Issue 5.10 is now online!
This month we include 4 freely available application articles:
– agTrend: A Bayesian approach for estimating trends of aggregated abundance
– MEMGENE: Spatial pattern detection in genetic distance data
– mizer: an R package for multispecies, trait-based and community size spectrum ecological modelling
– PyRate: a new program to estimate speciation and extinction rates from – incomplete fossil data
We also have 2 interesting open access papers, ‘Statistics for citizen science: extracting signals of change from noisy ecological data‘ by Nick Isaac et al. and ‘Effects of phylogenetic reconstruction method on the robustness of species delimitation using single-locus data‘ by Cuong Tang et al.
The cover image of this issue shows research diver Marine Guenzo using a diver-operated stereo-video system (stereo-DOV) to survey coral reef fish in Palau, Micronesia. Although SCUBA is commonly used to survey fish populations, the accompanying article, ‘Silent fish surveys: bubble-free diving highlights inaccuracies associated with SCUBA-based surveys in heavily fished areas‘, highlights that the presence of bubbles produced by SCUBA can bias counts of reef fish. Using stereo-video techniques to survey the fish community inside and outside areas protected from fishing, the authors compared conventional SCUBA diving to a more advanced diving technique, the closed-circuit rebreather (CCR) which does not produce bubbles. The results show that especially in areas where reef fish are heavily targeted by fishing, SCUBA can underestimate the numbers of large fish, thereby overestimating the effectiveness of marine protected areas. Silent bubble-free diving is recommended to minimise the behaviour of reef fish towards divers.
Photo © Steve Lindfield.
To keep up to date with Methods newest content, have a look at our Accepted Articles and Early View articles, which will be included in forthcoming issues.
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