Tag Archives: Power Analyses

Could We Be Treating Invertebrates More Ethically?

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Post provided by ELEANOR DRINKWATER

©Joaquim Alves Gaspar

For ecology to stay ethical and maintain public support, we need to revisit invertebrate ethics in research.  With our recent advances in understanding invertebrate cognition and shifts in public opinion, an ethical re-examination of currently used methodologies is needed. In our article – ‘Keeping invertebrate research ethical in a landscape of shifting public opinion’ – that’s exactly what we aim to do.

Invertebrate Cognition

Recent work, particularly on lobsters, has raised questions about whether invertebrates can experience suffering. In lobsters for example, noxious stimuli can induce long term changes in behaviour, and these changes can be inhibited by adding analgesic. While these findings can be interpreted as evidence for pain perception in crustaceans, the question of invertebrate suffering is still hotly debated, and a firm consensus is still to be reached. But these studies, coupled with recent public concern about the ethics of large-scale sampling projects, highlight the need for discussion on invertebrate ethics in ecology research. Continue reading →

Spatially-explicit Power Analysis: A First Step for Occupancy-Based Monitoring

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Post provided by Martha Ellis and Jody Tucker

Where’s Waldo? Trying to find this fisher somewhere in a giant landscape is going to be tricky! ©Mike Schwartz

Where’s Waldo? Trying to find this little guy somewhere in a giant landscape is going to be tricky! © Mike Schwartz

The seemingly basic question of whether a population is increasing, decreasing, or stable can be one of the most difficult to answer. Collecting data on rare and elusive species is hard. Imagine trying to detect a handful of fisher or wolverine across hundreds of thousands of acres – it is physically demanding, time consuming and logistically complicated. And that’s just to do it once! To monitor a population for changes, you have to repeat these surveys regularly over many years. The long-term monitoring that is necessary for conservation requires careful planning and a substantial commitment of resources and funding. So before we spend these valuable resources, it’s critical to know whether the data we are collecting can help us to answer our questions. Continue reading →