggest challenges to ecologists and evolutionary biologists. Fortunately, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a new tool that makes this task easier than ever.  By subscribing to RSS feeds from your favorite journals and blogs, you will have the latest research delivered directly to you, the moment it is released.  The first step to using RSS is to get an aggregator.  There are lots of aggregator options, but I use the on-line application Google Reader (requires sign-up) and the Apple OSX application NetNewsWire (which will import subscriptions through a Google Reader account).  Once you have an aggregator, you simply sign up for the RSS feeds of your choosing.  Feeds that I subscribe to include: Evolution (see “Sign up for RSS feed” link to left of screen), American Naturalist (see RSS link at right of screen),  Systematic Biology (scroll down for options), Molecular Ecology (see “Sign up for RSS feed” link to left of screen),  and Molecular Phylognetics and Evolution (see “New Article Feed”).  And, of course, don’t forget about the feeds for your favorite blogs like dechronization, Tree of Life, EEB and Flow, and iPhylo.  How you subscribe will depend on the aggregator you’re using, but in most cases you just need to copy the link provided on the pages linked above and paste it into the dialogue box after reguesting to add a subscription in your aggregator.  Make Google Reader (or iGoogle) your homepage and you’ll soon be seeing the newest stuff everytime you hop onto the web!