Category Archives: General

Managing Stress in Academia: Tools and Suggestions

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Post provided by Holly Langridge

Stress in academia is increasingly recognised, but knowing about an issue and solving it are very different things. ©Christopher Sweeney

Stress in academia is increasingly recognised, but knowing about an issue and solving it are very different things. ©Christopher Sweeney

Sometimes stress can be anticipated, avoided or mitigated. Other times, it sneaks up on you and sucker punches you in the face. A quick google search turns up loads of articles and op-eds on the topic – this, this and this are just three of the first examples I found. Stats abound on the negative effect it can have on students, staff and productivity. Mental health problems and stress in academia are increasingly recognised, but knowing about an issue and solving it are very different things.

My lab at the University of Manchester is fairly big and busy. Headed by the current BES president, and with over 30 people, and many millions of pounds in funding, it can be a stressful place. I am by no means an expert in stress, but I can tell you about my personal experiences and some of the ways that the University of Manchester helps staff and students deal with stress here. Continue reading →

New Associate Editor: Laura Graham

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Today, we are pleased to announce the latest new member of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editor Board. Laura Graham joins us from the University of Southampton, UK as an Applications Editor. You can find out a little more about her below.

Laura Graham

“I’m a quantitative ecologist interested in how anthropogenic changes such as climate change and habitat loss affect global ecosystems, and how this in turn affects human well-being. I develop computational methods for spatial ecology to facilitate the reproducible analysis of social-ecological systems and ecosystem services. I’m interested in using novel statistical methods and heterogeneous sources of data to answer applied and theoretical questions.” Continue reading →

Meet the Editor: Bob O’Hara

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We’re just days aware from the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting. That means it’s time to meet our fourth Senior Editor: Bob O’Hara

What can you tell us about the first paper you published?
I got the sub-species name wrong in the first sentence of the introduction. This is why it’s good I’m not a taxonomist.

Who inspired you most as a student?
I’m not sure. I guess the writers of all those wonderful 70s Am. Nat. papers, when they did theory without the use of computers.

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?
The ability to be organised. Also hte ability to type without typos.

Continue reading →

Meet the Editor: Rob Freckleton

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Today, we’re finding out a bit more about Methods in Ecology and Evolution‘s Executive (and founding) Editor, Rob Freckleton.

Please share a [funny] story about a paper you had rejected.
I had a paper rejected (from a journal that will remain nameless) – so I submitted it to Functional Ecology… and it won the Haldane prize for best paper by a young author. I had another that was rejected from that journal and subsequently published in Functional Ecology that directly got me a job! Another amusing anecdote from around the same time: a third paper was not rejected, but I was accidentally forwarded some correspondence from the Editor with some (very non-flattering) opinions of me & my co-author… that paper went on to get >300 citations; and the Editor apologised fulsomely and unreservedly, to their great credit. And I’m not specifically knocking the journal in question: I just send a lot of papers there so have a lot of stories!
Continue reading →

Meet the Editor: Lee Hsiang Liow

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We’re meeting a second Senior Editor ahead of the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting today: Lee Hsiang Liow

What’s your favourite species and why?
Microporella rusti. It is a bryozoan species from New Zealand and is named after a good friend Seabourne Rust who is a Kiwi bryozoologist. Most marine bryozoans are really lovely, but this one is not just that, but a bit weird, because no one has yet seen any brood chambers in the hundreds of colonies we have examined (hey! where did the babies go?). And, by naming this species, I am forever linked with some of the best bryozoologists in the world (Emanuela Di Martino, Paul D Taylor and Dennis Gordon), who are also some of the people I admire most!
Continue reading →

Meet the Editor: Aaron Ellison

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The British Ecological Society Annual Meeting is fast approaching. Those of you joining us in Birmingham will have a chance to meet our Senior Editors. So, we thought that you might like to get to know them a little bit beforehand.

First up, we’re meeting our newest Senior Editor, Aaron Ellison.

What can you tell us about the first paper you published?
I published my first paper in 1983 (A naturally occurring developmental synergism between the cellular slime mold, Dictyostelium mucoroides and the fungus, Mucor hiemalis). It was based on summer undergraduate research in which I developed a new method to collect cellular slime molds (Dictyostelium spp.) in the field and then worked on culturing them in the lab during the following fall and spring. During this time, I discovered that one of the strains of D. mucoroides only made stalked fruiting bodies in the presence of a fungus, Mucor hiemalis. My first draft was terrible, but I learned a lot through the editing process with my undergraduate mentor, Leo Buss. Continue reading →

New Associate Editors

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Two new Associate Editors are joining the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Board today: Sydne Record (Bryn Mawr College, USA) and Hao Ye (University of Florida, USA). They have both joined on a three-year term and you can find out more about them below.

Sydne Record

“My research incorporates knowledge of field-based natural history, ecological theory, statistics, remote sensing, and computer modeling to ask how abiotic, biotic, and anthropogenic drivers structure biodiversity across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales. I am particularly interested in understanding how differences in scale (i.e., spatial, temporal, levels of biological organization) influence inferences about biological systems and contribute to uncertainty in models. I enjoy thinking about biota with different life histories.”

