The Data Double Standard: how this article came to be

Post provided by Alison Binley As a new Master’s student at Carleton University, I was excited to learn the ins and outs of using community science data (also known commonly as citizen science, participatory research, and crowd-sourced data) to conduct conservation research. I was working on estimating population trends using eBird, a popular, opportunistic community science platform that collects data on birds, and fascinated by … Continue reading The Data Double Standard: how this article came to be

Early career research: Increasing access, reproducibility and transparency in phylogenetic analyses with Cristian Román-Palacios

I was born in the Colombian Andes (Armenia, Quindío) back in the 90s. I received my bachelor’s degree in Biology from Universidad del Valle, in Cali, Colombia, in 2015. I moved to the US in 2016 to pursue a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona – a degree that I completed in Fall of 2020. Although my research interests seem … Continue reading Early career research: Increasing access, reproducibility and transparency in phylogenetic analyses with Cristian Román-Palacios

2023 Robert May Prize Shortlist: Methods Ecology and Evolution’s Award for Early Career Researchers

The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. With entries spanning the 14th Volume of the journal, our Senior Editors carefully shortlisted the following 9 papers: Megan Laxton; Balancing structural complexity with ecological insight in Spatio-temporal species distribution models Charlotte de Vries; Discretising Keyfitz’ entropy for … Continue reading 2023 Robert May Prize Shortlist: Methods Ecology and Evolution’s Award for Early Career Researchers

Methods in Ecology and Evolution: International Women’s Day 2024 

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2024, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of our new Associate Editors. In each post, our editors discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Inspire Inclusion‘, means to them.   Dr Lorna Hernandez-Santin (She/her)  What work do you do?  These days I work mostly with restoration ecology. … Continue reading Methods in Ecology and Evolution: International Women’s Day 2024 

Key Concepts in Ecology: Competition 

This blog post on ‘Competition’ is part of the BES ‘Key Concepts in Ecology’ series, designed to help ecologists in learning the key topics in ecology! Take a look at the full series for a list of key topics you might typically find in an ecology textbook, each providing a quick introduction to the topic, and a list of suggested papers for students to refer … Continue reading Key Concepts in Ecology: Competition 

Opening Ecology to Local, Traditional, and Indigenous Knowledge

Post provided by James T. Thorson Ecologists have a social responsibility to document, interpret, and forecast how human activities are impacting our shared world.  There’s an ongoing movement to open ecology to new voices: for example, the Biden-Harris Administration has directed US agencies to incorporate Indigenous Knowledge through ethical and mutually beneficial relationships with tribal nations.  This direction is clearly important, and requires developing new … Continue reading Opening Ecology to Local, Traditional, and Indigenous Knowledge

ToxTrac: A free and user-friendly animal tracking software

Post provided by Magnus Andersson Animal tracking software no longer has to be costly or require advanced computational science skills to operate. Over the last decade, a significant number of free animal tracking software options have been released. However, many of these options suffer from infrequent updates and demand considerable computational expertise to utilize effectively. To address this issue, the creators of ToxTrac launched the … Continue reading ToxTrac: A free and user-friendly animal tracking software

Key Concepts in Ecology: Adaptations to variable environments 

This blog post on ‘Adaptations to variable environments’ is part of the BES ‘Key Concepts in Ecology’ series, designed to help ecologists in learning the key topics in ecology! Take a look at the full series for a list of key topics you might typically find in an ecology textbook, each providing a quick introduction to the topic, and a list of suggested papers for … Continue reading Key Concepts in Ecology: Adaptations to variable environments 

Our January issue is out now!

This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution, including automated tracking, unhatched eggs, quantifying colour vision and much more! Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured There are two distinct approaches to describing the distributions of biomass and species in food webs: one to consider them as discrete trophic levels (TLs); and the other … Continue reading Our January issue is out now!

The buzzOmeter: Recording buzzing insects in motion

Post provided by Marta Skowron Volponi Has the buzzing sound of a wasp flying past your ear ever made you recoil in fear of being stung? What if these buzzes are a warning display aimed at potential predators, just like the bees’ and wasps’ bright colouration that sends a message: “don’t touch me, I’m dangerous”? Or perhaps they are audio messages meant for other wasps? … Continue reading The buzzOmeter: Recording buzzing insects in motion