Methods in Ecology and Evolution is delighted to announce 13 new Associate Editors who have joined the Editorial Board following our latest open call across all seven BES journals

Dr Timo Adam
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

My research focuses on the development, implementation, and application of innovative statistical methods for stochastic processes, particularly hidden Markov models and their flexible extensions. I am particularly interested in statistical models of animal movement that help to extract novel ecological insights from various types of tracking data that are now available, such as positional, dive, and acceleration data. My recent work is concerned with joint modelling of multi-scale data, such as low-resolution positional data and high-resolution acceleration data.

Dr Abebe Ali
Wollo University, Ethiopia

Abebe Mohammed Ali studied forestry at Wondo Genet College of Forestry, Debub University, Ethiopia. He received the B.Sc. degree in 2002, the M.Sc. degree in geo-information science Geo-Information Science from Wageningen University, in 2006, and received Ph.D. degree on 06 October in 2016 from the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente. He has been workeding as Lecturer and assistance professor Assistant Professor in the Geography and environmental studies Environmental Studies department, Wollo University, Dessie, Ethiopia, since 2009. He has also worked for three years (June 2017 to April 2020) as postdoc researcher for the globdiversity GlobDiversity project within the Department of Natural Resources, University of Twente (Faculty ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands. His research interests include mapping and modeling biochemical and biophysical properties of vegetation to determine biodiversity variables with the use of statistical and radiative transfer models from hyperspectral and multispectral remote sensing data. He has good experience on the use of remote sensing lab and field instruments in plant functional traits mapping and monitoring.

Dr Robin Boyd
Uk Centre of Ecology and Hydrology , UK

I am a quantitative ecologist and methodologist with a fascination for how things work. Most of my recent work has been on methods to assess, mitigate and communicate biases in biodiversity data. I also have experience developing and applying a range of ecological models. Examples include causal models (path analysis and directed acyclic graphs), individual-based models, traditional species distribution models and extensions such as occupancy-detection models. Like many people, I am becoming very interested in AI

Dr Gustavo Burin
Natural History Museum, UK

I am an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in understanding the mechanisms behind species and phenotipyc diversity in deep time. More specifically, I aim to unravel the biotic and abiotic factors that are behind the diversity patterns we see in different moments in time, working with different groups and systems that allow me to answer particular questions. Lastly, I am also interested in how processes in macroevolutionary timescales shaped the structure of ecological networks. To accomplish that, I use molecular phylogenies, the fossil record, trait data for both extant and extinct species, ecological network data and species distribution information. I have broad experience with phylogenetic comparative methods and simulations, and more recently delved into the world of fossils. I am an enthusiast and promoter of open and reproducible science

Dr Nicholas Clark
University of Queensland, Australia

An ecologist by training, I am broadly interested in exploring new ways to (1) understand how ecological communities are formed and (2) predict how they will change over time. My current research focuses on developing computational tools and adapting techniques from statistical forecasting to study how organisms and ecosystems respond to change. This work is being applied to investigate natural dynamics for a range of ecological systems.

Dr Si-Chong Chen
Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

I work on plant regeneration and biotic interaction at the macroecological scale. My research aims to contribute to our understanding of ecology, especially seed ecology, in three key ways: 1) by narrowing the gaps between data, intuitive ideas and theories; 2) by enhancing the integration of replicated studies at a macro-ecological scale; and 3) by extending understanding from a local scale and a small number of species to a global scale spanning many biomes and taxonomic groups. I am particularly interested in the practical techniques and analytical tools involved in any plant reproductive stages from flowering to germinating, such as seed dispersal, seed bank, seed rain, dormancy and seedling establishment.

Dr Maria Grazia Pennino
Instituto Espanol de Oceanografia, Spain

My research focuses on understanding patterns and processes that characterize ecosystems and, in particular, changes of, and threats to, biodiversity, natural resources and ecosystem services. In doing so I develop statistical and mechanistic models for spatial ecology, combining techniques from Bayesian analysis and population modeling.  I am particularly interested in using novel statistical methods and heterogeneous sources of data with the final aim of provide useful tools for the conservation and management of resources and ecosystems.

