Welcome to all the Methods editors, authors, reviewers and readers attending the British Ecological Society’s Festival of Ecology – the online version of our annual conference.

With a huge number of amazing talks, posters and workshops to choose from, it may be difficult to choose what to attend this week. Below is a list of conference content by our editors and authors that may be of interest to you.

If you can’t make a live session, the plenary lectures and thematic sessions are being recorded and videos will be uploaded to the conference platform the following day.

Don’t forget that presenter networking sessions run twice per day and these give you an opportunity to ask live questions while presenters of the on-demand talks and posters are online.

Follow #BES2020 and @MethodsEvolEcol for the latest updates!

Live Thematic Sessions

New methods for studying evolution in ecological time

Thursday 9.00-10.30 AM

Join us at this Methods in Ecology and Evolution-sponsored thematic session, chaired by our Senior Editor Rob Freckleton, and featuring a talk by our Associate Editor Susan Johnston.

Changes in climate and land use are driving habitat changes at unprecedented rates, often leading to extinction or distribution changes of species, but also driving fast evolutionary change. Studying evolution on these time scales requires new techniques such as next-generation sequencing, remote sensing or eDNA analyses; combined with statistical methods the resulting large datasets can be integrated with ecological information to make forecasts about the fates of individuals or populations.

This session will focus on a range of methodologies and how they are facilitating new research approaches at the interface between ecology and evolution.

Workshops

Analysing multivariate ecological data with Generalized Linear Latent Variable Models: 2-part workshop

Part 1: Wednesday 14.00-15.30, Part 2: Thursday 14.00-15.30

Our Senior Editor Bob O’Hara is co-running this workshop on analysing multivariate ecological data.

Participants in this workshop will learn how to explore co-occurrence patterns in species distributions, using a modeling framework that combines the best of ordination methods and Joint Species Distribution Models. This framework, Generalized Linear Latent Variable Models (GLLVMs), unifies classical community and species distribution modelling. On both days, the workshop will cover basic theory around GLLVMs, and provide hands-on experience with examples and exercises using the R-package “gllvm”.

Thematic Session talks by our Associate Editors

Soundscapes as a tool to monitor disturbance impacts in the Anthropocene

Ecoacoustics monitoring of anthropogenic stressors in freshwater environments
Camille Desjonquères,University of St Andrews

Automated habitat quality prediction and unsupervised anomaly detection using learned acoustic features
Sarab Sethi, Imperial College London

Capturing ecology across scales using new technology

Promises and pitfalls of conservation technology
Lian Pin Koh, National University of Singapore

On-Demand Talks by our Associate Editors

Invasive species

Chasing invasive species-affected forest beta-diversity: Approaches based on multi-scale, multi-temporal remote sensing
Hooman Latifi, K.N.Toosi University of Technology

Macroecology and Biogeography

The importance of considering ecological memory when using data from continental scale observatories
Sydne Record, Bryn Mawr College

Community Ecology

Using DNA metabarcoding to investigate diet and niche partitioning in the native European otter (Lutra lutra) and invasive American mink (Neovison vison)
Lynsey Harper, Liverpool John Moores University

Asymmetric competition influences responses to environmental fluctuations
Aline Lee, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Application of Antifreeze for Nationwide Community-Based DNA Metabarcoding of Freshwater Macroinvertebrates
Chloe Robinson, University of Guelph

Population Ecology

Will the old outlive the storm? Generation time correlates with the response of herbaceous perennials to climate in temperate habitats
Aldo Compagnoni, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

Re-colonization of secondary habitats by locally extinct fauna
Miguel Acevedo, University of Florida


Conservation Science and Policy

Horizon Scan on emerging challenges and opportunities in community-based conservation
Jana McPherson, Calgary Zoo

On-Demand Posters from our Associate Editors

A big house in the country: Assessing the economic and biodiversity value of trees in the Harewood Estate parkland
Karen Bacon, National University of Ireland Galway

Effects of sulphur dioxide exposure on leaf mass per area of selected gymnosperms and implications for interpreting the plant fossil record
Karen Bacon, National University of Ireland Galway

Trust your guts? Diet composition differences ofMus musculusgastrointestinal tract sections using metabarcoding
Raquel Vasconcelos, CIBIO-InBIO

Drivers of Crop Diversity in the Contiguous United States
Sarah Goslee, USDA-ARS