Issue 6.11 is now online!

The November issue of Methods is now online!

This month’s issue contains two Applications articles and one Open Access article, all of which are freely available.

– mvMORPH: A package of multivariate phylogenetic comparative methods for the R statistical environment which allows fitting a range of multivariate evolutionary models under a maximum-likelihood criterion. Its use can be extended to any biological data set with one or multiple covarying continuous traits.

– Low-cost soil CO₂ efflux and point concentration sensing systems: The authors use commercially available, low-cost and low-power non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) CO₂ sensors to develop a soil CO₂ efflux system and a point CO₂ concentration system. Their methods enable terrestrial ecologists to substantially improve the characterization of CO₂ fluxes and concentrations in heterogeneous environments.

This month’s Open Access article comes from Jolyon Troscianko and Martin Stevens. In ‘Image calibration and analysis toolbox – a free software suite for objectively measuring reflectance, colour and pattern‘ they introduce a toolbox that can convert images to correspond to the visual system (cone-catch values) of a wide range of animals, enabling human and non-human visual systems to be modelled. The toolbox is freely available as an addition to the open source ImageJ software and will considerably enhance the appropriate use of digital cameras across multiple areas of biology. In particular, researchers aiming to quantify animal and plant visual signals will find this useful. This article received some media attention upon Early View publication over the summer. You can read the Press Release about it here.

Our November issue also features articles on Population Genetics, Macroevolution, Modelling species turnover, Abundance modelling, Measuring stress and much more. Continue reading “Issue 6.11”