Tag: Ecology

Methods papers

Making survival spatial: merging mark-recapture and territory occupancy data to estimate one of ecology’s most elusive patterns

Post provided by Jaume A. Badia-Boher In 1997, a pair of peregrine falcons settled on a cliff in Hungary. It was the first breeding pair in the country since the species disappeared during the pesticide crisis, in the 1960s. Since then, researchers, rangers, and volunteers of MME-BirdLife Hungary’s peregrine conservation group have checked nearly every breeding site, every season, and ringed chicks whenever they could. … Continue reading Making survival spatial: merging mark-recapture and territory occupancy data to estimate one of ecology’s most elusive patterns

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Code and Applications

Dead alien DNA tells the story of underground ecological interactions

Post provided by Liming Cai Much of the species diversity on Earth is driven by biotic interactions. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists, including myself, strive to characterize these phenomena through careful field observation. However, cryptic underground interactions still largely remain a black box even with long-term surveys. Luckily, some of these cryptic interactions, such as plant parasitism, leave a unique genetic footprint that allows researchers to … Continue reading Dead alien DNA tells the story of underground ecological interactions

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Ecology, Methods papers

The roadkill we never see

Post provided by Guillermo Gomez-Peña Roads, power lines and wind turbines kill an enormous number of animals every year. To measure this, researchers go out and count the carcasses we find along these infrastructures. Whatever the infrastructure, however, we are only able to record the animals we can find, which is far fewer than the number that actually die. Researchers have long known these counts … Continue reading The roadkill we never see

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Ecology, Statistical methods, Theoretical methods

Defining species’ ranges in practice, not just in theory

Post provided by Alexa Fredston What is a range edge? Every ecologist and evolutionary biologist knows what the edges of species’ geographic ranges (also called distributions) mean, in theory. But I’ve learned that we have virtually no agreement on what they are in practice. Give ten researchers a dataset of a species’ occurrences and abundances over space and time to calculate where the range edges … Continue reading Defining species’ ranges in practice, not just in theory

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Ecology, Methods papers, Statistical methods

The Baby and the Teddy Bear: The Flash of Insight Behind the WAH-i Algorithm

Post Provided by Ravi Umadi On a sunny morning after heavy snowfall in the Bavarian winter, I stood by the door of an early train to Munich. Bright sunlight streamed through the glass and lit me up. I thought to myself: it was a good day. Moments later, the train screeched to a halt. The driver announced an unscheduled stop and possible disruptions due to … Continue reading The Baby and the Teddy Bear: The Flash of Insight Behind the WAH-i Algorithm

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Methods papers

How to spot river-borne diseases with almost no data

Post provided by Pouria Ramazi When Alberta Environment and Parks brought this problem to our group in 2018, the question was practical. Whirling disease had been detected in Alberta, but testing every stretch of a river was impossible. Could a few scattered fish and worm tests show where the parasite Myxobolus cerebralis was most likely to occur across the Oldman River? I had just begun … Continue reading How to spot river-borne diseases with almost no data

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Ecology

Its never too late – Risk of Bias in ecology and evolutionary biology

Post provided by Antica Čulina Hi, I am Antica. I work as a senior researcher at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Croatia. This is a story about how something that bugged me 15 years ago was finally formalised in a paper on a Risk of Bias assessment in ecological and evolutionary meta-analysis. The take away massage – it is never too late to do the … Continue reading Its never too late – Risk of Bias in ecology and evolutionary biology

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Editor Profiles, Journal updates

Welcoming new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution

Following an open call for applicants at the beginning of 2026, we are pleased to welcome 44 new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution. The researchers joining us span 18 different countries. We are really delighted to have further expanded the expertise on our board so that we can continue to promote the development of new methods in ecology and evolution. Welcome aboard! … Continue reading Welcoming new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution

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Practical Tools

Developing the Mothbox automated light trap

Blog post provided by Hubert A. Szczygieł Origins Back in 2022, I was in Panama working on landscape-scale biodiversity monitoring. The system I was testing included a lot of standard approaches – for example trail cameras for mammals, point counts and passive acoustic monitoring for birds, and Gentry transects for trees. However, I realized that none of the standard insect monitoring methodologies work for large-scale … Continue reading Developing the Mothbox automated light trap

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Methods papers

Forking anatomy: borrowing software’s best idea to build 3D atlases together

Post provided by A. Murat Maga Picture a graduate student who has just spent eighty hours tracing the individual bones of a fish skull, slice by slice, through a high-resolution microCT scan. The result is a beautiful, richly labelled 3D dataset. And then? Too often it lands on a hard drive, or gets flattened into a static 3D model that no one else can edit, … Continue reading Forking anatomy: borrowing software’s best idea to build 3D atlases together

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