Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 6.4: Opportunities at the Interface Between Ecology and Statistics

Issue 6.4 is now online!

© Chun-Huo Chiu and Ching-Wen Cheng

The April issue of Methods, which includes our latest Special Feature: “Opportunities at the Interface Between Ecology and Statistics” is now online!

Opportunities ar the Interface Between Ecology and Statistics is a collection of eight articles which arose from the Eco-Stats Symposium at the University of New South Wales (Australia) in July 2013.This Symposium was designed to be a collaborative forum for researchers with interests in ecology and statistics. It brought together internationally recognised leaders in these two fields (such as Jane Elith, Trevor Hastie, Anne Chao and Shirley Pledger) – many of whom have contributed articles to this Special Feature.

The Eco-Stats Symposium was arranged around five special topics, all of which are represented in this issue of Methods. Those five topics are:

In his Editorial for the Special Feature, Guest Editor David Warton suggests that one of the reasons for the success of Methods in Ecology and Evolution may be that it provides a forum for statisticians and ecologists to interact. The articles in this issue, and the conference that gave rise to them, show that these interactions can provide significant benefits for both groups.

There will be another Eco-Stats Symposium at the University of New South Wales in December of this year (8-10 December, 2015).
For more details on this, please click here. Continue reading “Issue 6.4: Opportunities at the Interface Between Ecology and Statistics”

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General, Journal updates, Methods papers, Robert May Prize, Society, Virtual Issues

2014 Robert May Prize Winner: Laure Gallien

The Robert May Prize is awarded annually for the best paper published in Methods by a young author at the start of their research career. We’re delighted to announce that the 2014 winner is Laure Gallien, for her article ‘Identifying the signal of environmental filtering and competition in invasion patterns – a contest of approaches from community ecology‘.

Today, biological invasions are of major concern for maintaining biodiversity. However, understanding what drives the success of invasive species at the scale of the community remains a challenge. Two processes have been described as main drivers of the coexistence between invasive and native species: environmental filtering and competitive interactions. However, recent reviews have shown that competitive interactions are rarely detected, and thus their importance as drivers of invasion success placed under question. But can this be due to pure methodological issues? Using a simulation model of community assembly, Laure and co-authors (Marta Carboni and Tamara Münkemüller) show that the infrequent detection of competition can arise from three important methodological shortcomings, and provide guidelines for future studies of invasion drivers at the scale of the community.

Continue reading “2014 Robert May Prize Winner: Laure Gallien”

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Editor Profiles, General, Journal updates

Associate Editor Profile: LOUISE JOHNSON

Dr Louise Johnson, a population geneticist working on the evolution of genetic systems, has been an Associate Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution since October 2013. In that time she has handled a range of manuscripts falling within her areas of expertise (primarily molecular evolution, population genetics and genomes).

Louise Johnson
Dr Louise Johnson

Louise began her academic career with a degree in Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. She then moved south to complete her PhD on the evolution of mating systems in yeast at Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Austin Burt. Following her successful time in London, she took up post-doctorate positions at the University of Nottingham (working on transposable elements with Professor John Brookfield) and across the Atlantic at the University of Virginia (looking at genome defences with Professor Janis Antonovics and Professor Michael Hood). Louise returned to the UK in 2006 to take up an RCUK Fellowship at the University of Reading and has been there ever since.

As part of our series of Editor Profiles, we asked Louise to tell us about some of her current research:

There are three projects which I am currently working on that I would like to outline. I’ll be discussing the cancer project – or at least the story so far – at the Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5th Anniversary Symposium later this month. Do check out the programme, and I hope to see you there! The whole point of a methods journal is to help each other do our research as well and easily as possible, so there’s a built-in community spirit about MEE, which bodes well for a fun and useful meeting. Before I start I should also say that I’m lucky to have amazing collaborators at Reading and beyond: for the projects below, credit is particularly due to my colleagues Rob Jackson and Tiffany Taylor, who had a huge input, and to Mike Brockhurst at York. Continue reading “Associate Editor Profile: LOUISE JOHNSON”

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General, Meetings

Towards a More Reproducible Ecology

The following post has been provided by Dr Nick Isaac.

