March was a busy month across the British Ecological Society blogs. Methods in Ecology and Evolution and Journal of Animal Ecology launched an open call for submissions for a joint Special Feature on Animal Social Network Analysis. People and Nature published their first every issue with a whistle stop tour of every paper in picture form and Journal of Ecology brought us some stunning photos from the French Alps.
Joint Special Feature Open Call
Methods in Ecology and Evolution and Journal of Animal Ecology have launched a new open call for a joint special feature on Animal Social Networks. The deadline for submissions is Monday 26 August, for details on submissions guidelines check out the open call blog post. For the lowdown on the types of submissions we are looking for check out the blog on Research gaps in Animal Social Network Analysis.
Relational Thinking – People and Nature
People and Nature issue 1 in pictures
March saw the publication of the first issue of the fully Open Access journal People and Nature. Here’s a whistlestop tour of the first articles in pictures.
Move science forward: Join the conversation on diversity and inclusion
For International Women’s Day 2019, Kelly S. Ramirez, Susan J. Cheng and Ana Paula S. Carvalho of 500 Women Scientists explore why honest (sometimes uncomfortable) conversations and bold solutions are needed to make the sciences truly equitable and inclusive—and why these conversations need you.
Journal of Ecology The Blog – Journal of Ecology
Monique Weemstra, Postdoctoral researcher, CEFE & AMAP, shares a collection of photos from her team’s fieldwork in the French Alps where they collected data for the ECOPICS project.
Ecological Inspirations: Deepak Barua
Journal of Ecology Associate Editor Deepak Barua shares with us what has inspired his career as an ecologist. Deepak’s current work is primarily focused on tropical forests in India, but before that he had interests in molecular and cellular biology, worked in the biotechnology industry, and researched algal stress responses in Germany.
The latest volume of the BES Ecological Reviews series is ‘Grasslands and Climate Change’ co-edited by Jonathan Newman and Journal of Ecology Executive Editor David Gibson. In this blog post, find out exactly how susceptible grasslands are to climate change and how the book addresses this important issue.
The Applied Ecologist’s Blog – Journal of Applied Ecology
Volunteering time matters for improving amphibian conservation
Salamander bucket brigades represent grassroots volunteer efforts to reduce road mortality of amphibians. Simulations by Sean Sterrett et al. found that efforts to move outbound metamorphs are more influential than inbound adults.
To celebrate the 2019 theme for International Women’s Day, #BalanceforBetter, Journal of Applied Ecology invited their Editorial Board to nominate and discuss the initiatives they feel support gender balance in science and academia. Several editors drew our attention to the directory, DiversifyEEB, which aims to highlight ‘ecologists and evolutionary biologists who are women and/or underrepresented minorities’.
Methods Blog – Methods in Ecology and Evolution
R-Ladies: For More Balance in the R Community!
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day was #BalanceForBetter. So, we decided to take this opportunity to promote an organisation that supports and empowers women and gender minorities in STEM fields. We have a wide audience of R coders and R users, so R-Ladies seemed like a fairly obvious group for us to promote.
Phylogenetic Tip Rates: How Well Can We Estimate Diversification?
Biologists have long been interested in how speciation rates change as a function of ecological opportunity or whether key innovations lead to increases in the rate of speciation. Exploring this rate variation and examining how clades differ in terms of their diversification dynamics can help us to understand why species diversity varies so dramatically in time and space.
Functional Ecologists – Functional Ecology
Telomere length and ‘super’ albatrosses – Frédéric Angelier talks about his recent paper,”Is telomere length a molecular marker of individual quality?“, why looking at telomeres might be important for conservation efforts and what got him into ecology.
Tail-clipped tadpoles result in shorter-limbed metamorphs – “To our knowledge, our research is the first to show across-stage negative effects of failed predation events on locomotion, which is particularly important in animals with complex life cycles like toads” Dr Francisco Javier Zamora‐Camacho
Animal Ecology In Focus Journal of Animal Ecology
Weak effects of geolocators on small birds
Biologging is a powerful tool and often utilised to study animal movement patterns. But how can researchers be sure that the tag itself does not negatively impact the study animal? A recent meta-analysis published in theJournal of Animal Ecology investigated the effects of geolocators on small birds. Lead authorVojtěch Brlík explains the #StoryBehindThePaper and the study results.
Following our #DiversityInEcology theme, Ben Whittaker discusses mental health from the perspective of the umwelt.
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Animal Ecology in Focus 