Category: Journal updates

Journal updates

Mainz scientists develop new soil moisture sensor

Below is a press release about the Methods paper ‘Development and calibration of a novel sensor to quantify the water content of surface soils and biological soil crusts‘ taken from the Max Planck Institute.

Innovative measuring device enables the water content of biological soil crusts to be measured for the first time.

Biological soil crusts comprising lichens, algae and mosses play an important role in the earth’s ecosystems. They fix carbon dioxide and nitrogen while giving off significant amounts of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Information on soil moisture is of vital importance to investigate their fixation and release processes and to understand them in detail. Previously, no sensor existed that could measure the water content in the top millimeters of the soil with sufficient accuracy. This gap has now been closed by a new development of Bettina Weber and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, as can be read online in the ‘Early View’ section of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Wiley Online Library. They have managed to construct an appropriate soil moisture sensor, which delivers reliable data, as well as being cost-effective and flexible to use.

The site, where the soil moisture sensors are installed as a compound of climate stations, is protected from grazing animals by means of a fence. ©Bettina Weber
The site, where the soil moisture sensors are installed as a compound of climate stations, is protected from grazing animals by means of a fence. ©Bettina Weber

Biological soil crusts consist of a community of cyanobacteria, lichens, algae and bryophytes, together with fungi, bacteria, and archaea, which grow in the upper three to five millimeters of the soil, forming a hardened layer. They exist in dry regions throughout the world and occupy approximately 20 million square meters, which is almost as large as the surface of South America. All the organisms in biological soil crusts are poikilohydric, which means that they are only active when the soil is sufficiently moist, but survive in an inactive state under dry conditions. Continue reading “Mainz scientists develop new soil moisture sensor”

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Methods papers, Online extras

National Wildlife Day 2015

Happy National Wildlife Day everyone!

Today is 10th National Wildlife Day. As we have done for a few awareness days this year (Bats, Biodiversity and Bees so far) we are marking the day by highlighting some of our favourite Methods in Ecology and Evolution articles on the subject. Obviously ‘wildlife’ is a pretty big topic, so we have narrowed our focus (slightly) to monitoring wildlife (with one or two additional papers that we didn’t want to leave out).

This list is certainly not exhaustive and there are many more wonderful articles on these topics in the journal. You can see more of them on the Wiley Online Library.

If you would like to learn more about National Wildlife Day, you may wish to visit the organisation’s website, follow them on Twitter and Facebook or check out today’s hashtag: #NationalWildlifeDay.

Without further ado though, please enjoy our selection of Methods articles for National Wildlife Day:

Integrating Demographic Data

Our National Wildlife Day celebration begins with an article from our EURING Special Feature. Robert Robinson et al. present an approach which allows important demographic parameters to be identified, even if they are not measured directly, in ‘Integrating demographic data: towards a framework for monitoring wildlife populations at large spatial scales‘. Using their approach they were able to retrieve known demographic signals both within and across species and identify the demographic causes of population decline in Song Thrush and Lawping.

 

Continue reading “National Wildlife Day 2015”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson1 Comment
Journal updates, Methods papers

Study Finds Black Bears in Yosemite Forage Primarily on Plants and Nuts

Below is a press release about the Methods paper ‘Measuring the realized niches of animals using stable isotopes: from rats to bears‘ taken from the University of California, San Diego:

©PLF73 (Click image to see original)
Animal proteins only make up a small part of a black bear’s diet. ©PLF73 (Click image to see original)

Black bears in Yosemite National Park that don’t seek out human foods subsist primarily on plants and nuts, according to a study conducted by biologists at UC San Diego who also found that ants and other sources of animal protein, such as mule deer, make up only a small fraction of the bears’ annual diet.

Their study, published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, might surprise bear ecologists and conservationists who had long assumed that black bears in the Sierra Nevada rely on lots of protein from ants and other insects because their remains are frequently found in bear feces. Instead, the researchers believe that bears likely eat ants for nutrient balance. Continue reading “Study Finds Black Bears in Yosemite Forage Primarily on Plants and Nuts”

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Methods papers, Online extras

National Honey Bee Day 2015

Happy National Honey Bee Day everyone!

