Metapopulation Microcosm Plates (MMP) are devices which resemble 96-well microtiter plates in size and shape, but with corridors connecting the wells in any configuration desired. They can be used to culture microbial metapopulations or metacommunities with up to 96 habitat patches.
In these two video tutorials, Helen Kurkjian explains how you can assemble, fill and clean MMPs in your lab.
Issue 6.5 is now online!
The May issue of Methods is now online!
We have two freely available articles this month: one Application and one Open Access Article.
– rSPACE: An open-source R package for implementing a spatially based power analysis for designing monitoring programs. This method incorporates information on species biology and habitat to parameterize a spatially explicit population simulation.
Tim Lucas et al. provide this month’s Open Access article: A generalised random encounter model for estimating animal density with remote sensor data. The authors have developed a Generalised Random Encounter Model (gREM) to estimate absolute animal density from count data from both camera traps and acoustic detectors. They show that gREM produces accurate estimates of absolute animal density for all combinations of sensor detection widths and animal signal widths. This model is applicable for count data obtained in both marine and terrestrial environments, visually or acoustically. It could be used for big cats, sharks, birds, echolocating bats, cetaceans and much more. Continue reading “Issue 6.5”
In the past week, MEE has been at the ITN Speciation conference in Jyväskylä. As a result, journal updates have been slower than usual. So here is a quick overview of the new papers available online during the past week: Research papers: Movement ecology of human resource users: using net squared displacement, biased random bridges and resource utilization functions to quantify hunter and gatherer behaviour … Continue reading Latest papers online
Methods will be attending the next ITN Speciation conference 2012 in Jyväskylä, Finland and to mark the occasion, the editorial team has put together a list of some our most relevant work in speciation and evolution. Applications – concise papers describing new software, equipment, or other practical tools: PASSaGE: Pattern Analysis, Spatial Statistics and Geographic Exegesis. Version 2 by Micheal Rosenberg and Corey Anderson RBrownie: … Continue reading Top 10 speciation and evolution papers
Long-term datasets yield a great deal of information and are increasingly used to inform conservation measures. In the first video of the new year, Gary Powney and Tom Oliver show how long-term monitoring data on the Speckled Wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria) from the UK monitoring butterfly scheme can be used to assess functional connectivity of the landscape. In a paper recently published in Methods, Gary … Continue reading Measuring functional connectivity using butterflies
Methods Blog 