ISI has only been indexing Methods in Ecology and Evolution for a short time, but some of our papers are already accumulating an impressive number of citations. Over the next few days we’ll be highlighting our most cited papers across a broad range of fields – just in case they’ve slipped you by. Statistical methods in ecology & evolution A protocol for data exploration to avoid common … Continue reading Top cited papers – part 1
In this video to accompany their paper Randomization tests for quantifying species importance to ecosystem function, authors Nicholas Gotelli and Fernando Maestre discuss the introduction of simple tests for measuring the effect of species on ecosystem variables, and give us an insight into the logistics required for their paper’s “natural experiements” – involving the collection and preparation of over 25,000 lichen samples! The methodology presented in this paper … Continue reading Measuring the importance of species to ecosystems
Four more papers have been recently accepted for publication in Methods in Ecology and Evolution: REDDcalculator.com: a web-based decision-support tool for implementing Indonesia’s forest moratorium Lian Pin Koh, Holly Gibbs, Peter Potapov, Matthew Hansen PMx: software package for demographic and genetic analysis and management of pedigreed populations Robert Lacy, Jonathan Ballou and John Pollak Exploring causal pathways in demographic parameter variation: path analysis of mark–recapture … Continue reading Recently accepted articles
Here’s a nice piece by Karthik Ram, of Inundata, about RNCEP, an application whose introduction we recently published on Early View. RNCEP is a package of open-source R functions that make it easy to access and use two free, long-term, high-quality atmospheric data sets with global coverage, and comes highly recommended for anyone interested in climate data and questions related to global change! Related An introduction to RNCEP RNCEP … Continue reading Methods blogging
Open access research papers, freely available applications, and papers supported by podcasts continued to be our most popular publications for June. Open papers How safe is mist netting? Evaluating the risk of injury and mortality to birds, by Spotswood et al., and A simple method for in situ-labelling with 15N and 13C of grassland plant species by foliar brushing, by Putz et al., both received a lot of downloads, with How … Continue reading Top papers for June
Articles recently accepted by the Methods editorial board include: A novel molecular approach for rapid assessment of soil nematode assemblages – variation, validation and potential applications Suzanne Donn, Roy Neilson, Bryan Griffiths and Tim Daniell Reconstructing historical snow depth surfaces to evaluate changes in critical demographic rates and habitat components of snow-dependent and snow-restricted species Jeffrey Manning and Edward Garton Comparative interpretation of count, presence–absence … Continue reading Recently accepted articles
Two uploads in two days make this a bumper week for Methods in Ecology and Evolution‘s author videos! In Studying deepwater animals with TrapCam lead author Brett Favaro walks us through the construction of TrapCam, an inexpensive, self-contained camera system designed to deliver high-definition video footage of deepwater animals at depths inaccessible for scuba divers, which does not require ongoing support from a vessel, or … Continue reading Studying deepwater animals with TrapCam
In our latest video Shannon Pellini demonstrates experimental equipment designed to simulate the effects of warmer air temperatures on forest ecosystems – and, particuarly, on arthropod communities. You can read a full account of their experimental methods, and results from two contemporaneous trials at Harvard Forest and Duke Forest, in their recently published paper, Heating up the forest: open-top chamber warming manipulation of arthropod communities … Continue reading Heating up the forest
Seed predation plays an important role in global plant demography. In this video, Adam Davis, of the University of Illinois, demonstrates how field experiments and statistical models can can enable the extrapolation of long-term seed predation rates from short-term data. A full treatment of this can be found in the paper Temporal scaling of episodic point estimates of seed predation to long-term predation rates, recently … Continue reading Estimating seed predation rates
Researchers from the Computational Ecology and Environmental Sciences division of Microsoft Research Cambridge are carrying out a survey to help improve the way in which we develop software for species distribution modelling, and as part of wider research into how the software available to researchers affects the advancement of knowledge. It should take about 15 minutes of your time, and you don’t have to use … Continue reading New species distribution modelling survey
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