Catching Biodiversity in the Wind: How a Simple Dust Cloth Revolutionizes Airborne eDNA Monitoring

Post provided by Meng Yao Biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate worldwide. To protect it, we first need to monitor it—but tracking species traditionally requires significant time, expertise, and often expensive equipment. What if we could detect the presence of plants and animals just by sampling the air around us? As the principal investigator of the molecular ecology and biodiversity laboratory at Peking University, … Continue reading Catching Biodiversity in the Wind: How a Simple Dust Cloth Revolutionizes Airborne eDNA Monitoring

Harriet RhodesAugust 4, 2025July 31, 2025Leave a comment

Field Methods

Can we identify animal behaviours from camera traps without training new AI models?

Post provided by Gaspard Dussert. My name is Gaspard Dussert, and I am a PhD student at the Université Lyon 1, working in the Laboratory of Biometry and Evolutionary Biology (LBBE). My research combines artificial intelligence (AI) with ecology, focusing on automating wildlife monitoring from camera trap images. Camera traps are motion-activated cameras placed in the wild. They are incredibly powerful tools in ecology, helping … Continue reading Can we identify animal behaviours from camera traps without training new AI models?

khanyilenomthiJuly 31, 2025Leave a comment

Journal Issues

Our July Issue is out now!

This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution. Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured MicroEcoTools: An R package for comprehensive theoretical microbial ecology analysis Authors introduce MicroEcoTools, an R package designed to test ecological framework predictions using microbial community data. It assesses microbial diversity and evaluates the relative impacts of stochastic and deterministic … Continue reading Our July Issue is out now!

Harriet RhodesJuly 2, 2025July 2, 2025Leave a comment

Ecology

False Causes, Meet Attractor Dimension

Post provided by Yair Daon Who am I? I’m Yair Daon, a mathematician-turned-epidemiologist at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Medicine. Most days I stare at time-series curves that claim one thing “drives” another. When those claims are wrong, public-health decisions can drift off course. Our new Methods in Ecology & Evolution paper introduces a fast way to shout “no!” before that happens. A two-minute primer for … Continue reading False Causes, Meet Attractor Dimension

plydtantheraJune 30, 2025July 2, 2025Leave a comment

Conservation and management, Ecology

Practical tools to advance Image-Based bio-logging in marine ecosystems

Post provided by Marianna Chimienti My name is Dr Marianna Chimienti, and I am a lecturer in Marine Top Predator Ecology at the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University (UK). I’m fascinated by animal movements. My main research focuses on understanding how, where, when, and why animals move, using bio-logging technology (devices attached to animals that can record location, depth, acceleration, orientation, environmental conditions, … Continue reading Practical tools to advance Image-Based bio-logging in marine ecosystems

plydtantheraJune 25, 2025June 23, 20251 Comment

Code and Applications

An easy-to-manage tool for forest ecosystem modeling—The pnetr R package

Post provided by Xiaojie Gao I am a remote sensing ecologist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Forest department of Harvard University. My research focuses on mapping and understanding the impacts of climate change and human activities on the terrestrial vegetation ecosystems. The development of the pnetr R package for forest ecosystem modeling was inspired by my own research interest in understanding how … Continue reading An easy-to-manage tool for forest ecosystem modeling—The pnetr R package

Harriet RhodesJune 19, 2025June 18, 2025Leave a comment

Field Methods, LGBTQ+

Supporting safe and equitable access to field research

To celebrate Pride Month 2025, we are excited to share a series of blogs and podcasts highlighting useful articles and resources for LGBTQIA+ ecologists and researchers. In each post, the authors behind these resources explain what they are, how they came to produce them, and why they are important. In this post, Elizabeth shares fieldwork advice for researchers with marginalized identities. Post provided by Elizabeth N. … Continue reading Supporting safe and equitable access to field research

Harriet RhodesJune 17, 2025June 10, 2025Leave a comment

Ecology

Charting the Unheard: A Primer for Analysing Toothed Whale Vocal Repertoires

Post provided by Maia Austen Introduction: Why toothed whale voices matter I’m a PhD candidate in the ONDAS Lab at the University of Vermont, advised by Dr. Laura May-Collado. My PhD looks to utilize machine learning analysis to better understand how and why dolphins communicate with each other. Toothed whales – like dolphins and belugas – are among the most acoustically sophisticated animals on Earth. … Continue reading Charting the Unheard: A Primer for Analysing Toothed Whale Vocal Repertoires

Harriet RhodesJune 10, 2025June 10, 2025Leave a comment

Ecology

Predictability or pondering prediction

Post provided by Marieke Wesselkamp At the beginning of this project, we often found ourselves contemplating on the evolution of various environmental systems – some vast and global, others local. These were, for example, the trajectory of elephant populations in the Southern African Kruger national park over the next decades, the change in plant species composition on the roof the neighbour’s garage over the months, … Continue reading Predictability or pondering prediction

Harriet RhodesJune 5, 2025June 3, 2025Leave a comment

Journal Issues

Our June Issue is out now!

This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution, including papers from the special feature Innovation in Practice. Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured ECKOchain: A FAIR blockchain‐based database for long‐term ecological data Open data practices in ecology are increasingly accepted, yet primary long-term ecological data remain hard to find. To incentivise open primary ecological … Continue reading Our June Issue is out now!

Harriet RhodesJune 4, 2025Leave a comment