Tag Archives: climate change

Where do Animals Spend Their Time and Energy? Theory, Simulations and GPS Trackers Can Help Us Find Out

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Post provided by MATT MALISHEV (@DARWINANDDAVIS)

An adult sleepy lizard with a GPS tracker and body temperature logger strapped to her tail. ©Mike Bull.


An adult sleepy lizard with a GPS tracker and body temperature logger strapped to her tail. ©Mike Bull.

Changes in temperature and available food determine where and when animals move, reproduce, and survive. Our understanding of how environmental change impacts biodiversity and species survival is well-established at the landscape, country and global scales. But, we know less about what could happen at finer space and time scales, such as within habitats, where behavioural responses by animals are crucial for daily survival.

Simulating Movement and Daily Survival with Individual-Based Movement Models

Key questions at these scales are how the states of individuals (things like body temperature and nutritional condition) influence movement decisions in response to habitat change, and how these decisions relate to patchiness in microclimates and food. So we need tools to make reliable forecasts of how fine-scale habitat use will change under future environments. Individual-based movement simulation models are powerful tools for these kinds of studies. They let you construct habitats that vary in temperature and food conditions in both space and time and ask ‘what if’ questions. By populating these models with activity, behaviour, and movement data of animals, we can simulate different habitat conditions and predict how animals will respond to future change. Continue reading →

Early Spring: Predicting Budburst with Genetics

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Below is a press release about the Methods in Ecology and Evolution article ‘On the importance of accounting for intraspecific genomic relatedness in multi‐species studies‘ taken from the Université de Montréal.

Bud of American beech (Fagus grandifolia). ©Tim Savas

Researchers from Canada and the USA found that tree and shrub genetics can be used to produce more accurate predictions of when leaves will burst bud in the spring. Their study was published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Although climate sceptics might find it hard to believe with this year’s endless snow and freezing temperatures, climate change is making warm, sunny early springs increasingly common. And that affects when trees start to leaf out. But how much?

Simon Joly, biology professor at Université de Montréal and Elizabeth Wolkovich, an ecology professor at University of British Columbia, showed that a plant’s genetics can be used to produce more accurate predictions of when its leaves will burst bud in spring. Continue reading →

Volunteer Ornithological Survey Shows Effects of Temperatures on Eurasian Jay Population

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Below is a press release about the Methods in Ecology and Evolution article ‘Incorporating fine‐scale environmental heterogeneity into broad‐extent models‘ taken from the University of Southampton.

A study led by researchers at the University of Southampton has used data collected by volunteer bird watchers to study how the importance of wildlife habitat management depends on changing temperatures for British birds.

The team studied data from the British Trust for Ornithology’s Bird Atlas 2007 – 11 on the abundance of the Eurasian jay over the whole of Great Britain. The University of Southampton researchers focused on jays for this trial as they are a species of bird known to frequent a mixture of different natural environments. Continue reading →

Using Experimental Methodology to Determine Grassland Response to Climate Change

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Post provided by Heather Hager

©Hajnal Kovacs

In the second chapter of Grasslands and Climate Change – Methodology I: Detecting and predicting grassland change – Jonathan Newman and I take an in-depth look at the experimental methodology that has been used to determine how grassland ecosystems will respond to climate change. When we set out, we were interested in knowing, for example, the magnitudes and types of treatments applied, plot sizes, replication, study durations, and types of response variables that were measured and by how many studies. For simplicity(!), we focused on three treatment types: changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, changes in temperature (mean, minimum, maximum), and changes in precipitation (increases, decreases, timing).

Using the methods of a formal systematic review, we identified 841 relevant studies, for which we extracted information on study location and experimental methodology. There were some surprises, both good and bad. For instance, mean and median plot sizes were actually larger than we had expected. On the other hand, numbers of true experimental replicates were low. Although many of the study methods were well reported, some areas lacked critical detail such as descriptions of (at least) the dominant plant species in the study area.

Continue reading →

Methods in Temporal Ecology

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Post provided by Althea L. Davies & M. Jane Bunting

This post presents our reflections from two sessions at the first British Ecological Society Annual Meeting since the Palaeoecology Special Interest Group (SIG) was formed. Did the term “palaeoecology” make you want to stop reading? Then you’re not alone – our field of ecology seems to have drifted apart from neoecology over the last couple decades. We seem to have been separated by our choice of methods, rather than brought together by the fascinating, complex and essential challenges of better understanding ecosystem function that we share.

