This week David Warton (Methods’ Associate Editor) received the 2014 Christopher Heyde Medal from the Australian Academy of Sciences for contributions in probability theory, statistical methodology and their applications. He gave a talkto the academy, which he’s summarised in this article, originally published onThe Conversation.
Sorry Rick – you should’ve been left behind about three decades ago (along with some algorithms). Claudio Poblete/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND
By David Warton
It’s an exciting time to be doing statistics. You heard me – statistics: exciting.
It often gets a bad rap, but stats is after all at the business end of the research process. When I’ve collaborated on studies of megafauna, leopard seals, police confessions, a new casino game or climate change effects on biodiversity, the point where researchers find out their results and have those “Eureka!” moments is more often than not in front of a computer rather than out in the field.
Now is an especially good time to be a statistician because the technological revolution over the past couple of decades has blown the field wide open – but despite this, some researchers continue to use outdated and inadequate statistical methods.
The sooner we can change this, the better.
Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
When I started high school (around 25 years ago) computers looked like the one pictured right. They had 64kB memory. And this compressed digital image is more than 100kB, meaning that this poor computer doesn’t have enough memory to look at this picture of itself!
Issue 5.5 is now online! This months issue includes articles on species distribution models, detection and diversity, and movement and modelling. We have 2 open access papers on calculating second derivatives of population growth rates for ecology and evolution by Esther Shyu and Hal Caswell, and understanding co-occurrence by modelling species simultaneously with a Joint Species Distribution Model (JSDM) by Laura Pollock et al. Mick … Continue reading Issue 5.5
Originally posted on Michael McCarthy's Research: Update: The paper is now available (free) from Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Species might tend to occur together, or they might tend to occur apart. Factors driving these patterns can include environmental variables or species interactions. Species distribution models can predict the probability of occurrence of species, but they rarely account for the joint occurrence of multiple… Continue reading Joint Species Distribution Models
University of Notre Dame scientists have now published the first detailed investigation of just how small (or big) environmental DNA, or eDNA, particles really are, and their results provide important guidance for all eDNA monitoring programs.
Like investigators combing a crime scene for DNA traces from suspects or victims, ecologists now apply similar genetic tests to search the environment for important species. These traces of animal or plant DNA in water, soil and air are called environmental DNA. Aquatic eDNA monitoring is emerging as a powerful way to detect harmful species like invasive Asian carp and Burmese pythons or beneficial species like Chinook salmon and Idaho giant salamander. Because this tool is new, little is known about these tiny DNA-containing bits and how to best capture them from water.
Using common carp, one of the 30 worst invasive species worldwide, the researchers found eDNA in particles ranging from smaller than a mitochondrion to larger than a grain of table salt. Most of the eDNA was in particles between 1 and 10 micrometers, about the same diameter as a single strand of spider silk. Continue reading “Notre Dame study reveals that particle size matters for environmental DNA monitoring”
A mathematical tool used by the Metropolitan Police and FBI has been adapted by researchers at Queen Mary University of London to help control outbreaks of malaria, and has the potential to target other infectious diseases.
In cases of serial crime such as murder or rape, police typically have too many suspects to consider, for example, the Yorkshire Ripper investigation in the UK generated a total of 268,000 names. To help prioritise these investigations, police forces around the world use a technique called geographic profiling, which uses the spatial locations of the crimes to make inferences about the criminal’s likely anchor point – usually a home or workplace.
Writing in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, the team has shown how the maths that underpins geographic profiling can be adapted to target the control of infectious diseases, including malaria. Using data from an outbreak in Cairo, the scientists show how the new model could use the addresses of patients with malaria to locate the breeding sites of the mosquitoes that transmit the disease.
“The experts working in the field had to search almost 300 square km to find seven breeding sites, but our model found the same sites after searching just two thirds of this area,” said Dr Steve Le Comber, a senior lecturer at QMUL’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.
“In fact our model found five of the seven sites after searching just 10.7 square km. This is potentially important since there is a lot of evidence suggesting that the best way to control outbreaks of malaria is to attack the mosquito breeding sites – but it is incredibly difficult to do in practice.”
The mathematical approach takes just minutes on a computer, meaning that the method could be used in the early stages of epidemics, when control efforts are most likely to be effective – potentially stopping outbreaks before they spread.
This contour map shows the number of cases in Cairo, Egypt. The observed data points are shown as red circles, while the empirically identified sources are shown as blue dots.
Dr Le Comber added: “The model has potential to identify the source of other infectious diseases as well, and we’re now working with public health bodies to develop it further for use with TB, cholera and Legionnaires’ disease.” Continue reading “Criminal profiling technique targets killer diseases”
Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have processed existing data on global UV-B radiation in such a way that scientists can use them to find answers to many ecological questions. According to the paper published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, an online journal of the British Ecological Society, this data set allows drawing new conclusions about the global distribution of animal and plant species.
Average intensity of global UV-B radiation – mean UV-B of highest month. (Tomáš Václavík/UFZ)Average intensity of global UV-B radiation – mean UV-B of lowest month. (Tomáš Václavík/UFZ)
Many research projects study the effects of temperature and precipitation on the global distribution of plant and animal species. However, an important component of climate research, the UV-B radiation, is often neglected. The landscape ecologists from UFZ in collaboration with their colleagues from the Universities in Olomouc (Czechia), Halle and Lüneburg have processed UV-B data from the U.S. NASA space agency in such a way that they can be used to study the influence of UV-B radiation on organisms.
The basic input data were provided by a NASA satellite that regularly, since 2004, orbits the Earth at an altitude of 705 kilometres and takes daily measurements of the UV-B radiation. “For us, however, not daily but the long-term radiation values are crucial, as these are relevant for organisms”, says the UFZ researcher Michael Beckmann, the lead author of the study. The researchers therefore derived six variables from the UV-B radiation data. These include annual average, seasonality, as well as months and quarters with the highest or lowest radiation intensity.
By Pat Backwell Associate Editor, Methods in Ecology and Evolution Is it necessary to study animals in their natural environment? It is often hot, uncomfortable, tiring, and rainy. You come home with mosquito bites, sore feet and sunburn. Can’t you just collect the animals and study them in the laboratory? Those of us who spend long periods in the field, watching real animals doing real … Continue reading Is fieldwork essential?
Issue 5.4 is now online! Included are 2 freely available application articles: PopGenReport: simplifying basic population genetic analyses in R, by Aaron T. Adamack and Bernd Gruber, and RangeShifter: a platform for modelling spatial eco-evolutionary dynamics and species’ responses to environmental changes by Greta Bocedi et al. There is also an open access article: Measuring telomere length and telomere dynamics in evolutionary biology and ecology, … Continue reading Issue 5.4
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 2013 winner is Will Pearse, for his Application article “phyloGenerator: an automated phylogeny generation tool for ecologists”. Although ecologists frequently want to make use of phylogenies, they often lack the skills to create detailed … Continue reading 2013 Robert May Prize Winner
Issue 5.3 is now online, including research on stable isotopes, distribution modelling, agriculture, habitat monitoring and surveys. There is a freely available Application article, Geographic assignment with stable isotopes in IsoMAP, by Gabe Bowen et al., and an open access article, Predicting local and non-local effects of resources on animal space use using a mechanistic step selection model, by Jonathan Potts et al. About the cover: Vegetation … Continue reading Issue 5.3
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