Coming to the BES Annual Meeting? Planning to submit a paper to a BES journal? Then you should sign up for the Speed Review Session on Thursday 12 December! (sign-up sheets will be on the BES Stand in the Exhibition Hall.) Find out more about this session below.

What is a Speed Review Session?

Essentially, Speed Review is a chance for you to get a Senior Editor’s opinion on your manuscript. All you need to do is sign-up and bring along a figure or a key finding from your research to centre the discussion on. Each session will be limited to five minutes, so try to have a succinct summary of your manuscript ready as well. The Editor you speak to will let you know what they think of your paper and try to give you some advice about any areas to highlight or any potential concerns that they might have about it.

When/Where Will the Speed Review Session be?

The Speed Review Session will be during the Poster Session on the second day of the BES Annual Meeting (Thursday 12 December). It will run from 17:30 until 18:30, so you’ll still have time to see the posters that day as well. The session will finish in plenty of time for you to get to the LGBT+ Mixer and/or the Conference Dinner.

We’ll have a table set up for each journal by the BES activities stand in the Exhibition Hall. People who have signed up will be asked to come to that stand to meet an Editor from their chosen journal. There may be a wait, but everyone who signs up will have the chance to talk to an Editor.

How Can I Get Involved?

The sign-up sheets will be on the BES Stand from the beginning of the Welcome Mixer on Tuesday until the Speed Review session begins (or all the places are taken). Places are limited though, so make sure to sign-up as soon as possible.

Please note, you must sign-up at the BES Stand if you want to take part in the Speed Review Session. Checking in for the event on the conference app does not count as signing up.

What do you remember of the first paper you published?

My first first-authored paper was ‘Adaptive social and maternal induction of antipredator dorsal patterns in a lizard with alternative social strategies’ (with Andrew McAdam, John Wingfield and Barry Sinervo as coauthors, Ecology Letters, 2007). This was a cool paper because we actually made a really exciting discovery—treating embryonic side blotched lizards with estradiol resulted in dramatic changes to their dorsal patterning! The discovery was serendipitous, but upon further reading, previous research indicated that migration of the neural crest cells during embryogenesis (which determines pigment patterns) is strongly dependent on regulation by estrogen response elements (EREs). Anyway, as far as I know, no one has followed up this discovery in this or other species. So if you’re reading this blog post and are interested in this topic, please consider taking up the torch and letting me know what you find!

These side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana) hatchlings are sisters. The one on the right received a prenatal does of estradiol, resulting in extreme modification of its dorsal patterning.

When was the last time you had a paper rejected?

This happens to me all the time! It is never fun! The other thing that is no fun is rejecting other people’s papers. Unfortunately I have to reject papers in this role, and it’s by far the least pleasant part of the job. To mitigate this a bit, I reserve editorial duties for the early part of the week. I promise I won’t send you a rejection on Friday or over the weekend. Rejection is always unpleasant for everyone, but having a rejection ruin your weekend is unforgivable

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?

Talent for the creative arts.

Are you a good cook? What’s your signature dish?

Yes, I love cooking. I don’t have a signature dish, but I love to make anything that either involves a lot of chopping (like pico de gallo), or which cooks for a long time in the oven. A good one that comes to mind is a recipe I got a long time ago from an Emeril Lagasse show on FoodTV, where you slow cook ham houghs (hocks) with loads of spring greens, in a broth made from a roux flavoured with onions, celery, and beer. It’s pretty good!

Which small thing irritates you the most at work?

I can’t seem to get on top of my inbox. I just went for coffee and came back to 28 new emails.

How do you deal with stress?

Play with my children, walk the dog, or drink wine.

Who inspired you most as a student?

My dad was my earliest scientific inspiration- as a child, he taught me how to make fireworks, identify the local flora, and dissect the chickens from our backyard henhouse. As a student, papers by David Haig, Jason Wolf, Bill Rice, and Mary Jane West-Eberhard (among others!) helped shape my early ideas about the evolutionary process. Things that blew my mind early on in my scientific training were the life cycles of slime moulds and kelp (seaweed has eyes! Argh!).

If you could recommend one place for people to travel on holiday, where would it be and why?

Aberdeen, Scotland! We don’t get many tourists here, but this is a lovely part of the world and the people are fantastic.

Aberdeen beachfront by Gordon Robertson

Next up in our Meet the Editor series is our Blog Editor Sarah Marley, marine biologist and fan of ancient woodlands. Catch Sarah at any of the breaks at the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting or during the Nature and Humans session on Tuesday morning (Hall 5).

What can you tell us about the first paper you published?

My first publication was based on my Honours thesis. I had very little clue about the whole publishing process and was terrified being both lead and corresponding author! But the Editor who dealt with my manuscript was fantastic – very patient, happy to answer my many ‘quick questions’, and even helped me deal with reviewer responses. This has always stayed with me as a great example of how the publishing experience should be!

What’s your favourite species and why?