Nick is organising the OpenData and Reproducibility Workshop at Charles Darwin House, London on 21 April 2015 (more information below). He is also an Associate Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Macro_finalThe open science movement has been a major force for change in how research is conducted and communicated. Reproducibility lies at the heart of the open science agenda. It’s a broad topic, covering how data are shared, interpreted and reported.

Reproducibility has been advanced by a coalition of publishers (who have been embarrassed by a series of high-profile retractions), funding agencies keen that data should be re-useable after the life of a grant, and young researchers taking a more collaborative attitude than previous generations.

There is now a vast range of tools and platforms to help scientists share data and other materials (e.g. Dryad, Github, Figshare) and to create efficient and reproducible workflows (e.g. Sweave, Markdown, Git and, of course, R). There’s even a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) in Reproducible Research, run out of Johns Hopkins University.

Ecology has lagged behind wet-lab biology and other disciplines in the adoption of reproducibility concepts and there are few examples of ecological studies that are truly reproducible. To address this, we’re running a one-day workshop at Charles Darwin House, London on Tuesday 21 April entitled OpenData & Reproducibility Workshop: the Good Scientist in the Open Science era. Continue reading “Towards a More Reproducible Ecology”

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Methods papers, Statistical methods

Understanding and Presenting YOUR Data

A Beginner’s Guide to Data Exploration and Visualisation with R
by Elena N. Ieno and Alain F. Zuur

A Beginner's Guide to Data ExplorationIn 2010 Alain Zuur, Elena Ieno and Chris Elphick published a paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution entitled ‘A protocol for data exploration to avoid common statistical problems‘ (Volume 1, Issue 1). Little did they know at the time that this paper would become one of the journal’s all-time top downloaded and top cited papers, with a total of 22,472 downloads between 2010 and 2014.

Based on this success they decided to extend the material in the paper into a book.

Zuur and his colleagues at Highland Statistics ltd. give about 25 five-day statistics courses per year. Their typical audience consists of biological scientists at the post-graduate and post-doctoral levels. Early on in each course they have the following conversation with the participants:

Speaker: “Do you review submitted manuscripts for journals?”
Audience: “Yes.”
Speaker: “Do you like the statistical part of these manuscripts?”
Audience: “No!”
Speaker: “Do you understand the statistical part?”
Audience: “Not always.”

What if there were ways you could make reviewing your paper easier and more enjoyable for reviewers? What if making your manuscript easier to understand and nicer to read would increase the likelihood of your work being published?

A Beginner’s Guide to Data Exploration and Visualisation with R explains how you can do exactly that! Alain Zuur and Elena Ieno use ecological datasets to discuss the data exploration and visualisation tools you can use to make your paper simpler for readers and reviewers to understand. The authors also explain how to visualise the results of statistical models, an important aspect of scientific papers. Continue reading “Understanding and Presenting YOUR Data”

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Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 6.3

Issue 6.3 is now online!

The March issue of Methods is now online!

We have three freely available Applications articles in this issue. Anyone can access these with no subscription required and no charge to download.

– TR8: This R package was built to provide plant scientists with a simple tool for retrieving plant functional traits from freely accessible online traitbases.

– StereoMorph: A new R package for the rapid and accurate collection of 3D landmarks and curves using two standard digital cameras.

– MotionMeerkat: A new standalone program that identifies motion events from a video stream. This tool reduces the time needed to review videos and accommodates a variety of inputs.

This month we have a total of FIVE Open Access articles. That makes eight articles in this issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution that you can read for free!

Continue reading “Issue 6.3”

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General

My Career in Science (and Elsewhere)

The following is a piece written by Jane Elith, the author highlighted in our first International Women’s Day article. Dr Elith also won the Recognition of Achievement for a Research Paper award for Methods in Ecology and Evolution in 2014 (you can read her full paper here).

