Tag: Methods in Ecology and Evolution

Ecology, Field Methods, Practical Tools

Goby gummies: the fish ‘lolly’ that provides a window to study predation underwater

Post provided by Christopher Hemingson Close your eyes and picture a predation event. Personally, I default to the Planet Earth series’ “Mountains” episode, in which a snow leopard acrobatically chases a mountain goat across near-vertical cliffs in an adrenaline-inducing pursuit. While iconic, predation sequences like this one generally represent the minority. More often than not, predation events occur on the order of split seconds – … Continue reading Goby gummies: the fish ‘lolly’ that provides a window to study predation underwater

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Code and Applications

Testing Evolutionary Ecological and Community Ecological Outcomes with Matrix Projection Using R Package adapt3

Post provided by Richard P. Shefferson, University of Tokyo Matrix projection has become widely used by population ecologists to analyze and predict the behavior of wild populations of plants and animals… and sometimes even other, odder organisms (Salguero-Gómez et al. 2015; Salguero‐Gómez et al. 2016). Over the last few decades, the size and complexity of these models have increased dramatically, with matrix dimensions now ranging … Continue reading Testing Evolutionary Ecological and Community Ecological Outcomes with Matrix Projection Using R Package adapt3

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Ecology

Can extinction risk be reliably estimated even with limited data?

Post provided by Hiroshi Hakoyama. Rethinking extinction probability as a conservation endpoint Thinking about conservation in terms of species extinction as an endpoint underpins how priorities are set in the IUCN Red List and CITES. At their core, these frameworks are about deciding which populations or taxa should be prioritised for conservation effort. Yet Population Viability Analysis (PVA), which aims to quantify extinction probability itself, … Continue reading Can extinction risk be reliably estimated even with limited data?

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Ecology, Lab Methods, Methods papers

A longer read on microbes: Why bigger fragments matter in Earth’s harshest habitats

Post provided by Xi Peng When I first started analysing metagenomic data from cold seeps and hot springs, I didn’t expect to spend quite so much time staring at confusing lines of code and fragmented sequences. Yet these digital traces—broken fragments of DNA scattered across a matrix of microbial complexity—hold the fingerprints of life in Earth’s most extreme habitats. In this work, we developed an … Continue reading A longer read on microbes: Why bigger fragments matter in Earth’s harshest habitats

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Journal updates, Peer Review

How to avoid a desk-rejection because your manuscript is the wrong type

Post provided by Dr. Aaron M. Ellison, Executive Editor at Methods in Ecology and Evolution You’ve worked for months, sometimes years, on developing and testing a new method, and spent a similar amount of time writing the manuscript. It’s finally finished and after navigating the online submission system and uploading and proofing your files, you press the “submit my manuscript” button. Back in the Dark … Continue reading How to avoid a desk-rejection because your manuscript is the wrong type

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What is series

What is acoustic spatial capture-recapture (aSCR)?

Post provided by Ané Cloete What is acoustic spatial capture-recapture (aSCR)? Estimating how many animals live in a given area is one of the most fundamental challenges in conservation. For species that are easy to see such as large mammals on open plains, for example, this is manageable. But for cryptic species that hide from view, counting them directly is often impossible. This is where … Continue reading What is acoustic spatial capture-recapture (aSCR)?

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Conferences and Meetings

Organising the BES Data and Code Hackathon

Post provided by Natalie Cooper, MEE Senior Editor In my last blog post I wrote generally about why and how to organise a hackathon. To help make those instructions a little clearer, below I provide an example from the BES Data and Code Hackathon we ran 29th-30th September 2025. Note that technically this was really a datathon rather than a hackathon! We followed the outline … Continue reading Organising the BES Data and Code Hackathon

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Conferences and Meetings

The What, Why and How of Hackathons

Post provided by Natalie Cooper, MEE Senior Editor In September 2025 we ran a hackathon to collect data for a paper on data- and code-sharing across the BES journals. After the event, we thought it might be nice to share what we learned about hackathons here on the MEE blog. Massive thanks to all the participants of the BES Data and Code Hackathon for their … Continue reading The What, Why and How of Hackathons

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Robert May Prize

Peter Dietrich: Advancing plant biomass measurements: Integrating smartphone-based 3D scanning techniques for enhanced ecosystem monitoring

Throughout March, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2025 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Peter Dietrich’s article ‘Advancing plant biomass measurements: Integrating smartphone-based 3D scanning techniques for enhanced ecosystem monitoring‘ is one of those shortlisted for the award. About the paper What … Continue reading Peter Dietrich: Advancing plant biomass measurements: Integrating smartphone-based 3D scanning techniques for enhanced ecosystem monitoring

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Robert May Prize

Maia Austen: A computational framework to characterize and compare the tonal repertoires of toothed whales

Throughout March, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2025 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Maia Austen’s article ‘A computational framework to characterize and compare the tonal repertoires of toothed whales‘ is one of those shortlisted for the award. About the paper  … Continue reading Maia Austen: A computational framework to characterize and compare the tonal repertoires of toothed whales

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