Conservation and management, Ecology, Field Methods, Methods papers

Insect tracking using retroreflective tags

Post provided by Michael Smith Tracking bee movement is anything but an easy task. Electronic tags are often too cumbersome and extensive electronic systems such as radars are costly to deploy. There is a need for a low-cost, low-impact tool, with high spatial resolution for tracking bees, to investigate how far they forage. In this blog post, Michael Smith discusses the development of retroreflective tags … Continue reading Insect tracking using retroreflective tags

Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Ecology, Field Methods, Methods papers, Practical Tools

Large drones make a big splash: Using smaller drones to conduct less disruptive wildlife surveys

Post provided by Kayla Kuhlmann

Hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus). Credit: Veronica Zamora-Gutierrez.

Ecologists have started looking into drones as new tools for wildlife surveys, but how can drone disturbance be minimized in order to produce accurate wildlife counts? In this post, Kayla Kuhlmann describes a drone practice to reduce disruption during acoustic bat surveys as featured in the paper “Miniaturization eliminates detectable impacts of drones on bat activity”, recently published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Journal Issues

February Issue Out Now

Our February issue is now online! Our second issue of the year contains 22 high-quality articles about the latest methods in ecology and evolution. This month we have methods for visualising the tree of life, estimating arthropod abundance and diversity, disentangling effects of climate and land use on biodiversity and much more! This issue also contains four Applications and two Practical Tools articles that are free to … Continue reading February Issue Out Now

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

Revealing the hidden lives of cryptic mountain lions using GPS data and a Moving-Resting Motion model

Post provided by Mark Elbroch, Chaoran Hu, Tom Meyer, Vladimir Pozdnyakov & Jun Yan

Female mountain lion collared in Washington USA in late December 2021.

Information on how and even why terrestrial mammals move through their habitat landscapes is important for forming the foundation of how to manage and conserve species. For elusive mountain lions, GPS data is particularly vital for monitoring these important apex predators in relation to their ecosystems and the people they share the land with. In this blog post, the team discusses their novel motion model, published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, which helps us understand the movement of mountain lions from GPS location data.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Conservation and management, Field Methods, Methods papers, Practical Tools

Non-invasive playback experiments allow for rigorous studies of wildlife interactions

Post provided by Meredith Palmer, Chris “Akiba” Wang, Jacinta Plucinski & Robert M. Pringle

The BoomBox ABR deployed with a Bushnell TrophyCam camera trap in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique

Camera traps are a valuable tool in ecological research, especially for capturing large quantities of information on the behaviour of an array of wildlife within an ecological community. Camera traps are seldom used to experimentally testing key animal behaviour hypotheses, despite the potential offered by the non-invasive technology. In this blog post, Dr. Meredith Palmer and co-authors discuss the application of the ‘BoomBox’ camera trap module that allows researchers to conduct a unique suite of manipulative experiments on free-living species in complex environments, as published in their Methods in Ecology and Evolution article ‘BoomBox: An Automated Behavioral Response (ABR) Camera Trap Module for Wildlife Playback Experiments’.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. Robinson1 Comment
MEEin3, Methods papers

MEEin3: The Movebank System

Check out the latest episode of our new podcast, MEEin3! Here we interview Roland Kays from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University to learn about the Movebank database featured in his recent article ‘The Movebank system for studying global animal movement and demography‘. What were the inspirations and challenges in developing this home for animal tracking data? Listen now! … Continue reading MEEin3: The Movebank System

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

plantR: Managing species records from biological collections

Post provided by Renato Lima

Many biodiversity studies, covering a wide range of goals, need species records. These records are becoming readily available online, however there is minimal standardisation for these records at this stage, therefore requiring final users to spend a significant amount of time formatting records prior to using data. To overcome this, Renato Lima et al. have created plantR – an open-source package that provides a comprehensive toolbox to manage species records from biological collections. In this blog post, Renato discusses the workflow of the package and describes how this package can help researchers better assess data quality and avoid data leakage.

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Unknown's avatarChloe V. RobinsonLeave a comment
Journal Issues

January 2022 Issue Out Now!

Our January issue is now online! Our first issue of the year contains 17 brilliant articles about the latest methods in ecology and evolution. This month we have methods for testing publication bias in meta-analyses, managing uncertainty in systematic conservation planning and much more! Read on to find out about this month’s featured articles. Featured Articles Methods for testing publication bias (open access) Publication bias threatens the … Continue reading January 2022 Issue Out Now!

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment
MEEin3, Methods papers

MEEin3: Identifying latent behavioral states in animal movement

We are pleased to share the latest episode of MEEin3 with you! Listen now to this episode, where we interview Dr Josh Cullen about their recent publication titled “Identifying latent behavioral states in animal movement with M4, a non-parametric Bayesian method“. You can find more about Josh’s research by visiting their personal webpage and scholar page.  Continue reading MEEin3: Identifying latent behavioral states in animal movement

Unknown's avatarIndia StephensonLeave a comment