Category: Methods papers

International Days, Methods papers, Statistical methods

Do-it-yourself fishing and climate scenario experiments with a marine ecosystem model

Post provided by Michael Heath, Tom Doherty,  Jack Laverick & Douglas Speirs

Herring is a planktivorous fish species. Credit: Atle Grimsby.

World Fisheries Day, celebrated on November 21, is dedicated to highlighting the critical importance of healthy ocean ecosystems and to ensure sustainable stocks of fisheries in the world. Pressure to find ecologically sustainable strategies for harvesting food from the sea is getting ever stronger, especially in the face of changing climate. However, the question is complex because the harvestable species live in a complex food web where everything is directly or indirectly connected to everything else. Models for carrying out scenario analyses on the impact of fisheries management options on food webs are usually the preserve of trained experts.

In this blog post, Michael Heath of the University of Strathclyde guides us through how using a new marine modelling package and online app, published in their recent Methods in Ecology and Evolution paper ‘StrathE2E2: An R package for modelling the dynamics of marine food webs and fisheries.’, makes these analyses easily accessible to anyone with just basic website skills.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Cover Image Stories, Journal Issues, Methods papers

Cover Stories: Overlooked primary producers key to accurate trophic position estimation

Post provided by Matthew Ramirez, Alexi Besser, Seth Newsome, and Kelton McMahon

The cover of our October issue shows a katydid feeding on a leaf in the Tirimbina Rainforest National Wildlife Refuge of Costa Rica. Once digested, nitrogen from the leaf is incorporated into the katydid’s tissues in the form of amino acids, with slight modification to their stable nitrogen isotope values (δ15N). In this post the authors discuss the importance of understanding and accounting for variability in primary producer amino acid δ15N values when characterizing where consumers are positioned within food webs, detailed in their Methods in Ecology and Evolution article “Meta-analysis of primary producer amino acid δ15N values and their influence on trophic position estimation.”

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Methods papers

Monsters Behind the Movies

Post provided by Ben Whittaker & Chloe Robinson

“There’s no such thing as monsters” you whisper to yourself while creeping into bed, regretting your decision to spend the whole night watching horror movies. Thunder rumbles in the distance as rain begins tapping on the windowpane. The lamps flicker and black out. “Just a power cut” you chuckle nervously, clutching the bed covers up to your face. Laid in the darkness, you become aware of every creak and bump echoing throughout the empty house. But what is that shuffling sound? Is it coming closer? The shuffling stops right outside your bedroom door, which gently rattles and then slowly groans open. A dreadful chill runs down your spine. “There’s no such thing as monsters?”

In this special Halloween post, blog editors Chloe Robinson and Ben Whittaker conjure stories of the real-life monsters that have inspired movie makers. Continue reading at your own peril and be warned that Methods in Ecology and Evolution holds no liability for ensuing nightmares, hauntings, or extra-terrestrial abduction.  

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Unknown's avatarBen WhittakerLeave a comment
International Days, Methods papers

Trash Talking: Every Litter Bit Hurts

Post provided by Chloe Robinson

Trash collected from a beach clean at Buccaneer Bay Provincial Park, BC in collaboration with Pender Harbour Ocean Discovery Station (PODS) and the Loon Foundation. Picture credit: Jessica Scott.

It is no surprise that COVID-19 has changed the course of a substantial number of things in the world since the start of the pandemic. One of the most understated impacts is the devastating reversal of many years’ worth of fighting plastic pollution. In the wake of International Coast Cleanup Day and World Environmental Health Day, Associate Editor Dr. Chloe Robinson will be discussing the impacts of marine litter and plastic pollution on marine life and how the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup program is working to stop the leak of litter and plastic pollution into the ocean.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Code and Applications, Methods papers, Statistical methods

An Ecologist and a Programmer Walk Into a Bar…

Post provided by Daniel Vedder, Markus Ankenbrand, and Juliano Sarmento Cabral

Five years ago, a new institute opened its doors at the University of Würzburg: the Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology (CCTB). The idea was simple. Take six computational research groups, covering topics from image analysis to genomics and ecological modelling, put them in a building together, and see what happens.