The diversity of talks at BES 2018 showed that ecologists working on time scales beyond the scope of direct study are researching the same urgent, exciting questions as other flavours of ecology. And that they are doing it by using an ever-growing range of methods and technologies. The Thematic Session ‘Advancing Our Understanding of Long-Term Ecology’ showcased advances in studies of long-term ecology. The Palaeoecology Oral Session demonstrated the diversity within this field. We don’t have room to mention all presenters, so we’d like to highlight contributions from two speakers in each session which demonstrate how strong the shared ground between palaeoecology and neoecology is. Continue reading →

New Associate Editor: Res Altwegg

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Today, we are pleased to be welcoming a new member of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editor Board. Res Altwegg joins us from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and you can find out a little more about him below.

Res Altwegg

“My interests lie at the intersection between ecology and statistics, particularly in demography, population ecology, species range dynamics and community ecology. My work addresses questions in conservation biology especially in relation to climate change. I’m particularly excited about the increasing availability of large data sets, such as those collected by citizen scientists, and the opportunities and challenges their analysis brings.”

Res is the founding director of the centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation at the University of Cape Town. The centre brings together ecologists and statisticians with the aim to address some of the most important questions in ecology and conservation using cutting-edge statistical methods. He has reviewed for Methods in Ecology and Evolution a number of times over the past few years and has had one article – ‘A general framework for animal density estimation from acoustic detections across a fixed microphone array‘ – published in the journal. Another of Res’ articles has recently been accepted for publication and will appear in an upcoming Special Feature.

We are thrilled to welcome Res as a new Associate Editor and we look forward to working with him on the journal.

What the Past Can Tell Us About the Future: Notes from Crossing the Palaeontological – Ecological Gap

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Post provided by Karen Bacon

I had the pleasure of delivering one of the plenary talks at the first (hopefully of many) Crossing the Palaeontological – Ecological Gap meeting held in the University of Leeds on August 30th and 31st. I’m a geologist and a botanist, so this is a topic that’s close to my heart and my professional interests.

How Palaeoecology Can Help Us Today

©Gail Hampshire

©Gail Hampshire

As we move into an ecologically uncertain future with pressures of climate change, land-use change and resource limitations, the fossil record offers the only truly long-term record of how Earth’s ecosystems respond to major environmental upheaval driven by climate change events. The fossil record is, of course, not without its problems – there are gaps, not everything fossilises in the same way or numbers, and comparisons to today’s ecology are extremely difficult.  It’s these difficulties (and other challenges) that make the uniting of palaeontology and ecology essential to fully address how plants, animals and other organisms have responded to major changes in the past. Perhaps uniting them could give us an idea of what to expect in our near-term future, as carbon dioxide levels return to those not previously experienced on Earth since the Pliocene, over 2 million years ago. Continue reading →

Poles Apart Yet Poles Together

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Post provided by Matt Davey

Earlier this summer, I attended a rather unique conference – Polar2018 in Davos, Switzerland. This conference brought together the two major committees that help govern and coordinate Arctic, Alpine and Antarctic research around the globe – the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) – who also celebrates their 60th Anniversary this year – and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC).

With nearly 2500 delegates over one week it was impressive how talks and sessions kept to time, posters went up and came down, and coffee (good coffee, served with correctly cooked croissants!) was served. The level of organisation you’d hope to see at all conferences, big or small. The venue for Polar2018 was also home to the G7 world economic forum summits and staff seemed at ease with only having 2500 delegates to deal with…

From day one, there was persistent message throughout the conference. Not only does the rest of the human populated world affect the polar environments, but in response, any change in polar ecosystem and environment functioning (biological and non-biological) has a large knock-on effect on the rest of the world. Continue reading →

Improving Biodiversity Monitoring using Satellite Remote Sensing

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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.

In our latest Special Feature, ‘Improving Biodiversity Monitoring using Satellite Remote Sensing‘, Sandra Luque, Nathalie Pettorelli, Petteri Vihervaara and Martin Wegmann explain why tackling this challenge is worth doing. The articles demonstrate how combining satellite remote sensing data with ground observations and adequate modelling can help to give us a better understanding of natural systems, leading to improved management practices. They focus on three key conservation challenges:

  1. Monitoring of biodiversity
  2. Developing an improved understanding of biodiversity patterns
  3. Assessing biodiversity’s vulnerability to climate change

Continue reading →

TV Coverage of Cycling Races Can Help Document the Effects of Climate Change

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Archive footage of the Tour of Flanders obtained by Flemish broadcaster VRT - Flanders Classics

Archive footage of the Tour of Flanders obtained by Flemish broadcaster VRT – Flanders Classics

Analysing nearly four decades of archive footage from the Tour of Flanders, researchers from Ghent University have been able to detect climate change impacts on trees. Their findings were published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

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 →