I’m Willem Bonnaffé, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. In my research, I integrate biological data, mathematical modelling, and machine learning. I spend most of my time modelling natural systems with neural ordinary differential equations – NODEs or Neural ODEs for short. In this blog post, I am hoping to shed light on what these models are and how I came to use … Continue reading Detangling NODEs
Post provided by Lotte de Vries Animals and plants exhibit a wide range of patterns of longevity, growth, and reproduction but the general drivers of this enormous variation in life history are poorly understood. Comparative demography uses large demographic databases to attempt to identify patterns in life-history strategies across the tree of life (e.g. this PNAS paper, and this one). In this paper, we show … Continue reading Does my species senesce?
Megan Laxton and colleagues originally set out to translate an existing example of a species distribution model into a new software framework. However, what originated as a simple modelling example developed into a discussion on structural complexity in species distribution models. Complexity in Species Distribution Models The original idea for our paper was to provide a worked example demonstrating the usage of the R package … Continue reading Increasing Complexity in Species Distribution Modelling
Post provided by Alison Binley As a new Master’s student at Carleton University, I was excited to learn the ins and outs of using community science data (also known commonly as citizen science, participatory research, and crowd-sourced data) to conduct conservation research. I was working on estimating population trends using eBird, a popular, opportunistic community science platform that collects data on birds, and fascinated by … Continue reading The Data Double Standard: how this article came to be
I was born in the Colombian Andes (Armenia, Quindío) back in the 90s. I received my bachelor’s degree in Biology from Universidad del Valle, in Cali, Colombia, in 2015. I moved to the US in 2016 to pursue a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona – a degree that I completed in Fall of 2020. Although my research interests seem … Continue reading Early career research: Increasing access, reproducibility and transparency in phylogenetic analyses with Cristian Román-Palacios
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. Today we present the shortlisted papers for 2019’s award, based on articles published in volume 10 of the journal. The winner will be chosen by the journal’s Senior Editors in a few weeks. Keep an eye on the blog … Continue reading 2019 Robert May Early Career Researcher Prize Shortlist
The Robert May Prize is awarded annually for the best paper published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution by an Early Career Researcher. We’re delighted to announce that the 2015 winner is Kim Calders, for his article ‘Nondestructive estimates of above-ground biomass using terrestrial laser scanning‘.
Kim led the work on this article and had an international team of co-authors. They have developed a way to harness laser technology for use in measurements of vegetation structure of forests. The study is an important development in the monitoring of carbon stocks for worldwide climate policy-making. Continue reading “2015 Robert May Prize Winner: Kim Calders”
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