Despite our disparate areas of expertise, this “experiment” has worked really well. It soon turned out that one of our greatest strengths as an institute lay in the cumulative computer know-how we have, or have acquired together. In our experience, many biologists are still somewhat wary of computational techniques, and struggle with them even when they use them. Part of the reason for this unease, we believe, is that few biologists are thoroughly trained in computer science.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Code and Applications, Methods papers, Theoretical methods

Creating a research and conservation tool to support pollinator survival

Post provided by Matthias Becher, Grace Twiston-Davies & Juliet Osborne

The BEEHAVE Team Osborne Becher and Twiston-Davies. Credit: Pete Kennedy.

Everyone, well, almost everyone, loves honey – that sweet, liquid gold laboriously collected by busy bees from countless little flowers. But of course, much more important than honey or wax or even cosmetic royal jelly products are the pollination services that bees provide to wildflowers and crops. In this blog post, authors Matthias Becher, Grace Twiston-Davies & Juliet Osborne discuss their latest paper published in Methods in Ecology & Evolution, “BEE-STEWARD: a research and decision support software for effective land management to promote bumblebee populations”.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Conservation and management, MEEin3, Methods papers

MEEin3: A standardisation framework for bio-logging data to advance ecological research and conservation

We are very excited to share the second episode of MEEin3 with you! Listen to Dr Ana Sequeira share the story behind the paper ‘A standardisation framework for bio-logging data to advance ecological research and conservation‘. Ana is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, with research focusing on understanding the movement of marine megafauna. But what inspired this article, what was … Continue reading MEEin3: A standardisation framework for bio-logging data to advance ecological research and conservation

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
Methods papers, Statistical methods

Smart genetic analysis made fast and easy

Post provided by: Salvador Herrando-Pérez

If you use genetics to differentiate populations, the new package smartsnp might be your new best friend. Written in R language and available from GitHub and CRAN, this package performs principal component analysis with control for genetic drift, projects ancient samples onto modern genetic space, and tests for population differences in genotypes. The package can load big datasets and run complex stats in the blink of an eye.

In this post, Salvador Herrando-Pérez discusses the features of this new package which is fully described in the new paper “smartsnp, an R package for fast multivariate analyses of big genomic data” recently published in Methods in Ecology & Evolution.

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Unknown's avatarBen WhittakerLeave a comment
Methods papers, Statistical methods

FuzzyQ: The Commonness of Rarity

Post provided by Juan A. Balbuena

Sea of Azov. Credit: Sergey Sorokin.

Most species in ecological communities are rare, whereas only a few are common. This distributional paradox has intrigued ecologists for decades, but the interpretation of species abundance distributions remains elusive. In this blog post, lead author Juan A. Balbuena discusses how their recently published Methods in Ecology and Evolution paper and R package ‘Fuzzy quantification of common and rare species in ecological communities (FuzzyQ)’, is a potentially valuable analytical tool in community ecology and conservation biology.

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Unknown's avatarstreamdnaLeave a comment
International Days, Methods papers

International Bat Appreciation Day: Giving thanks to the real superheroes of the sky

Post provided by Chloe Robinson

Mexican greater funnel-eared bat (Natalus mexicanus). Credit: Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez.

Bat Conservation International (BCI), founded in 1982, aims to conserve bats and their habitats through a combination of education, conservation, and research. Bats worldwide contribute towards controlling pests, create rich fertilizer for landowners, and pollinate fruit and flowers. BCI introduced International Bat Appreciation Day to increase awareness about bats and what they do for our environment.

In this post, associate editor Chloe Robinson will be summarising the various MEE published methods for bat monitoring and how technological developments have allowed us to further look and listen into the lives of these incredible creatures.

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Unknown's avatarstreamdnaLeave a comment