• Bigger is Not Always Better in Habitat Conservation

    This week’s paper investigates whether one of the key tenets of Island Biogeography Theory has potentially been harmful when deciding which habitat patches to conserve.

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  • Girls, Cats, and Problems With Peer Reviews

    Last week saw International Day of Women and Girls in Science. So naturally the journal Biological Conservations decided to release a paper entitled Where There Are Girls, There Are Cats*. It’s an ill-informed, ill-conceived paper that essentially blames women for free-ranging cat populations. It is insulting to women, and quite frankly insulting to any scientist who has had a paper rejected in the last year. Yet as with the recent #PruittGate debacle, most of the community has veered away from directly attacking the researchers. They’ve been focussing on the real problem here – in this case the peer review system.

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  • What’s the Deal with P-Values and Their Friend the Confidence Interval?

    After the first edition of Ecology for the Masses’ stats corner, many people requested a discussion of p-values. Ask and you shall receive! And as an added bonus, we’ll also talk about confidence intervals.

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  • It Pays to Break from the Crowd

    Organisms that depend on mutualistic partners for their reproduction and survival can struggle to survive without their partners, but how do these relationships change as climate change drives organisms to shift their habitat?

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  • Towards Equality in Ecology: BES Edition

    Every year, ecological organisations like the British Ecological Society and the Ecological Society of Australia make efforts to create a more inclusive society. But these conferences of course only represent a part of the broader ecological community. So how is the discipline progressing on a day-to-day basis with regards to equality? Around the time of last year’s Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society, I sat down with four members of the society and got their thoughts.

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  • Leadership can play an important role of a population dynamics, but is it the strength of the leaders or the willingness of the followers that has more influence?

    #PruittData and the Ethics of Data in Science

    If you follow anyone in the fields of ecology or biology, chances are you’ve seen or heard of #PruittData, #PruittGate, #SpiderGate, or some other similar hashtag. We at Ecology for the Masses decided that we wanted to add our voice to the discussion, not to disparage anyone, but to take the opportunity to discuss ethics in science and data reporting.

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  • Biological Invasions & The Witcher

    The Witcher’s Geralt is the latest take on a medieval monster hunter. But given that most of these monsters only arrived in the world we see relatively recently, what we have are essentially a huge series of biological invasions. So let’s have a look at invasive ecology’s take on the monsters of The Witcher.

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  • The Changing Face of Ecology: Part Five

    2019 was a year in which many changes that our planet is experiencing came to the fore, capped off in December by the Australian bushfires, a phenomenon that scientists predicted would start to occur with increasing intensity at the beginning of last decade. With all the change that our planet is currently undergoing, it’s always worth noting that the discipline of ecology itself has changed as well.

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Current Issues

Girls, Cats, and Problems With Peer Reviews

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Last week saw International Day of Women and Girls in Science. So naturally the journal Biological Conservations decided to release a paper entitled Where There Are Girls, There Are Cats*. It’s an ill-informed, ill-conceived paper that essentially blames women for free-ranging cat populations. It is insulting to women, and quite frankly insulting to any scientist who has had a paper rejected in the last year. Yet as with the recent #PruittGate debacle, most of the community has veered away from directly attacking the researchers. They’ve been focussing on the real problem here – in this case the peer review system.

Leadership can play an important role of a population dynamics, but is it the strength of the leaders or the willingness of the followers that has more influence?

#PruittData and the Ethics of Data in Science

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If you follow anyone in the fields of ecology or biology, chances are you’ve seen or heard of #PruittData, #PruittGate, #SpiderGate, or some other similar hashtag. We at Ecology for the Masses decided that we wanted to add our voice to the discussion, not to disparage anyone, but to take the opportunity to discuss ethics in science and data reporting.

The Unseen Effects of Habitat Loss

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Whilst climate change continues to hog the limelight, habitat loss remains the key threat to biodiversity worldwide. And whilst events like the Australian bushfires obviously contribute to habitat loss, its main cause is land clearing, whether for agriculture, cattle grazing, mining and urbanization. No matter how many politicians deny or try to deviate attention from it, scientists have shown time and time again just how threatening habitat loss is to our planet’s biodiversity.

The Challenges Facing Community Ecology

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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.

Stats Corner & Words from the Experts

Towards Equality in Ecology: BES Edition

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Every year, ecological organisations like the British Ecological Society and the Ecological Society of Australia make efforts to create a more inclusive society. But these conferences of course only represent a part of the broader ecological community. So how is the discipline progressing on a day-to-day basis with regards to equality? Around the time of last year’s Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society, I sat down with four members of the society and got their thoughts.

Conference Reviews & Paper of the week

COP25: A Short Review and On-Site Experiences

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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.