Sydne is currently working on understanding drivers of community assembly across several taxonomic groups including ants, trees, and small mammals. In many of these projects, she leverages spatially and/or temporally replicated data sets collected by networks of sites (e.g., the Long Term Ecological Research [LTER] and National Ecological Observatory Networks [NEON]).

Hao Ye

“I am a computational ecologist who dabbles in dynamical systems and software development. My research is centered around modeling change in ecosystems, using methods to infer the underlying processes that produce time series observations. Some specific areas that I work on include: population dynamics and forecasting, quantifying information flow and causality, and indicators of stability & resilience. I am also interested in reproducible research practices to both accelerate science and improve its accessibility.”

Hao Ye contributed to the BES Guide to Reproducible Code last year. He has recently been published in Regional Studies in Marine Science and Nature.

We’re delighted to welcome Hao Ye and Sydne to the Associate Editor Board and we look forward to working with them over the coming years.

New Associate Editor: Res Altwegg

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Today, we are pleased to be welcoming a new member of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editor Board. Res Altwegg joins us from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and you can find out a little more about him below.

Res Altwegg

“My interests lie at the intersection between ecology and statistics, particularly in demography, population ecology, species range dynamics and community ecology. My work addresses questions in conservation biology especially in relation to climate change. I’m particularly excited about the increasing availability of large data sets, such as those collected by citizen scientists, and the opportunities and challenges their analysis brings.”

Res is the founding director of the centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation at the University of Cape Town. The centre brings together ecologists and statisticians with the aim to address some of the most important questions in ecology and conservation using cutting-edge statistical methods. He has reviewed for Methods in Ecology and Evolution a number of times over the past few years and has had one article – ‘A general framework for animal density estimation from acoustic detections across a fixed microphone array‘ – published in the journal. Another of Res’ articles has recently been accepted for publication and will appear in an upcoming Special Feature.

We are thrilled to welcome Res as a new Associate Editor and we look forward to working with him on the journal.

New Associate Editors

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Today we are welcoming two new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution: Huijie Qiao (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) and Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez (Unidad Durango, Mexico and University of Southampton, UK). They have both joined on a three-year term and you can find out more about them below.

Huijie Qiao

Huijie Qiao

Huijie Qiao

“My research is focused broadly on macroecology. I work to clarify the theory and methodology behind ecological niche modelling and species distribution modelling. In this realm, I have worked to improve our understanding of those modelling algorithms that perform best under different model configuration scenarios, and examined how spatial bias affects model outcomes. I have also developed a simulation framework designed to understand the causal mechanisms that structure biodiversity on both long and short timescales in a virtual world.”

Huijie had an article published in last December’s issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution. In ‘Using data from related species to overcome spatial sampling bias and associated limitations in ecological niche modelling‘ the authors assess how useful it is to integrate occurrence data for closely related species with varying degrees of niche overlap into Ecological niche models of focal species. In recent years, Huijie has also had articles published in Global Ecology and Biogeography, American Naturalist and Ecography.

Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez

Veronica Zamora Gutierrez

Veronica Zamora Gutierrez

“I am an ecologist and my research interests range from mammal´s conservation, bioacoustics and species interactions to ecosystem services in both natural areas and human-dominated landscapes like cities and agroecosistems. At present, my work focuses mainly on bats to answer question related to their importance as pollinators and suppressors of insects’ population, their echolocation behaviour and how global change is and might affect them. Deepening our understanding of these questions is crucial for developing effective conservation strategies in this anthropozoic era.”

In 2016, Veronica was the lead author on ‘Acoustic identification of Mexican bats based on taxonomic and ecological constraints on call design‘ which was published in the September issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution. The article collated a reference call library for bat species that occur in a megadiverse country (Mexico) and is now freely available. More recently, she has published articles on the effects of climate change on bats and the importance of vertebrate pollinators.

We’re delighted to welcome Huijie and Veronica to the Associate Editor Board and we look forward to working with them over the coming years.

Balance: Time for Your Life and Your Career

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Post Provided by Stacy De Ruiter

There’s an Impostor Behind this Post

The premise of this post is that it might provide some useful advice on how to achieve a tenable work-life balance and find a satisfying, successful career in science.

©Paul VanDerWerf

I’m writing this post, but there is no way that I would hold myself up as an example of success. I have a job that’s a great fit for me, but there was probably no-one else who wanted it, and there are so many others with more prestigious and high-profile jobs. I sometimes manage to divide my time well between my family and my work goals, but I actually feel like I am shortchanging both of them, basically all the time. And how long ago was the last time I got enough sleep, enough exercise, enough personal time? I often feel like someday very soon everyone is going to realise that I really don’t have it all together.

But here’s the thing: almost all the successful, self-aware people I know feel this way, at least some of the time. Impostor syndrome seems to be incredibly common, and I think at least partly it grows out of a genuine awareness of the privilege and luck that helped pave the way to your achievements. Impostor syndrome that interferes with your mental health or limits your potential is clearly unhealthy, and the part where you refuse to believe in your own competence must go immediately. But if it can peacefully coexist with confidence in your own abilities and healthy ambition, it might even be a good thing (or at least, an honest thing). Continue reading →