Meetings

Ecology Hackathon at Ecology Across Borders 2017

Post provided by Gergana Daskalova

Brainstorming ideas at the Ecology Hackathon in Ghent.
Brainstorming ideas at the Hackathon.

Imagine an ecologist. Now imagine a programmer. Did you imagine the same person? If you were at the Ecology Hackathon on the day before the Ecology Across Borders (#EAB2017) conference in Ghent, Belgium (a joint conference between the BES, GFÖ, NecoV and EEF), you probably did (or at least we hope you did!).

Ecology is becoming increasingly quantitative and, as a result, we can add one more item on our daily to do lists as scientists:

  • Think of questions
  • Go on fieldwork / run simulations
  • Supervise students
  • Meet with our own supervisors
  • Teach
  • Write articles and review manuscripts
  • Answer emails
  • And now code as well

A Coding Community

Coding doesn’t need to be a lonely activity – one of the areas where it truly shines is collaborative coding. This can take us across borders and bring us together to figure out the best way to answer our research questions. That is exactly what the EAB Ecology Hackathon set out to do. Continue reading “Ecology Hackathon at Ecology Across Borders 2017”

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Editor Profiles, Journal updates

New Associate Editor: Chris Sutherland

Today, we are pleased to welcome the latest new member of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editor Board. Chris Sutherland joins us from the University of Massachusetts, USA and you can find out a little more about him below. Chris Sutherland “I’m an applied ecologist with a focus on spatial population ecology. I am particularly interested in understanding how spatial processes such as movement, … Continue reading New Associate Editor: Chris Sutherland

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Evolution, Methods papers

Exploring Coevolutionary History: Do Entire Communities Shape the Evolution of Individual Species?

Post provided by Laura Russo, Katriona Shea, and Adam Miller

Diffuse Coevolution

Interactions between plants and pollinators tend to be highly generalized.
Interactions between plants and pollinators tend to be highly generalized.

In 1980, Janzen published an article titled “When is it coevolution?” where he explained the concept of diffuse coevolution: the idea that evolution of interacting species is shaped by entire communities, rather than simple paired interactions. This idea, though compelling, remains poorly understood, and strong evidence of diffuse coevolution acting on a community is lacking. Perhaps this is because there’s a lack of consensus on what would constitute evidence in support of the concept of diffuse coevolution, or, indeed, coevolution in general (Nuismer et al 2010). Continue reading “Exploring Coevolutionary History: Do Entire Communities Shape the Evolution of Individual Species?”

Unknown's avatarIndia Stephenson1 Comment
Journal updates

Policy on Publishing Code: Encouraging Good Practice to Ensure Quality

Following on from our sponsorship of the Guide to Reproducible Code in Ecology and Evolution and our collaboration with rOpenSci, we have now released a new policy on publishing code. The main objective of this policy is to make sure that high quality code is readily available to our readers.

We’ve set out four key principles to help achieve this, as well as explaining what code outputs we publish, giving some examples of things that make it easier to review code, and giving some advice on how to store code once it’s been published. Below is a summary of some highlights of the policy, but you can find it in full on the Methods in Ecology and Evolution website. Continue reading “Policy on Publishing Code: Encouraging Good Practice to Ensure Quality”

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Conservation and management, Journal updates, Methods papers

New Studies Aim to Boost Social Science Methods in Conservation Research

Below is a press release about the Methods Special Feature ‘Qualitative Methods for Eliciting Judgements for Decision Making‘ taken from the University of Exeter.

Scientists have produced a series of papers designed to improve research on conservation and the environment.

A group of researchers have contributed to a Special Feature of the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution to examine commonly used social science techniques and provide a checklist for scientists to follow.

Traditional conservation biology has been dominated by quantitative data (measured in numbers) but today it frequently relies on qualitative methods such as interviews and focus group discussions. The aim of the special issue is to help researchers decide which techniques are most appropriate for their study, and improve the “methodological rigour” of these techniques. Continue reading “New Studies Aim to Boost Social Science Methods in Conservation Research”

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Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 9.1: Qualitative Methods for Eliciting Judgements for Decision Making

Issue 9.1 is now online!

Our first issue of 2018, which includes our latest Special Feature – “Qualitative methods for eliciting judgements for decision making” – is now online!

