In this series, we explore the unique experiences of field ecologists conducting research in remote field stations during the holiday season. Through personal stories and reflections, our contributors share what it’s like to conduct scientific work in remote, biodiverse environments, where the challenges of research intersect with the spirit of the holidays. From the solitude of secluded field stations to unexpected festive moments in the … Continue reading From the Field to Museums: Uncovering the Hidden Insect World of the Galápagos Islands.
In this series, we explore the unique experiences of field ecologists conducting research in remote field stations during the holiday season. Through personal stories and reflections, our contributors share what it’s like to conduct scientific work in remote, biodiverse environments, where the challenges of research intersect with the spirit of the holidays. From the solitude of secluded field stations to unexpected festive moments in the … Continue reading A Remote Holiday Season: Research and Reflections at the Succulent Karoo Station.
Studies of ecosystem function are studies of action: of insects pollinating flowers, of predators killing pests – and in our case (well, more often than not) of beetles disposing of dung. To isolate the effects of the critters that we think will matter, we need to selectively include or exclude them. If we think a particular species or species group is responsible for a certain function, then we test this by keeping it in or out of enclosures. If we want to look at effects of species diversity, then we create communities of different species richness.
Depending on the target organism, this is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult. But it almost invariably proves to be fun! We enjoy the challenge of inventing new techniques for unravelling ecosystem functions sustained by insects. Working on dung beetles – as we tend to do – can be messy, but it’s definitely never boring.
In targeting ecosystem functions, the real trick is to make the experiments relevant. What we want to understand are the effects of changes occurring in the real world. All too often studies of ecosystem functions have been focused on artificial species pools in artificial settings. To see how we have solved this, we’ll give you a quick look at our dungy portfolio of approaches to date. Continue reading “Disentangling Ecosystem Functions: Our Imagination is the Limit”
Modern technology offers some really exciting new opportunities for the use of citizen science, and in our newest video Jonathan Silvertown, Open University, gives a demonstration of Evolution MegaLab, a huge collaboration exploring the use of citizen science methods to undertake high-quality surveys of polymorphism in a wild species. Jonathan demonstrates the site’s display of historical polymorphism data, some features designed to enable researchers to assess the … Continue reading Evolution MegaLab
In this video to accompany their paper Randomization tests for quantifying species importance to ecosystem function, authors Nicholas Gotelli and Fernando Maestre discuss the introduction of simple tests for measuring the effect of species on ecosystem variables, and give us an insight into the logistics required for their paper’s “natural experiements” – involving the collection and preparation of over 25,000 lichen samples! The methodology presented in this paper … Continue reading Measuring the importance of species to ecosystems
Two uploads in two days make this a bumper week for Methods in Ecology and Evolution‘s author videos! In Studying deepwater animals with TrapCam lead author Brett Favaro walks us through the construction of TrapCam, an inexpensive, self-contained camera system designed to deliver high-definition video footage of deepwater animals at depths inaccessible for scuba divers, which does not require ongoing support from a vessel, or … Continue reading Studying deepwater animals with TrapCam
In our latest video Shannon Pellini demonstrates experimental equipment designed to simulate the effects of warmer air temperatures on forest ecosystems – and, particuarly, on arthropod communities. You can read a full account of their experimental methods, and results from two contemporaneous trials at Harvard Forest and Duke Forest, in their recently published paper, Heating up the forest: open-top chamber warming manipulation of arthropod communities … Continue reading Heating up the forest
Seed predation plays an important role in global plant demography. In this video, Adam Davis, of the University of Illinois, demonstrates how field experiments and statistical models can can enable the extrapolation of long-term seed predation rates from short-term data. A full treatment of this can be found in the paper Temporal scaling of episodic point estimates of seed predation to long-term predation rates, recently … Continue reading Estimating seed predation rates
This is the new blog for the new Methods in Ecology and Evolution journal from the British Ecological Society and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This blog will highlight content in the journal, new research in ecological and evolutionary methods, as well as provide a sounding board for developments in the journal and publishing. Updates will be provided by members of the editorial team. One of the … Continue reading Welcome to methods.blog & see you at INTECOL
Methods Blog 