Category: Methods papers

Methods papers

Making survival spatial: merging mark-recapture and territory occupancy data to estimate one of ecology’s most elusive patterns

Post provided by Jaume A. Badia-Boher In 1997, a pair of peregrine falcons settled on a cliff in Hungary. It was the first breeding pair in the country since the species disappeared during the pesticide crisis, in the 1960s. Since then, researchers, rangers, and volunteers of MME-BirdLife Hungary’s peregrine conservation group have checked nearly every breeding site, every season, and ringed chicks whenever they could. … Continue reading Making survival spatial: merging mark-recapture and territory occupancy data to estimate one of ecology’s most elusive patterns

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Ecology, Methods papers

The roadkill we never see

Post provided by Guillermo Gomez-Peña Roads, power lines and wind turbines kill an enormous number of animals every year. To measure this, researchers go out and count the carcasses we find along these infrastructures. Whatever the infrastructure, however, we are only able to record the animals we can find, which is far fewer than the number that actually die. Researchers have long known these counts … Continue reading The roadkill we never see

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Methods papers

The photograph you didn’t take: why underwater colour science starts before the shutter

Post Provided by Derya Akkaynak I am an aerospace engineer turned oceanographer, and I am obsessed with colour in the ocean. How could I not be? The seafloor is full of colourful organisms, but we almost always see them through the coloured light that water leaves us, never in colours of their own. However, this is not a limitation of my eyes, or yours. Water … Continue reading The photograph you didn’t take: why underwater colour science starts before the shutter

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Ecology, Methods papers, Statistical methods

The Baby and the Teddy Bear: The Flash of Insight Behind the WAH-i Algorithm

Post Provided by Ravi Umadi On a sunny morning after heavy snowfall in the Bavarian winter, I stood by the door of an early train to Munich. Bright sunlight streamed through the glass and lit me up. I thought to myself: it was a good day. Moments later, the train screeched to a halt. The driver announced an unscheduled stop and possible disruptions due to … Continue reading The Baby and the Teddy Bear: The Flash of Insight Behind the WAH-i Algorithm

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Methods papers

From replicate detection to DNA concentration: What can ddPCR tell us about sedaDNA metabarcoding?

Post provided by Elena Baños Lara I am currently completing my PhD at the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB-CSIC) in Spain, where I use environmental and sedimentary ancient DNA to explore past marine ecosystems. As part of my PhD, I had the opportunity to spend three months at the Globe Institute in Copenhagen, joining Kristine Bohmann’s group and working side by side with … Continue reading From replicate detection to DNA concentration: What can ddPCR tell us about sedaDNA metabarcoding?

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Methods papers

Fostering a network for creating and implementing open education resources in ecology

Blog post provided by Ann Russell The Need for Authentic, Open Educational Resources Given the rapid changes underway in undergraduate STEM education, the teaching community aspires to move beyond models that involve static content to develop agile, scalable ways to create authentic open educational resources (OERs). Researchers can provide authentic case studies, but they may lack the skills to create engaging OERs based on their … Continue reading Fostering a network for creating and implementing open education resources in ecology

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Methods papers

How to spot river-borne diseases with almost no data

Post provided by Pouria Ramazi When Alberta Environment and Parks brought this problem to our group in 2018, the question was practical. Whirling disease had been detected in Alberta, but testing every stretch of a river was impossible. Could a few scattered fish and worm tests show where the parasite Myxobolus cerebralis was most likely to occur across the Oldman River? I had just begun … Continue reading How to spot river-borne diseases with almost no data

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Methods papers

Make insect metabarcoding quantitative? Challenge accepted.

Post provided by Ela Iwaszkiewicz-Eggebrecht The journey from scepticism to abundance estimates When I moved to Sweden in 2019 to start a postdoc, I entered a completely new research field. My background was in evolutionary biology, but I knew very little about DNA metabarcoding (identifying many species at once by sequencing barcode DNA from mixed samples). I was joining a project that was developing methods … Continue reading Make insect metabarcoding quantitative? Challenge accepted.

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Methods papers

From pattern to process: estimating species interactions and driver-species relationships from count data

Post provided by Quinn Asena Uncovering signals from the past Understanding interactions among organisms, and between organisms and their environment, has been a cornerstone of ecology as long as we have been busying ourselves with the lives of other species. How do plants and animals facilitate or compete with each other? How do they respond to the continuous challenge of changing climates or new neighbors? … Continue reading From pattern to process: estimating species interactions and driver-species relationships from count data

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Methods papers

Forking anatomy: borrowing software’s best idea to build 3D atlases together

Post provided by A. Murat Maga Picture a graduate student who has just spent eighty hours tracing the individual bones of a fish skull, slice by slice, through a high-resolution microCT scan. The result is a beautiful, richly labelled 3D dataset. And then? Too often it lands on a hard drive, or gets flattened into a static 3D model that no one else can edit, … Continue reading Forking anatomy: borrowing software’s best idea to build 3D atlases together

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