This new Special Feature is a collection of five articles (plus an Editorial from Guest Editors Bill Sutherland, Lynn Dicks, Mark Everard and Davide Geneletti) brings together authors from a range of disciplines (including ecology, human geography, political science, land economy and management) to examine a set of qualitative techniques used in conservation research. They highlight a worrying extent of poor justification and inadequate reporting of qualitative methods in the conservation literature.

As stated by the Guest Editors in their Editorial “these articles constitute a useful resource to facilitate selection and use of some common qualitative methods in conservation science. They provide a guide for inter-disciplinary researchers to gauge the suitability of each technique to their research questions, and serve as a series of checklists for journal editors and reviewers to determine appropriate reporting.”

All of the articles in the ‘Qualitative methods for eliciting judgements for decision making‘  Special Feature are all freely available.
Continue reading “Issue 9.1: Qualitative Methods for Eliciting Judgements for Decision Making”

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Methods papers, Online extras

Satellite Data Fusion for Ecologists and Conservation Scientists

What is satellite data fusion, and how can it benefit ecologists and conservation scientists? In a new Methods in Ecology and Evolution video, Henrike Schulte-to-Bühne answers this question using whiteboards and questionable drawing skills. The availability and accessibility of multispectral and radar satellite remote sensing (SRS) imagery are at an unprecedented high. However, despite the benefits of combining multispectral and radar SRS data, data fusion techniques, including image … Continue reading Satellite Data Fusion for Ecologists and Conservation Scientists

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Journal updates

Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2017: The Year in Review

Happy New Year! We hope that you all had a wonderful Winter Break and that you’re ready to start 2018. We’re beginning the year with a look back at some of our highlights of 2017. Here’s how last year looked at Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

The Articles

We published some amazing articles in 2017, too many to mention them all here. However, we would like to take a moment to thank all of the Authors, Reviewers and Editors who contributed to the journal last year. Your time and effort make the journal what it is and we are incredibly grateful. THANK YOU for all of your hard work!

Technological Advances at the Interface between Ecology and Statistics

Our first Special Feature of the year came in the April issue of the journal. The idea for Technological Advances at the Interface between Ecology and Statistics  came from the 2015 Eco-Stats Symposium at the University of New South Wales and the feature was guest edited by Associate Editor David Warton. It consists of five articles based on talks from that conference and shows how interdisciplinary collaboration help to solve problems around estimating biodiversity and how it changes over space and time.

Continue reading “Methods in Ecology and Evolution 2017: The Year in Review”

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Meetings, Society

Ecology, do we have a problem?

Last week many of us were at the Ecology Across Borders meeting in Ghent, catching up with friends, making new friends, and listening to talks about the latest ecological science. Many of us, of course, were also following social media. On the statistics social media scene a lot of attention was being paid to a post on Medium by Kristian Lum: Statistics, we have a … Continue reading Ecology, do we have a problem?

Unknown's avatarBob O'H6 Comments
Methods papers

What About Winter? Accounting for the Snow Season When We Simulate Climate Warming

Post provided by Rebecca Sanders-DeMott and Pamela Templer

Processes that occur in winter are a significant component of annual carbon and nutrient cycles. ©Travel Stock Photos
Processes that occur in winter are a significant component of annual carbon and nutrient cycles. ©Travel Stock Photos

The climate is changing throughout the globe with consequences for the biogeochemical processes and ecological relationships that drive ecosystems. Scientists have been conducting manipulative experiments to determine the effect of climate warming on ecosystems for several decades. These experiments allow us to observe ecosystem responses before the climate changes occur and have yielded invaluable insight that has expanded our understanding of the natural world.

There is a wide range of creative approaches to mimicking climate warming that have been used, for example open-topped chambers which passively heat small areas of soil and small stature plants (like the ITEX global network), burying heating cables in the soil to directly increase soil temperatures (e.g. Harvard Forest experiments), infrared heating lamps (like Jasper Ridge), or even large scale chambers that can encompass taller stature plants like trees and actively warm the air (like the SPRUCE experiment). The focus of much of these inquiries has been on changes that occur during the growing season, when biological activity is at its peak. Continue reading “What About Winter? Accounting for the Snow Season When We Simulate Climate Warming”

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