As you may know, tomorrow (Saturday 22 August) is National Honey Bee Day in the USA. To mark the day we will be highlighting some of the best papers that have been published on bees and pollinators in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

You can find out more about National Honey Bee Day (and about bees in general) HERE.

Without further ado though, here are a few of the best Methods papers related to Honey Bees:

Wildebeast graze on the cover of MEE 2.5Honey Bee Risk Assessment

Our Honey Bee highlights begin with Hendriksma et al.’s article ‘Honey bee risk assessment: new approaches for in vitro larvae rearing and data analyses‘. Robust laboratory methods for assessing adverse effects on honey bee brood are required for research into the issues contributing to global bee losses. To facilitate this, the authors of this article recommend in vitro rearing of larvae and suggest some appropriate statistical tools for the related data analyses. Together these methods can help to improve the quality of environmental risk assessment studies on honey bees and secure honey bee pollination. As this article was published over two years ago, it can be accessed for free by anyone.

Continue reading “National Honey Bee Day 2015”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson3 Comments
Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 6.8

Issue 6.8 is now online!

The August issue of Methods is now online!

This month’s issue contains two Applications article and one Open Access article, all of which are freely available.

– LEA: This R package enables users to run ecological association studies from the R command line. It can perform analyses of population structure and genome scans for adaptive alleles from large genomic data sets. The package derives advantages from R programming functionalities to adjust significance values for multiple testing issues and to visualize results.

– PIPITS: An open-source stand-alone suite of software for automated processing of Illumina MiSeq sequences for fungal community analysis. PIPITS exploits a number of state of the art applications to process paired-end reads from quality filtering to producing OTU abundance tables.

Giovanni Strona and Joseph Veech provide this month’s Open Access article. Many studies have focused on nestedness, a pattern reflecting the tendency of network nodes to share interaction partners, as a method of measuring the structure of ecological networks. In ‘A new measure of ecological network structure based on node overlap and segregation‘ the authors introduce a new statistical procedure to measure both this kind of structure and the opposite one (i.e. species’ tendency against sharing interacting partners).

In addition to this, our August issue features articles on Estimating Diversity, Ecological Communities and Networks, Genetic Distances and Immunology. Continue reading “Issue 6.8”

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Journal updates, Methods papers

Impact of Flooding on Wetlands Measurable via Low-Cost Approach

Below is a press release about the Methods paper ‘Testing sea-level rise impacts in tidal wetlands: a novel in situ approach‘ taken from the University of Alabama:

IMG_0175 (2)
Researchers installed adjustable enclosures near the shoreline to simulate low, medium & high flooding levels. © Dr Eric Sparks, Mississippi State University

Scientists designed a new, on-site method for studying potential impacts rising sea levels can have on vital wetlands, said a University of Alabama researcher who led a study publishing in Methods in Ecology and Evolution today describing the modifiable apparatuses.

Primarily using materials available at the local hardware store, the scientists, including UA’s Dr Julia Cherry, designed, constructed and tested low-cost enclosures, called weirs, to realistically simulate three flooding levels on coastal wetlands. Simulating impacts of sea level rise on-site and at larger scales had previously proven difficult.

“I hope this provides other researchers with a template to ask their questions and to improve upon the method we’ve documented to do bigger and better coastal wetland studies,” said Cherry, an associate professor in UA’s New College and its biological sciences department. Continue reading “Impact of Flooding on Wetlands Measurable via Low-Cost Approach”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson1 Comment
Journal updates, Methods papers

Animal-eye view of the world revealed with new visual software

Below is a press release about the Open Access Methods paper ‘Image calibration and analysis toolbox – a free software suite for objectively measuring reflectance, colour and pattern‘ taken from the University of Exeter:

New camera technology that reveals the world through the eyes of animals has been developed by University of Exeter researchers. The details are published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Echium angustifolium in Tenerife (Borage family). To us the flowers are a fairly uniform purple, but bees can see two UV absorbent patches at the top of the flower.
Echium angustifolium in Tenerife (Borage family). To us the flowers are a fairly uniform purple, but bees can see two UV absorbent patches at the top of the flower.

The software, which converts digital photos to animal vision, can be used to analyse colours and patterns and is particularly useful for the study of animal and plant signalling, camouflage and animal predation, but could also prove useful for anyone wanting to measure colours accurately and objectively.

