Tag: Invasive Species

Methods papers

Monsters Behind the Movies

Post provided by Ben Whittaker & Chloe Robinson

“There’s no such thing as monsters” you whisper to yourself while creeping into bed, regretting your decision to spend the whole night watching horror movies. Thunder rumbles in the distance as rain begins tapping on the windowpane. The lamps flicker and black out. “Just a power cut” you chuckle nervously, clutching the bed covers up to your face. Laid in the darkness, you become aware of every creak and bump echoing throughout the empty house. But what is that shuffling sound? Is it coming closer? The shuffling stops right outside your bedroom door, which gently rattles and then slowly groans open. A dreadful chill runs down your spine. “There’s no such thing as monsters?”

In this special Halloween post, blog editors Chloe Robinson and Ben Whittaker conjure stories of the real-life monsters that have inspired movie makers. Continue reading at your own peril and be warned that Methods in Ecology and Evolution holds no liability for ensuing nightmares, hauntings, or extra-terrestrial abduction.  

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Methods papers, Statistical methods

FuzzyQ: The Commonness of Rarity

Post provided by Juan A. Balbuena

Sea of Azov. Credit: Sergey Sorokin.

Most species in ecological communities are rare, whereas only a few are common. This distributional paradox has intrigued ecologists for decades, but the interpretation of species abundance distributions remains elusive. In this blog post, lead author Juan A. Balbuena discusses how their recently published Methods in Ecology and Evolution paper and R package ‘Fuzzy quantification of common and rare species in ecological communities (FuzzyQ)’, is a potentially valuable analytical tool in community ecology and conservation biology.

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Methods 10th Anniversary, Statistical methods, Theoretical methods

10th Anniversary Volume 1: The Art of Modelling Range-Shifting Species

Post provided by Jane Elith, Mike Kearney and Steven Phillips  

10th anniversary logo

To celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the launch of Methods in Ecology and Evolution, we are highlighting an article from each volume to feature in the Methods.blog. For Volume 1, we have selected ‘The art of modelling range-shifting species’ by Elith et al. (2010).  In this post, first author, Professor Jane Elith, discusses the background and key concepts of the article, and how things have changed since the paper was published.

Illustration of the idea that model settings affect prediction.

We started work on this manuscript around 2008, prompted by increasing use of species distribution models for climate change and invasive species problems. At that stage there was growing recognition of the problems in these applications (e.g. see a recent MEE review on transferability) but relatively few tools for dealing with them. In our view, if correlative models are to be used for such purposes, the data and models require special attention.

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Editor Recommendations, Journal updates, Methods papers

Issue 11.2: Stable Isotopes, in situ Monitoring, Image Analysis and more

The February issue of Methods is now online!

The latest issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is now online!

Executive Editor Rob Freckleton has selected six Featured Articles this month. You can find out about all of them below. We’ve also got six Applications articles and five Open Access articles in the February issue – we’ll talk about all of those here too.

On top of all that, the February issue includes articles on population genetics, ecological assemblages, and reconstruction of protein sequences.

Continue reading “Issue 11.2: Stable Isotopes, in situ Monitoring, Image Analysis and more”

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Uncategorized

Issue 10.12: Statistical Ecology, UAVs, Invasive Species and More

The December issue of Methods is now online!

The final 2019 issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is online now.

To close out another brilliant year, we’ve got papers on invasive species, convolutional neural networks, rapid spatial risk modelling, species distribution models and much more.

You can find out more about our Featured Articles (selected by the Senior Editor) below. We also discuss this month’s Open Access and freely available papers we’ve published in our latest issue (Practical Tools and Applications articles are always free to access, whether you have a subscription or not) .

Continue reading “Issue 10.12: Statistical Ecology, UAVs, Invasive Species and More”

India StephensonLeave a comment
Conservation and management, Methods papers, Statistical methods

Responding to New Weeds Needs Speed: Spatial Modelling with riskmapr Can Help

Post provided by JENS FROESE

Disclaimer: this post is NOT about the drug or the TV series, but about invasive alien plants. Yes, even biologists often refer to them as ‘weeds’.

Responding to New Weed Incursions

Responding to new weed incursions early and rapidly is very important. ©Panda8pie2
Responding to new weed incursions early and rapidly is very important. ©Panda8pie2

Weeds are a major threat to biodiversity and agricultural industries globally. New alien plant species are constantly introduced across borders, regions or landscapes. We know that some (such as those listed in the IUCN Global Invasive Species Database) are likely become problematic invasive weeds from experiences elsewhere.