 We asked Jane: what drew you to a career in science?

Jane Elith MEE Recognition of Achievement for a Research Paper Award Winner
Dr Jane Elith

I’ve always loved nature, and at school found I was better at science than other subjects. Obvious choices for university would have been Quantitative Ecology or Conservation Biology, but back in the early 1970s such courses didn’t exist in Melbourne. I decided on a Bachelor of Science (Forestry) – science, but focused on trees. However that wasn’t to be – the Head of Forestry advised me that there was no future for women in Forestry. By memory, his reasoning was that there were no facilities for women in the field and entrenched attitudes amongst foresters would make it impossible to get a job. I can’t quite believe, looking back, that I accepted that and changed tracks. But I did.

Continue reading “My Career in Science (and Elsewhere)”

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Editor Profiles

Senior Editor Profile: JANA VAMOSI

As many of you will already know, Dr Vamosi is the newest (and first female) Senior Editor for Methods in Ecology and Evolution. She joined Rob Freckleton and Bob O’Hara in June of 2014 and has been working on manuscripts ever since. Jana is also organising the Canadian half of our 5th Anniversary Symposium in April (the Early Bird deadline for which is approaching – Friday 20 March). We are also running a Poster Session at this event; if you would be interested in submitting a poster, please contact Jana here.

Jana VamosiThe research in Jana’s lab focuses on the macroevolution, macroecology, community ecology, and conservation biology of plants. Many of their projects require gathering empirical data on the mechanistic underpinnings of plant diversity in specific locales. However, they often incorporate global phylogenetic perspectives as well. You can learn more about the lab’s work here.

Jana’s most recent publications include ‘Species and Phylogenetic Heterogeneity in Visitation Affects Reproductive Success in an Island System’ (along with Lorraine Adderley) which was published in International Journal of Plant Sciences in February and ‘Evolutionary ecology of specialization: insights from phylogenetic analysis’ (along with W Scott Armbruster and Susanne S Renner) first published in October 2014.

As part of our International Women’s Day activities, we wanted to have a short profile on Jana. Luckily, she had recently written one for the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference which will be taking place at the University of Guelph from 18 August to 21 August 2015. Jana will be giving a Plenary session (along with Charles Godfrey and Naomi Pierce) on Ecological Interactions.

The following was originally posted on the International Barcode of Life Conference Continue reading “Senior Editor Profile: JANA VAMOSI”

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General, Journal updates, Meetings

Our 5th Anniversary Symposium

Charles Darwin House, London, UK: 10:00 – 18:00 (GMT) Alberta Room, Dining Centre, University of Calgary, Canada: 08:30 – 17:00 (MST) 22 April 2015 Methods in Ecology and Evolution, the British Ecological Society’s youngest journal, turns five this year. To celebrate we will be holding a joint Symposium – beginning in the UK and concluding in Canada. We will be hearing what’s in store for … Continue reading Our 5th Anniversary Symposium

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Conservation and management, Journal updates, Methods papers

Flawed Method puts Tiger Rise in Doubt

The following is a press release about the Methods paper ‘An examination of index-calibration experiments: counting tigers at macroecological scales‘ taken from the University of Oxford News and Events page:

Flaws in a method commonly used in censuses of tigers and other rare wildlife put the accuracy of such surveys in doubt, a new study suggests.

A team of scientists from theNH_QT_K2934024 University of Oxford, Indian Statistical Institute, and Wildlife Conservation Society exposes, for the first time, inherent shortcomings in the ‘index-calibration’ method that means it can produce inaccurate results. Amongst recent studies thought to be based on this method is India’s national tiger survey (January 2015) which claimed a surprising but welcome 30 percent rise in tiger numbers in just four years.

The team urges conservation practitioners to guard against these sources of error, which could mislead even the best conservation efforts, and suggests a constructive way forward using alternative methods of counting rare animals that avoid the pitfalls of the index-calibration approach.

A report of the research is published this week in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Continue reading “Flawed Method puts Tiger Rise in Doubt”

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