Dr Fernando Gonzalez Taboada
Univesity of Oviedo, Spain

I am a biological oceanographer interested in analyzing and predicting the impact of global change in marine ecosystems, from plankton dynamics to fisheries management and biodiversity conservation. To do that, I develop methods to analyze remote sensing data and the output of Earth system models. My approach builds on statistical and mechanistic modeling to analyze changes in the distribution, abundance and phenology of species and communities, combining techniques from Bayesian analysis and population modeling.

Dr Jiangshan Lai
Nanjing Forestry University, China

I am a quantitative ecologist in China. My main research interest is to develop new statistical methods to solve ecological problems, with a strong emphasis on multivariate statistics. I am also actively developing R packages for ecological data analysis, such as rdacca.hp and glmm.hp, which are used to obtain a individual R2 of a explanatory variables for canonical analysis and GLMM. These packages have been widely used in ecological research. My background is in forest community ecology. I am also interested in ecological statistics education, and have organized and led many workshops on statistical ecology with R in China, with tens of thousands of participants.

Dr Xingfeng Si
East China Normal University, China

I am a community ecologist and biogeographer interested in wildlife monitoring and conservation, especially for birds. I use emerging techniques of camera trapping and passive acoustic monitoring to sample animal diversity and plant-frugivore networks in terrestrial environments. I also use statistical methods, such as Bayesian occupancy models, to account for imperfect detection in estimating biodiversity. To do so, my lab aims to understand community assembly of island faunas and biodiversity changes in natural and human-dominated landscapes.

Dr Garrett Street
Mississippi State University, USA

I am a quantitative ecologist specializing in the movements of animals in complex landscapes, emergent space use from movement and behavior, and scale dependency in ecological phenomena. I am generally interested in the mechanisms linking fine-scale behavioural processes (e.g., foraging, thermoregulation) to broad-scale patterns in space use, density, and population dynamics. I use a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches to address questions relating to individual fitness, cognition, movement rates, habitat preference, and biomass production across multiple taxa, natural and agricultural landscapes, and spatiotemporal scales. I am especially interested in development of novel mathematical and statistical solutions and clever applications of existing methods to complex ecological data, and the philosophy and practice of data analysis and analytical narratives.

Dr Rania  Siam
The American University in Cairo, Egypt 

I am a microbial ecologist interested in microbial communities residing in extreme habitats (extremophiles). I am interested in the molecular basis behind the evolution of such microorganisms in harsh physicochemical conditions. Additionally, my lab utilizes such extremophiles in the discovery of novel bioactive compounds, with biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications.

Dr Eric Ward
NOAA Fisheries and the University of Washington, USA

I am broadly interested in the statistical analyses of time series and spatial processes to inform decision making (especially Bayesian methods). I have the privilege of being able to work on all sorts of interesting datasets; these are generally focused on problems in the marine or freshwater realms and range from data on climate responses to data on top predators (whales, humans) and everything in between. Recently I’ve been interested in the development of open source software to provide user-friendly tools to practitioners. 

Dr Ai-bing Zhang
Capital Normal University, China

My research is largely related to the ecology and evolution, of some insects, for instance, moths and butterflies. I’m especially interested in methodology of ecology, including modelling of the complex ecosystem and their diversity, and developing of computer programs/algorithms to simulate the evolution of community and ecosystem. I do believe ecology research provides excellent opportunities for biologists or ecologists to build mathematic models to simulate dynamics of communities or ecosystem. Instead of building commonly used statistical models, constructing more mechanism models of communities or ecosystems will become much important in the future of ecological studies.

Find out more about the expertise behind Methods in Ecology and Evolution by visiting our Editorial Board page.