Today, we are pleased to be welcoming a new member of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editor Board. Will Pearse joins us from McGill University in Canada and you can find out a little more about him below. Will Pearse “I am an evolutionary ecologist and use phylogeny to link the evolution of species’ traits with their ecological community assembly. I’m interested in phylogenetic methods, macro-evolution of species’ traits, community assembly … Continue reading New Associate Editor: Will Pearse
To understand how species survive in nature, demographers pair field-collected life history data on survival, growth and reproduction with statistical inference. Demographic approaches have significantly contributed to our understanding of population biology, invasive species dynamics, community ecology, evolutionary biology and much more.
As ecologists begin to ask questions about demography at broader spatial and temporal scales and collect data at higher resolutions, demographic analyses and new statistical methods are likely to shed even more light on important ecological mechanisms.
Traditionally, demographers collect life history data on species in the field under one or more environmental conditions. This approach has significantly improved our understanding of basic biological processes. For example, rosette size is a significant predictor of survival for plants like wild teasel (Werner 1975 – links to all articles are at the end of the post), and desert annual plants hedge their bets against poor years by optimizing germination strategies (Gremer & Venable 2014).
Demographers also include temporal and spatial variability in their models to help make realistic predictions of population dynamics. We now know that temporal variability in carrying capacity dramatically improves population growth rates for perennial grasses and provides a better fit to data than models with varying growth rates because of this (Fowler & Pease 2010). Moreover, spatial heterogeneity and environmental stochasticity have similar consequences for plant populations (Crone 2016). Continue reading “Demography and Big Data”
The February issue of Methods is now online! As you may have seen already, it includes the BES cross-journal Special Feature: “Demography Beyond the Population“. There are also eight other wonderful articles to read.
Happy New Year! We hope that you all had a wonderful Winter Break and that you’re ready to start 2016. We’re beginning the year with a look back at some of our highlights of 2015. Here’s how last year looked at Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
The Articles
We published some amazing articles in 2015, too many to mention them all here. However, we would like to say a massive thank you to all of the authors, reviewers and editors who contributed to the journal last year. Without your hard work, knowledge and generosity, the journal would not be where it is today. We really appreciate all of your time and effort. THANK YOU!
Opportunities at the Interface between Ecology and Statistics
Today, we are pleased to be welcoming a new member of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editor Board. Anne Chao joins us from the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and you can find out a little more about her below.
Anne Chao
Anne Chao
“I am 60% statistician, 30% mathematician and 10% ecologist. Mathematical and statistical problems in ecology and evolution fascinate me. My current research interests include statistical inferences of biodiversity measures (for example taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversities along with related similarity/differentiation indices), and statistical analysis of ecological and environmental survey data (such as standardising biological samples and rarefaction/extrapolation techniques).”
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.
Over the next few weeks we will be welcoming three new Associate Editors to Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Susan Johnston (University of Edinburgh, UK) became a member of the Associate Editor Board on Monday 5 October. She will be joined on 19 October by Natalie Cooper (Natural History Museum, London, UK) and finally by Luísa Carvalheiro (University of Brasília, Brazil) on 2 November. You can find out … Continue reading New Associate Editors
As you may know, today (Friday 22 May) is the United Nations Day for Biodiversity and we are celebrating by highlighting some of the best papers that have been published on biodiversity in Methods in Ecology and Evolution. This is by no means an exhaustive list and you can find many more articles on similar topics on the Wiley Online Library (remember, if you are a member of the BES, you can access all Methods articles free of charge).
If you would like to learn more about the International Day for Biological Diversity, you may wish to visit the Convention on Biological Diversity website, follow them on Twitter or check out today’s hashtag: #IBD2015.
Without further ado though, here are a few of the best Methods papers on Biological Diversity:
Biodiversity Soup
We begin with an Open Access article from one of our Associate Editors, Douglas Yu (et al.). This article was published in the August issue of 2012 and focuses on the metabarcoding of arthropods. The authors present protocols for the extraction of ecological, taxonomic and phylogenetic information from bulk samples of arthropods. They also demonstrate that metabarcoding allows for the precise estimation of pairwise community dissimilarity (beta diversity) and within-community phylogenetic diversity (alpha diversity), despite the inevitable loss of taxonomic information.
We have three freely available Applications articles in this issue. Anyone can access these with no subscription required and no charge to download.
– TR8: This R package was built to provide plant scientists with a simple tool for retrieving plant functional traits from freely accessible online traitbases.
– StereoMorph: A new R package for the rapid and accurate collection of 3D landmarks and curves using two standard digital cameras.
– MotionMeerkat: A new standalone program that identifies motion events from a video stream. This tool reduces the time needed to review videos and accommodates a variety of inputs.
This month we have a total of FIVE Open Access articles. That makes eight articles in this issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution that you can read for free!
Issue 3.4 Our latest issue covers an impressive array of subjects: from metabarcoding (with associated presentation), to population genetics and population monitoring (with video explaining a microphone array system). Modelling and monitoring dispersal also features heavily with four articles, one of which is accompanied by a video for a novel telemetry system to track wild animals. Articles also include topics such as transient dynamics, a review … Continue reading Latest issue and other articles
Opportunities at the Interface between Ecology and Statistics
Methods Blog 