I have worked with marine mammals for over a decade, but still get excited whenever a dolphin surfaces or a whale pops up! My Scottish accent gets really strong when I’m excited, so my younger years spent working on a whale-watch boat caused a lot of hilarity for the customers! But after several years of living overseas, I started to really miss the British wildlife. Since moving back a couple of months ago I have been delighted to reacquaint myself with red squirrels, tawny owls, and foxes!

Who inspired you most as a student?

My family are huge fans of Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough. As a kid, I would stay up late reading about Durrell’s childhood in Corfu, the challenges of starting his own zoo, and the exotic locations he adventured in looking for animals. Attenborough took these things from my imagination and made them ‘real’. Last year I gave a talk about my two science heroes as part of Laboratory – have a listen here!

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?

I would love to speak another language fluently (apart from Scottish and English, obviously!). My partner is French and it would be great to not only communicate with his family but have sneaky French conversations. I have tried learning on-and-off for years, and whilst my understanding is okay I struggle to formulate the words quick enough in conversation.

Are you a good cook? What’s your signature dish?

I like to think so! I’m best at making ‘warming’ food – stew, soup, oven bakes. These always seem to be appreciated by hungry field teams! My signature dish would have to be mushroom risotto, but my go-to comfort food is chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes and peas!

Are you attending #BES2018? If so, when is the best opportunity for people to meet you?

This will be my first BES conference! I am chairing the Nature and Humans session on Tuesday morning (Hall 5) and giving a talk on Tuesday afternoon in the S35 Behavioural Ecology session (Hall 10a).

Please send an informal photo that reflects you as a person

I enjoy walking along the beach. But as a marine mammal person, it is very hard to be ‘off duty’ – I am constantly scanning the waves, hoping to see a fin or a blow!

Even though I am a marine biologist, I love being in the woods! I spent a lot of my childhood exploring our local woods in Aberdeenshire and there is something very calming about being in a forest. This photo was taken when my former PhD supervisor and I were attending a conference in the US earlier this year. On the final day, we took a train out of the city and went for a hike along the Mississippi River. We’d soon left the path behind and were following an old trail – then a bald eagle flew by! A great end to the trip!

A downside of taking me anywhere is that I am easily distracted by animals! A casual lunch can result in me crawling through the bushes, trying to find a calling frog! My friends are very accepting!

Next up in our new Meet the Editor series is AS Saint-Etienne and Tintin fan Jean-Michel Gaillard. You can catch Jean-Michel over lunch at British Ecological Society Annual Meeting.

What can you tell us about the first paper you published?

This paper, published in Canadian Journal of Zoology in 1986, was not really in line with my research themes. I acted as a consulting for statistical analysis and performed a PCA to study morphometrics of fish.

What’s your favourite species and why?

For sure Roe deer because I spent some much time to try understanding why these animals do what they do. However, I started working on these animals during my Master just by chance. The French National Hunting Organization was seeking for a reliable census method of roe deer and had collected lots of data for that. When they proposed to me to work on that species, I said Yes. It was in autumn 1983 and I am still working on this fascinating animals!

Who inspired you most as a student?

Without doubt Tim Clutton-Brock. His now classic work on red deer on Rum Island was a model for my research on roe deer. Moreover, the papers his research group published in Journal of Animal Ecology between 1978 and 1989 were among the most influential for my career.

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?

The ability of slowing down time so that I could benefit from 100 hours a day!

Are you a good cook? What’s your signature dish?

I am not at all a good cook. My signature dish is very modest: a kind of pie with potatoes, eggs, and onions. I am much better at eating than at cooking!

Please share a [funny] story about a paper you had rejected.

Rejecting a paper is never a funny thing and most of the time, it is a difficult decision. However, I remember one case for which I had the opportunity to meet the authors sometime after and we had the opportunity to collaborate.

What’s your favourite sports team and why?

The football team of Saint-Etienne, the place where I live. It was a top team at the European scale in the late seventies but they cannot compete nowadays when money is so crucial for having a top team.

If you could recommend one place for people to travel to on holiday, where would it be and why?

While I am lucky enough to know several places I would want to recommend, I rank Paris above any others. Doing very simple things like having a drink on a terrace along the Seine River, reading a book on a bench of Jardin des Tuileries, doing shopping in Grands Magasins, or walking on Champs Elysees from Concorde square to Arc de Triomphe is magic in Paris.

What was the first album you owned?

The first album of Led Zeppelin. I was fifteen.

Tintin mural painting by Hergé. Photo by Ferran Cornellà.

If any fictional character could join your lab, who would it be and why?

Certainly Tintin! He is a very nice person, looks for helping everybody, and successfully solves every problem he faces.

How many British Ecological Society annual meetings have you attended? Which one was the best?

Four. it is quite difficult for me to select one other the others. All meetings were great and I am always impressed by the organization. Making sure that everything goes perfectly well for 1300 people is not an easy thing and all meetings I attended to were highly successful. If I have to identify one in particular, it would be the meeting organized at Lille because it was my first one and by chance it was the joint meeting between BES and SFE.

Are you attending #BES2018? If so, when is the best opportunity for people to meet you?

Yes. The best opportunity to meet me would certainly be the lunch time.