Another year has passed, and once again we’ve seen many world leaders make weighty promises to do better in their efforts to help the climate, only to do sharp about-faces once they’ve returned home. In an attempt to put aside some of the frustration that inevitably results from such grandstanding, let’s go through some of the more positive news stories that have popped up over the last month.
During the last couple have weeks, news reports, talk of renewed commitments, and lots of finger-pointing have been flying thick and fast COP26 has dominated the news over the past two weeks. The post pandemic world has watched as finger pointing and vague promises have emerged from Glasgow as talks progressed. But underlying all the drama is the realisation that the world is rapidly approaching a point of no return.
Evolutionary processes led to very diverse outcomes, including animals so different from our own appearance. Let’s take a look at one such form of life that is easily overlooked, but far more diverse and abundant than they may seem: colonial animals.
Danielle Crowely writes about her three months this summer as a Swift Fieldworker with Birdwatch Ireland, Ireland’s largest conservation organisation. The goal was to track down as many swift nests as possible, record them, and produce a report for Dublin City Council, who requested the survey as part of their Biodiversity Action Plan.
Failing to reject a null hypothesis that there is no difference between two samples doesn’t necessarily mean that there actually isn’t a difference. There is always a chance that we didn’t have enough evidence to detect a real difference. Finding ways to increase the power, the probability that we reject the null hypothesis when the alternative is really true, ahead of a study can help us feel more confident in our ultimate conclusion. This post talks about strategies for analyzing and increasing power in ecology settings.
You’ve probably heard of the Sargasso Sea – it is well-known for the floating seaweed called Sargassum that provides a habitat for baby sea turtles and many other sea critters. For the last 10 years, Sargassum seaweed has spread throughout more of the Atlantic Ocean and become a problem, with blooms affecting the Caribbean, states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, South America and even Africa.
Every year after I am finished with Europe’s largest ecology conference I write a summary of my most memorable thoughts and experiences. Truth be told,
Models are an incredibly powerful tool for predicting how our world is likely to change, and today’s authors utilized a modelling approach to understand the future of an Arctic system.
Perspectives on science, wildlife, travel and all things fascinating on our little blue dot
The Fisheries Blog: Your weekly spot for fun and engaging articles written by fish scientists from around the globe.
Boldly going where no forest ecologist has gone before
Discovering Dynamic Distributions - The virtual lab around Jonas Lembrechts
Don't need to be cool to be kind.
Bridging the gap between researchers, practitioners and policymakers
The Plankton and Policy Research Group at Plymouth University. PI: Dr Abigail McQuatters-Gollop
Ecology for the Masses 