Are you coming to the Evolution 2018 in Montpellier? Want to share your views on the future of evolution research? Fancy some beer, wine and snacks on us?
We know the history of research and publications in evolution, but what will the future hold?
We would like to invite you to participate in an exciting focus session centred around what the future research landscape might look like through the eyes of up-and-coming researchers.
We’re looking for active researchers (based in universities, research institutes, government agencies, NGOs or the private sector) within about 10 years of having been awarded a PhD. Experienced PhD students who have published in peer reviewed academic journals are also welcome to join. Continue reading “The Future of Research and Publishing in Evolutionary Biology”
The annual BES Macroecology Special Interest Group conference took place on the 10th and 11th of July. This year the meeting was in St Andrews, Scotland. Over 100 delegates came together in this old University town to discuss the latest research and concepts in macroecology and macroevolution.
Remote Sensing, Funky Koalas and a Science Ceilidh
The conference opened with a plenary by Journal of Applied Ecology Senior Editor Nathalie Pettorelli from ZSL. She talked about how remote sensing can be used in ecological and conservation studies. In the other plenary talks, we heard from:
Anne Magurran from the University of St Andrews discussing turnover and biodiversity change
Brian McGill from the University of Maine talking about the data-driven approach to the “biodiversity orthodoxy” and challenging the conventional wisdom about macroecological change
We also hosted a student plenary speaker, Alex Skeels, who gave a lively talk about diversification and geographical modelling using some pretty funky disco koalas. In addition to these talks, there were 60 short 5 minutes talks and 20 posters. Continue reading “BES Macroecology 2018: Macroecology and Data”
Increased access to satellite imagery and new developments in remote sensing data analyses can support biodiversity conservation targets by stepping up monitoring processes at various spatial and temporal scales. More satellite imagery is becoming available as open data. Remote sensing based techniques to capitalise on the information contained in spatially-explicit species data, such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), are developing constantly. Current free and open data policy will have a dramatic impact on our ability to understand how biodiversity is being affected by anthropogenic pressures, while improving our ability to predict the consequences of changes at different scales.
The Struggle is Real: Finding Interesting and Relevant Articles
Where to start? We are awash in data, information, papers, and books. There are hundreds of ecological and environmental journals published regularly around the world; the British Ecological Society alone publishes five journals and is now accepting submissions for a sixth (more information on People and Nature here).
None of us has time even to click on the various articles flagged by alerts, feeds, or keywords, and few even browse tables of contents (which are becoming irrelevant as we move to DOIs and immediate-online publication). Increasingly, we rely on our friends, colleagues, students, and mentors to point us towards papers we might find interesting – further evidence, I suppose, of the importance of good networks for knowledge creation and scientific understanding.
Regular readers of Methods in Ecology and Evolution or this Methods blog may not realise how many methodological papers are published routinely in our BES sister journals. In this inaugural posting of Also of interest…, I highlight three papers recently published in Journal of Applied Ecology that introduce and apply new, model-based methodology to interesting ecological questions. The specific methods are like many seen in the pages of Methods in Ecology and Evolution and suggest general approaches for modelling and studying complex ecological and environmental phenomena. Continue reading “Also of Interest… Journal of Applied Ecology”
Focusing on trees and shrubs growing around recognisable climbs and other ‘landmarks’ along the route of this major annual road cycling race in Belgium, the team looked at video footage from 1981 to 2016 obtained by Flemish broadcaster VRT. They visually estimated how many leaves and flowers were present on the day of the course (usually in early April) and linked their scores to climate data. Continue reading “TV Coverage of Cycling Races Can Help Document the Effects of Climate Change”
Understanding how wild populations respond and adapt to environmental change is a key question in evolutionary biology. To understand this, we need to be able to separate genetic and environmental effects on phenotypic variation. Statistical ‘animal models’, which can do just this, have revolutionised the field of quantitative genetics. A lack of full knowledge of individual pedigrees can lead to severe bias in quantitative genetic parameter estimates though – particularly when genetic values for focal traits vary non-randomly in unknown parents.
Datasets used by quantitative ecologists are getting more and more complex. So we need more complex models, such as hierarchical and complex spatial models. Typically, Bayesian approaches such as Markov chain Monte Carlo have been used. But these methods can be slow, making it infeasible to fit some models.
Statistical and quantitative methods within ecology have increased substantially in recent years. This rise can be attributed both to the growing need to address global environmental change issues, as well as the increase in data sources to address these challenges. Continue reading “Statistical Ecology Virtual Issue”
“…if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes…” (Cobb 1914)
He may have said it more than a century ago but we now, more than ever, realise that Nathan Augustus Cobb was right. Nematodes are by far the most abundant animals soil, freshwater and marine ecosystems. These tiny worms are barely visible to the human eye (if they’re visible at all), hundreds can inhabit a single gram of soil . Their similar shape might lead you to think that they’re all alike, but that’s not the case. More than 25,000 species have been identified and estimates put their entire species diversity in the 100,000s.
This taxonomic and functional diversity has boosted nematodes to become useful bioindicators for soil quality. Nematodes perform many different functions in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. These are mainly defined by what they eat:
Bacteria/Fungi: Many nematode groups eat bacteria and fungi. They control the population of these organisms and keep them active.
Plants: Plant feeders are the unwanted guests in agricultural systems as well as in our gardens. They can destroy entire harvests by piercing into or infiltrating roots.
Omnivores/Predators: Many nematode species prey on other smaller organisms including smaller nematodes and control their abundances.
Parasites: These species inhabit other larger organisms and can act as biocontrol agents.
David Warton interviews Alan Gelfand, a keynote speaker at the Statistics in Ecology and Environmental Monitoring (SEEM) conference in Queenstown, NZ. Alan is best known for proposing Bayesian estimation of a posterior distribution using Gibbs sampling, in his classic papers ‘Sampling-Based Approaches to Calculating Marginal Densities‘ and ‘Illustration of Bayesian Inference in Normal Data Models Using Gibbs Sampling‘. David and Alan discuss the origins of … Continue reading An Interview with Alan Gelfand
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