When a weed is first introduced, population growth and spread is typically slow. This ‘invasion lag’ may be due to straightforward mathematics (population dynamics) as well as geography, environmental change or genetics. In any case, the lag period often presents the only window of opportunity where weed eradication or effective containment can be achieved. So, responding to new weed incursions early and rapidly is very important. Anyone who has ever battled with a bad weed infestation in their backyard knows it’s best to get in early and decisively! But decisions about where to target surveillance and control activities are often made under considerable time, knowledge and capacity constraints. Continue reading “Responding to New Weeds Needs Speed: Spatial Modelling with riskmapr Can Help”

India StephensonLeave a comment
Evolution, Methods papers, Virtual Issues

Integrating Evolution and Ecology

©H. Zell
©H. Zell

The latest Methods in Ecology and Evolution Virtual Issue – ‘Integrating Evolution and Ecology‘ – is in honour of the late Isabelle Olivieri (1957-2016): an international, interdisciplinary and ground-breaking biologist. It was edited by Louise Johnson and James Bullock and features papers on topics she researched, and in many cases pioneered. But it might perhaps have been more difficult to find 15 Methods papers on areas outside of Isabelle’s research interests!

Isabelle was the first Professor of Population Genetics at Montpellier, a past President of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (2007-2009), and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. She spanned subject boundaries as easily as she collaborated across geographical borders. Her publications range through metapopulation and dispersal ecology, host-parasite coevolution, life history, invasive species and conservation ecology. In keeping with this breadth of interests, she also combined theory easily with experiment, and worked with a wide range of study systems from mites to Medicago. Continue reading “Integrating Evolution and Ecology”

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Conservation and management, Methods papers, Second Language Post, Statistical methods

Can Opportunistically Collected Citizen Science Data Create Reliable Habitat Suitability Models for Less Common Species?

Post provided by Ute Bradter, Mari Jönsson and Tord Snäll

Detta blogginlägget är tillgängligt på svenska

Opportunistically collected species observation data, or citizen science data, are increasingly available. Importantly, they’re also becoming available for regions of the world and species for which few other data are available, and they may be able to fill a data gap.

Siberian jay ©Ute Bradter
Siberian jay ©Ute Bradter

In Sweden, over 60 million citizen science observations have been collected – an impressive number given that Sweden has a population of about 10 million people and that the Swedish Species Observation System, Artportalen, was created in 2000. For bird-watchers (or plant, fungi, or other animal enthusiasts), this is a good website to bookmark. It will give you a bit of help in finding species and as a bonus, has a lot of pretty pictures of interesting species. Given the amount of data citizen science can provide in areas with few other data, it’s important to evaluate whether they can be used reliably to answer questions in applied ecology or conservation. Continue reading “Can Opportunistically Collected Citizen Science Data Create Reliable Habitat Suitability Models for Less Common Species?”

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Methods papers, Online extras

ANDe™: High‐Throughput eDNA Sampling in a Fully Integrated System

Current eDNA sampling technologies consist mainly of do‐it‐yourself solutions. The lack of purpose‐built sampling equipment is limiting the efficiency and standardization of eDNA studies. So, Thomas et al. (a team of molecular ecologists and engineers) designed ANDe™. In this video, the authors highlight the key features and benefits of ANDe™. This integrated system includes a backpack-portable pump that integrates sensor feedback, a pole extension with remote pump … Continue reading ANDe™: High‐Throughput eDNA Sampling in a Fully Integrated System

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Conservation and management, Methods papers

Remote Sensing for Counting Animals: Polar Bears, Sheep and Everything In-Between

Post provided by Tracey Hollings

In an age of rapid technological advances, ecologists need to keep abreast of how we can improve or reinvent the way we do things. Remote sensing technology and image analysis have been developing rapidly and have the potential to revolutionise how we count and estimate animal populations.

Using remotely sensed imagery isn’t new in ecology, but recent innovations mean we can use it for more things. Land use change and vegetation mapping are among the areas of ecology where remote sensing has been used extensively for some time. Estimating animal populations with remotely sensed imagery was also demonstrated more than 40 years ago by detecting indirect signs of an animal with some success: think wombat burrows and penguin poop.

A polar bear from a helicopter
A polar bear from a helicopter

Thanks to improved spatial and spectral resolution (see the text box at the bottom of the post for a definition), accessibility, cost and coverage of remotely sensed data, and software development we have now reached a point where we can detect and count individual animals in imagery. Many of the first studies to demonstrate automated and semi-automated techniques have taken computer algorithms from other disciplines, such as engineering or biomedical sciences, and applied them to automate counting of animals in remotely sensed imagery. It turns out that detecting submarines is not so different to detecting whales! And finding abnormal cells in medical imaging is surprisingly similar to locating polar bears in the arctic! Continue reading “Remote Sensing for Counting Animals: Polar Bears, Sheep and Everything In-Between”

India Stephenson1 Comment