Category: General

Editor Profiles, General, Journal updates

Associate Editor Profile: LOUISE JOHNSON

Dr Louise Johnson, a population geneticist working on the evolution of genetic systems, has been an Associate Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution since October 2013. In that time she has handled a range of manuscripts falling within her areas of expertise (primarily molecular evolution, population genetics and genomes).

Louise Johnson
Dr Louise Johnson

Louise began her academic career with a degree in Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. She then moved south to complete her PhD on the evolution of mating systems in yeast at Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Austin Burt. Following her successful time in London, she took up post-doctorate positions at the University of Nottingham (working on transposable elements with Professor John Brookfield) and across the Atlantic at the University of Virginia (looking at genome defences with Professor Janis Antonovics and Professor Michael Hood). Louise returned to the UK in 2006 to take up an RCUK Fellowship at the University of Reading and has been there ever since.

As part of our series of Editor Profiles, we asked Louise to tell us about some of her current research:

There are three projects which I am currently working on that I would like to outline. I’ll be discussing the cancer project – or at least the story so far – at the Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5th Anniversary Symposium later this month. Do check out the programme, and I hope to see you there! The whole point of a methods journal is to help each other do our research as well and easily as possible, so there’s a built-in community spirit about MEE, which bodes well for a fun and useful meeting. Before I start I should also say that I’m lucky to have amazing collaborators at Reading and beyond: for the projects below, credit is particularly due to my colleagues Rob Jackson and Tiffany Taylor, who had a huge input, and to Mike Brockhurst at York. Continue reading “Associate Editor Profile: LOUISE JOHNSON”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson1 Comment
General, Meetings

Towards a More Reproducible Ecology

The following post has been provided by Dr Nick Isaac.

Nick is organising the OpenData and Reproducibility Workshop at Charles Darwin House, London on 21 April 2015 (more information below). He is also an Associate Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Macro_finalThe open science movement has been a major force for change in how research is conducted and communicated. Reproducibility lies at the heart of the open science agenda. It’s a broad topic, covering how data are shared, interpreted and reported.

Reproducibility has been advanced by a coalition of publishers (who have been embarrassed by a series of high-profile retractions), funding agencies keen that data should be re-useable after the life of a grant, and young researchers taking a more collaborative attitude than previous generations.

There is now a vast range of tools and platforms to help scientists share data and other materials (e.g. Dryad, Github, Figshare) and to create efficient and reproducible workflows (e.g. Sweave, Markdown, Git and, of course, R). There’s even a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in Reproducible Research, run out of Johns Hopkins University.

Ecology has lagged behind wet-lab biology and other disciplines in the adoption of reproducibility concepts and there are few examples of ecological studies that are truly reproducible. To address this, we’re running a one-day workshop at Charles Darwin House, London on Tuesday 21 April entitled OpenData & Reproducibility Workshop: the Good Scientist in the Open Science era. Continue reading “Towards a More Reproducible Ecology”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson1 Comment
General

My Career in Science (and Elsewhere)

The following is a piece written by Jane Elith, the author highlighted in our first International Women’s Day article. Dr Elith also won the Recognition of Achievement for a Research Paper award for Methods in Ecology and Evolution in 2014 (you can read her full paper here).

 We asked Jane: what drew you to a career in science?

Jane Elith MEE Recognition of Achievement for a Research Paper Award Winner
Dr Jane Elith

I’ve always loved nature, and at school found I was better at science than other subjects. Obvious choices for university would have been Quantitative Ecology or Conservation Biology, but back in the early 1970s such courses didn’t exist in Melbourne. I decided on a Bachelor of Science (Forestry) – science, but focused on trees. However that wasn’t to be – the Head of Forestry advised me that there was no future for women in Forestry. By memory, his reasoning was that there were no facilities for women in the field and entrenched attitudes amongst foresters would make it impossible to get a job. I can’t quite believe, looking back, that I accepted that and changed tracks. But I did.

Continue reading “My Career in Science (and Elsewhere)”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson3 Comments
Editor Profiles

Senior Editor Profile: JANA VAMOSI

As many of you will already know, Dr Vamosi is the newest (and first female) Senior Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution. She joined Rob Freckleton and Bob O’Hara in June of 2014 and has been working on manuscripts ever since. Jana is also organising the Canadian half of our 5th Anniversary Symposium in April (the Early Bird deadline for which is approaching – Friday 20 March). We are also running a Poster Session at this event; if you would be interested in submitting a poster, please contact Jana here.

Jana VamosiThe research in Jana’s lab focuses on the macroevolution, macroecology, community ecology, and conservation biology of plants. Many of their projects require gathering empirical data on the mechanistic underpinnings of plant diversity in specific locales. However, they often incorporate global phylogenetic perspectives as well. You can learn more about the lab’s work here.

