Venturing into academia means that the more answers you learn to challenging scientific questions, the more questions get opened up. Nowhere is this more apparent to me than in community ecology. So here I’ve gone through some of the biggest challenges facing community ecology at the moment.
Biodiversity has become an immensely popular buzzword over the last few decades. Yet the concept of genetic diversity has been less present in everyday ecological conversations. So today I want to go through why genetic diversity is important, how we define it, and why there is often controversy about its application in conservation science.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (in which case, stay there, there’s probably less smoke), you’ll know by now that Australia has experienced wildfires over the last couple of months that dwarf what California and the Amazon went through last year. o how has the nation – and the world – reacted? The spectrum has been vast, making analysing the reaction no easy task. So today I wanted to have a look at Australia’s (and in a sense the world’s) ongoing reaction to the Australian bushfires as per the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief.
Collaboration with other disciplines and knowledges is central to ecology’s capacity to contribute to addressing sustainability challenges in our world today. Interdisciplinary research involves different disciplines working together to integrate their knowledges and methods to meet shared research goals and achieve a real synthesis of approaches. Here, Rachel Kelly breaks down her recent paper which provides researchers with ten tips to help them construct interdisciplinary programmes.
The thought of an ecologist may conjure the image of a scientist spending their time out in the field counting birds, looking for moss, studying mushrooms. Yet whilst field ecologists remain an integral part of modern ecology, the reality is that much of the discipline has come to rely on complex models. Yet a lot of these models rely on one big assumption – independence.
While climate change and habitat loss seem to keep making all the headlines when it comes to environmental damage, invasive species are still chugging along comfortably as the second biggest threat to our planet’s biodiversity. Yet the negative impact that many non-native species have on the habitats they move into have often led to stigmatisation of anything new. With this in mind, I sat down at the recent British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting with Professor Helen Roy of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
Last Sunday, the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid came to an end. It was a summit that marked the end of a year in which climate change has transformed into a climate emergency and in which society has woken up to the urgency of the situation. For a couple of days, I was in Madrid to participate in the part of the COP25 that was open to the public and to march with thousands of others in the biggest demonstration ever held in Spain.
This week’s paper looks at how great a role Indigenous Peoples could play in helping to preserve the planet’s biodiversity, and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Bridging the gap between researchers, practitioners and policymakers
The Plankton and Policy Research Group at Plymouth University. PI: Dr Abigail McQuatters-Gollop
Research, teaching, and mentorship in the sciences
Science for the Environment
ice age ecology, early career academia, and diversity in STEM
Conservation, management and planning in contested landscapes
Multa novit vulpes
Behavioural ecologist and science communicator at Deakin University
