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
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the coldest months of the year are upon us. A combination of post-holiday ‘blues’ and the cold, dark mornings make the daily trudge to work all that less inspiring. Recent snow storms in locations such as Newfoundland (Canada), have made it nearly impossible for many people to leave their homes, let alone commute to work. Now cast your mind to a little over 2,000 km north of Newfoundland and imagine the challenges faced with carrying out a job during the coldest, darkest months of the year.
As with every other biome on the planet, polar biomes contain a variety of different species, from bugs to baleen whales. To better understand the different species at our poles, scientists need to collect ecological data, but this is far from a walk in the park.
With the year 2020 marking 200 years since the discovery of Antarctica and the Centenary of ‘vital’ Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge, UK), we wanted to highlight some of the polar research published in the journal, featuring challenges faced and current research being undertaken at the poles.
Continue reading “Methods behind the Madness: Ecology at the Poles”Methods in Ecology and Evolution is turning 10 years old! Back in 2010, we launched the journal because of feedback from the community that there was a need for a journal that promoted the publication of new methods. Founding Editor Rob Freckleton and Graziella Iossa (now a member of the Editorial Board) summarised the aims and ambitions for the journal in the first issue. They … Continue reading Ten Years of Methods in Ecology and Evolution
As many of you will already know, this week is Peer Review Week (16-20 September). Peer Review Week is a global event celebrating the vital work that is done by reviewers in all disciplines. Throughout the week, we’ve been looking back at some of the peer review advice and guidance that we’ve published on the blog. The theme for this year’s Peer Review Week is … Continue reading Thank You to All of Our Reviewers: Peer Review Week 2019
Researchers at Washington State University and Smith-Root recently invented an environmental DNA (eDNA) filter housing that automatically preserves captured eDNA by desiccation. This eliminates the need for filter handling in the field and/or liquid DNA preservatives. The new material is also biodegradable, helping to reduce long-lasting plastic waste associated with eDNA sampling. This video explains their new innovation in the field of eDNA sampling technology: … Continue reading The Self-Preserving eDNA Filter: How It Works and Why You Should Use It
The recent focus on the study of animal social networks has led to some fundamental new insights. These have spanned across fields in ecology and evolution, ranging from epidemiology and learning through to evolution and conservation. Whilst network analysis has been used to address questions about sociality, food webs, bipartite networks and more over the past decade it is now extending into a wider variety … Continue reading Animal Social Networks: Joint Special Feature Open Call
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is #BalanceForBetter. So, we decided that we’d like to take this opportunity to promote an organisation that supports and empowers women and gender minorities in STEM fields that still suffer from underrepresentation. As a journal, we publish a lot of articles on software and code that are used in the study of different fields in ecology and evolutionary biology. We have a wide audience of R coders and R users who follow us on social media and read our blog. With that in mind, R-Ladies seemed like a fairly obvious group for us to promote…
R-Ladies is a global grassroots organisation whose aim is to promote gender diversity in the R community. The R community suffers from an underrepresentation of gender minorities (including but not limited to cis/trans women, trans men, non-binary, genderqueer, agender). This can be seen in every role and area of participation: leaders, package developers, conference speakers, conference participants, educators, users (see recent stats). What a waste of talent!
As a diversity initiative, the mission of R-Ladies is to achieve proportionate representation by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering people of genders currently underrepresented in the R community. So our primary focus is on supporting minority gender R enthusiasts to achieve their programming potential. We’re doing this by building a collaborative global network of R leaders, mentors, learners, and developers to help and encourage individual and collective progress worldwide. Continue reading “R-Ladies: For More Balance in the R Community!”
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 “Methods in Temporal Ecology”
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.
The estimation of population size is one of the primary goals and challenges in wildlife ecology. Within the last decade and a half, a new class of tools has emerged, allowing us to estimate abundance and other key population parameters in specific areas. So-called spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models are growing in popularity not only because they can map abundance, but also because they can be fitted to data collected from a variety of monitoring methods. For example, the ever increasing use of non-invasive monitoring methods, such as camera trapping and non-invasive genetic-sampling, is one of the reason that makes SCR models so popular.
One other strengths of SCR models is the ability to make population level inferences. But the wider the region you’re monitoring, the greater the computational burden, challenging the use of such methods at really large scale. Continue reading “Spatial Capture-Recapture: The Pros and Cons of Aggregating Detections”