The software has already been used by the Sensory Ecology group in a wide range of studies, such as colour change in green shore crabs, tracking human female face colour changes through the ovulation cycle, and determining the aspects of camouflage that protect nightjar clutches from being spotted by potential predators. Continue reading “Animal-eye view of the world revealed with new visual software”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson4 Comments
Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 6.7

Issue 6.7 is now online!

The July issue of Methods is now online!

This month’s issue contains two Applications article and one Open Access article, all of which are freely available.

– fuzzySim: Binary similarity indices are widely used in ecology. This study proposes fuzzy versions of the binary similarity indices most commonly used in ecology, so that they can be directly applied to continuous (fuzzy) rather than binary occurrence values, producing more realistic similarity assessments. fuzzySim is an open source software package which is also available for R.

– Actave.net: A freely accessible, web-based analysis tool for complex activity data, actave.net provides cloud-based and automatic computation of daily aggregates of various activity parameters based on recorded immersion data. It provides maps and graphs for data exploration, download of processed data for modelling and statistical analysis, and tools for sharing results with other users.

Anna Sturrock et al. provide this month’s Open Access article. In ‘Quantifying physiological influences on otolith microchemistry‘ the authors test relationships between otolith chemistry and environmental and physiological variables. The influence of physiological factors on otolith composition was particularly evident in Sr/Ca ratios, the most widely used elemental marker in applied otolith microchemistry studies. This paper was reported on in the media recently. You can read more about it here.

Our July issue also features articles on Monitoring, Remote Sensing, Conservation, Genetics and three papers on Statistics. Continue reading “Issue 6.7”

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Journal updates, Methods papers

‘Bee soup’ could help understand declines and test remedies

Below is a press release about the Methods paper ‘High-throughput monitoring of wild bee diversity and abundance via mitogenomics‘ taken from the University of East Anglia:

It may sound counter-intuitive, but crushing up bees into a ‘DNA soup’ could help conservationists understand and even reverse their decline – according to University of East Anglia scientists.

Research published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution shows that collecting wild bees, extracting their DNA, and directly reading the DNA of the resultant ‘soup’ could finally make large-scale bee monitoring programmes feasible.

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©Mibby23 (click image to see original version)

This would allow conservationists to detect where and when bee species are being lost, and importantly, whether conservation interventions are working.

The UK’s National Pollinator Strategy outlines plans for a large-scale bee monitoring programme. Traditional monitoring involves pinning individual bees and identifying them under a microscope. But the number of bees needed to track populations reliably over the whole country makes traditional methods infeasible.

This new research shows how the process could become quicker, cheaper and more accurate. Continue reading “‘Bee soup’ could help understand declines and test remedies”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson3 Comments
Journal updates, Methods papers

New Tool to Assess Effects of Powerful Man-Made Underwater Sounds

Below is a press release about the Methods paper ‘An interim framework for assessing the population consequences of disturbance‘ taken from the University of St Andrews:

A team of scientists from the University of St Andrews has developed a new desktop tool for assessing the impact of noise from human disturbance, such as offshore wind development on marine mammal populations.

PCOD_PR_imageThe team, led by Prof. John Harwood, have developed the interim Population Consequences of Disturbance (PCoD) framework for assessing the consequences of human induced noise disturbance on animal populations. The study was published yesterday in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Changes in natural patterns of animal behaviour and physiology resulting from animals being disturbed may alter the conservation status of a population if the activity affects the ability of individuals to survive, breed or grow. However, information to forecast population-level consequences of such changes is often lacking. The project team developed an interim framework to assess impacts when empirical information is sparse. Crucially, the model shows how daily effects of being disturbed, which are often straightforward to estimate, can be scaled to the duration of disturbance and to multiple sources of disturbance.

“We have developed a novel framework that can be used to broadly forecast the consequences of anthropogenic disturbance on animal populations, which in principal can be applied to a range of marine and terrestrial species and different types of disturbance.” – Dr Stephanie King

One important application for the interim PCoD framework is in the marine industry. Many industries use practices that involve the generation of underwater noise. These include shipping, oil and gas exploration, defence activities and port, harbour and renewable energy construction. Continue reading “New Tool to Assess Effects of Powerful Man-Made Underwater Sounds”

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