Jana’s most recent publications include ‘Species and Phylogenetic Heterogeneity in Visitation Affects Reproductive Success in an Island System’ (along with Lorraine Adderley) which was published in International Journal of Plant Sciences in February and ‘Evolutionary ecology of specialization: insights from phylogenetic analysis’ (along with W Scott Armbruster and Susanne S Renner) first published in October 2014.

As part of our International Women’s Day activities, we wanted to have a short profile on Jana. Luckily, she had recently written one for the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference which will be taking place at the University of Guelph from 18 August to 21 August 2015. Jana will be giving a Plenary session (along with Charles Godfrey and Naomi Pierce) on Ecological Interactions.

The following was originally posted on the International Barcode of Life Conference Continue reading “Senior Editor Profile: JANA VAMOSI”

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
General, Journal updates, Meetings

Our 5th Anniversary Symposium

Charles Darwin House, London, UK: 10:00 – 18:00 (GMT) Alberta Room, Dining Centre, University of Calgary, Canada: 08:30 – 17:00 (MST) 22 April 2015 Methods in Ecology and Evolution, the British Ecological Society’s youngest journal, turns five this year. To celebrate we will be holding a joint Symposium – beginning in the UK and concluding in Canada. We will be hearing what’s in store for … Continue reading Our 5th Anniversary Symposium

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
General, Meetings

BES 2015 Annual Symposium: Demography Beyond the Population

Demographic methods and population modeling have been popular tools amongst ecologists for a long time. Recent advances, some of which have been written about in the pages of Methods, have allowed these approaches to be applied to a wide range of questions, helping to integrate population-level processes more broadly into ecological research.

Continue reading “BES 2015 Annual Symposium: Demography Beyond the Population”

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
General, Journal updates

Thank you to our 2014 Reviewers

2014 was a wonderful year for Methods in Ecology and Evolution. We had a record number of submissions and we published some fantastic articles (if we do say so ourselves). None of this would have been possible though without the work of the people who generously provide reviews for the journal. Whether you reviewed one paper or twenty, we really appreciate your time and effort. … Continue reading Thank you to our 2014 Reviewers

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
General, Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 5.11

Issue 5.11 is now online! This month we include 2 freely available application articles: – ENMeval: An R package for conducting spatially independent evaluations and estimating optimal model complexity for Maxent ecological niche models – enaR: An r package for Ecosystem Network Analysis We also have 4 interesting open access papers, ‘The accuracy of Fastloc-GPS locations and implications for animal tracking‘ by Antoine Dujon et … Continue reading Issue 5.11

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
General, Journal updates, Methods papers, Virtual Issues

Modelling Demographic Processes in Marked Populations: Proceedings of the EURING 2013 analytical meeting

By Charles M. Francis, Richard J. Barker, Evan G. Cooch This joint Special Feature (published in MEE and the open access journal Ecology and Evolution) brings together a series of papers presented at the EURING 2013 technical conference that, collectively, cover many of the latest developments in the analysis of data from marked individuals to estimate demographic parameters, such as survival, recruitment, nest success, density, population size … Continue reading Modelling Demographic Processes in Marked Populations: Proceedings of the EURING 2013 analytical meeting

Unknown's avatarSamantha PontonLeave a comment
General, Journal updates, Methods papers, Online extras, Practical Tools

Laser scanning accurately ‘weighs’ trees

Below is a press release and video about the Methods paper, ‘Nondestructive estimates of above-ground biomass using terrestrial laser scanning‘, taken from UCL News:

Tree scanning 1
Lidar point cloud from a scanned Eucalyptus tree (left) with colours correlating to point density (blue to red moving from high to low density). On the right is the reconstructed tree volume from which mass can be estimated.

A terrestrial laser scanning technique that allows the structure of vegetation to be 3D-mapped to the millimetre is more accurate in determining the biomass of trees and carbon stocks in forests than current methods, according to new research involving UCL.

The research paper, an international collaboration led by Wageningen University, is published today in Methods in Ecology and Evolution and demonstrates the technique in Australian forests.

The study authors believe it could be an important development in the monitoring of carbon stocks for worldwide climate policy-making. Both above-ground biomass and carbon stocks are important details for UN-REDD, the United Nations initiative on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation that is striving to keep the destruction of forests in check and thereby preserve the uptake of carbon by trees.

Paper co-author Dr Mat Disney (UCL Geography) said: “This new paper shows how effectively we can now turn highly-accurate laser measurements, comprising millions of 3D laser points, into estimates of tree mass. Weighing trees is really hard – time Continue reading “Laser scanning accurately ‘weighs’ trees”

Unknown's avatarSamantha PontonLeave a comment