Assessing impacts of ocean warming on marine fishes

Post provided by Chi-Yun Kuo

Predicting the effects of ocean warming is vital for understanding the likely impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems. In this post, Chi-Yun Kuo shares insights from his recent publication in Methods in Ecology and Evolution which develops a framework for estimating the effects of warming water on communities of marine fishes, and discusses the implications for conservation, food security, and other ecosystem services.

Ben WhittakerMay 4, 2022Leave a comment

Robert May Prize

Tropical forest structure and diversity: a comparison of methodological choices

Post provided by Cléber Rodrigo de Souza

Each year Methods in Ecology and Evolution awards the Robert May Prize to the best paper published in the journal by an author at the start of their career. Ten Early Career Researchers made the shortlist for this year’s prize, including Cléber Rodrigo de Souza who is a data scientist at the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil. In this interview, Cléber shares insights on their paper ‘Tropical forests structure and diversity: a comparison of methodological choices’.

Ben WhittakerApril 12, 2022Leave a comment

Conservation and management, Statistical methods

Let’s get real: translating species distribution models into conservation practice

Post provided by Veronica F. Frans

Species distribution models (SDMs) are popular methods for identifying important habitats for species, but what does it take to translate SDMs into conservation practice? In this post, Veronica Frans discusses the applications of iSDMdb as featured in the paper, “Integrated SDM database: enhancing the relevance and utility of species distribution models in conservation management”, recently published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Ben WhittakerNovember 10, 2021Leave a comment

Conservation and management, Statistical methods

A new tool to identify important sites for conservation using tracking data

Post provided by Martin Beal, Steffen Oppel, Jonathan Handley, Richard Phillips, Paulo Catry, and Maria Dias.

Identifying areas around the world that can best contribute to the conservation of wild animals is a major challenge. Historically, this required conducting extensive surveys in the field, but with the advent of miniature tracking technology we can now follow animals and allow them to indicate which areas they depend on most. In this collaborative post, international researchers from ISPA – Instituto Universitário in Lisbon, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, BirdLife International, and British Antarctic Survey present a new conservation tool as outlined in the paper “track2KBA: An R package for identifying important sites for biodiversity from tracking data” recently published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Ben WhittakerSeptember 28, 2021Leave a comment

Conservation and management, Lab Methods, Robert May Prize

Ultrasound for trees? Using focused ultrasound technology as a new method of DNA extraction

Post provided by Hal Holmes

Each year Methods in Ecology and Evolution awards the Robert May Prize to the best paper in the journal by an author at the start of their career. Hal Homes has been shortlisted for their article ‘Focused ultrasound extraction (FUSE) for the rapid extraction of DNA from tissue matrices’. In this blog, Hal discusses how their paper came to be and the future applications of FUSE technology.

Ben WhittakerApril 28, 2021April 28, 20211 Comment

Conservation and management, Field Methods, Methods papers, Statistical methods

Searching for snow leopards

Post provided by Ian Durbach and Koustubh Sharma

Snow leopard captured via camera trap in Mongolia. Picture credit: Snow Leopard Conservation Foundation/Snow Leopard Trust/Panthera (OR SLCF/SLT/PF).

Snow leopards are notoriously elusive creatures and monitoring their population status within the remote, inhospitable habitats they call home, can be challenging. In this post, co-authors Ian Durbach and Koustubh Sharma discuss the applications of their Methods in Ecology and Evolution article, ‘Fast, flexible alternatives to regular grid designs for spatial capture–recapture’, for monitoring snow leopard populations.

streamdnaFebruary 15, 2021February 11, 2021Leave a comment

Editor Recommendations, Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 11.4: Population Dynamics, Machine Learning, Morphometrics and More

The April issue of Methods is now online!

The latest issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is now online! This month’s issue is a little shorter than our last few. But, as they say, good things come in small packages!

Senior Editor Lee Hsiang Liow has selected six Featured Articles this month. You can find out about all of them below. We’ve also got five Applications articles and a Practical Tools article in the April issue that we’re going to cover. Those six papers are freely available to everyone – no subscription required!

On top of all that, the April issue includes articles on camera traps, land cover classification, presence-absence sampling and more.

India StephensonApril 3, 2020Leave a comment

Conservation and management, Methods papers

Using Shark Scales to Unlock the Secrets of Historical Shark Communities on Coral Reefs

Post provided by Erin Dillon

Close your eyes for a second and imagine a coral reef. What do you think the shark community on that reef looked like historically?

Grey reef sharks on Palmyra Atoll’s forereef. ©Darcy Bradley.

Perhaps you imagined a remote reef with high shark abundance like Fakarava, French Polynesia or Palmyra Atoll, Northern Line Islands. Maybe you thought of a marine protected area such as Jardines de la Reina National Park in Cuba. Or perhaps you relied on your own memories from snorkeling on reefs in the past or photos of reefs taken decades ago.

The answer to this question depends on a reef’s location, given that shark abundances can vary with primary productivity and other oceanographic features. It also depends on which time period you chose as your reference point. Shark abundances can fluctuate over the course of a few hours – as well as over days to years to decades and beyond. Even if you chose the same time and place as the person before you, you might have come up with a slightly different answer. This variation in how we determine baselines – overlaid on a backdrop of natural variation in shark communities over space and time – can contribute to differing perceptions about what’s natural or what a depleted population can possibly be restored to.

India StephensonMarch 18, 2020Leave a comment

Conservation and management, Methods papers, Statistical methods

Using Artificial Intelligence to Track Birds’ Dark-of-Night Migrations

Below is a press release about the Methods in Ecology and Evolution article ‘MistNet: Measuring historical bird migration in the US using archived weather radar data and convolutional neural networks‘ taken from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

On many evenings during spring and fall migration, tens of millions of birds take flight at sunset and pass over our heads, unseen in the night sky. Though these flights have been recorded for decades by the National Weather Services’ network of constantly-scanning weather radars, until recently these data have been mostly out of reach for bird researchers.

“That’s because the sheer magnitude of information and lack of tools to analyse it made only limited studies possible,” says artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Dan Sheldon at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Continue reading “Using Artificial Intelligence to Track Birds’ Dark-of-Night Migrations”

India StephensonSeptember 24, 2019Leave a comment

Code and Applications, Conservation and management, Methods papers

Atlantis: A Model for Biophysical, Economic and Social Elements of Marine Ecosystems

Post provided by ASTA AUDZIJONYTE, Heidi Pethybridge, Javier Porobic, Rebecca Gorton, Isaac Kaplan, and Elizabeth A. Fulton

Increased Demands on a Crowded Ocean

Multiple demands on, and uses of, the ocean. ©Frank Shepherd

The ocean was once a limitless frontier, primed for exploitation of fish and other marine life. Today, a scan of the coastline (in our case off Australia and the US) shows an ocean landscape dotted with aquaculture pens, wind farms, eco-tours, and oil rigs, as well as commercial and recreational fishing boats. This presents marine and maritime managers with the huge challenge of balancing competing social, conservation, and economic objectives. Trade-offs arise even from success stories. For example, seal and sea lion populations are recovering from centuries of hunting, which is great. But now they’re preying heavily on economically valuable species like salmon and cod, creating potential tensions between fisheries and conservation communities. Ecosystem-based management is one way that we can start to address these trade-offs. Continue reading “Atlantis: A Model for Biophysical, Economic and Social Elements of Marine Ecosystems”

India StephensonAugust 27, 2019September 5, 20191 Comment

Methods Blog

Tag: conservation