Daniella Rabaiotti: Fitting Flatulence Facts Into a PhD
Image Credit: Daniella Rabaiotti, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped
Category Archives: The Forefront
Fredrik Widemo: The Manifold Conflicts Behind the Hunting Industry
Image Credit: USFWS Endangered Species, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped
Rewilding is a tricky business. Bringing back species that once roamed a country as their native land may seem like a worthy cause, but it is often fraught with conflict. People don’t want predators threatening their safety, or herbivores destroying their crops. Rural vs. urban tensions come into play. Local and federal politics get thrown into the mix.
With that in mind, I sat down with Associate Professor Fredrik Widemo, currently a Senior lecturer with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Fredrik has previously worked at both the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management (where he was the Director of Science) and the Swedish Biodiversity Centre. We explored some of the complexities behind the rewilding of wolves and its effects on the hunting and forestry industries in Sweden.
Jane Reid: Playing the Ecological Long Game
The red-billed chough, subject on one of Jane’s long term studies of effects of the environmental on the size and structure of populations (Image Credit: Jean-Jacques Boujot, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)
Our world is changing rapidly. Yet our perception of just how much it has changed is often dulled by our inability to compare what we see around us to what was around fifty years ago with enough clarity. This is one of the reasons that long-term scientific studies are so important. They give us a tangible assessment of just how much our world has changed, whether that be in the climate, how species have evolved, our how populations fluctuate.
Jane Reid is the new International Chair Professor at the Department of Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Jane has spent years working with several long-term studies, some of them successful, others not so much. Sam Perrin and I spoke to Jane about the importance of long term studies in ecological science.
Bob O’Hara: The Rise of the Ecological Modeller
Non-scientists still often think of ecologists as field workers in cargo shorts, running around a grassland with a notebook and a tape measure. Whilst I’d be remiss to say this wasn’t a percentage of us, the last two decades has seen the rise of ecological modelling, which has resulted in a new breed of ecologist. One who is capable of working almost exclusively with data, producing species distribution maps and population fluctuation graphs without leaving the office.
At the forefront of this group is Bob O’Hara, who has long claimed he plans to retire the moment he figures out whether he’s a biologist or statistician. Bob currently works at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, spending his time with the Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics and the Departments of Mathematical Sciences. I spoke to Bob about the history of ecological modelling, its integration into the wider field, and problems with modern ecological modelling.
The Changing Face of Ecology: Part Four
This installment includes thoughts from (left to right) Dag Hessen, Erica McAlister, Rasmus Hansson and Prue Addison (Image Credits: Dag Hessen, University of Oslo; Erica McAlister, CC BY-SA 2.0; Miljøpartiet de Grønne, CC BY-SA 2.0; Synchronicity Earth, CC BY 2.0)
Running EcoMass means we get to sit down with some exceptionally interesting ecologists, conservations, and in this post, even environmental politicians. Most of these individuals have been a part of the discipline for much longer than we have, so when we get the chance we pick their brains about how ecology has changed over the past decades. It’s always interesting to hear which aspects of ecological life we take for granted simply weren’t there 40, 30 or even 10 years ago.
You can also check out parts one (link), two (link) and three (link) of our Changing Face of Ecology specials, and click on the names below to read our full interviews with each of this issue’s respondents.
Nancy Knowlton: The Importance of Earth Optimism
Whilst it might seem like little guys like this don’t have much to smile about these days, being optimistic about the state of the environment is more important than ever, according to Nancy Knowlton (Image Credit: Rosalyn Davis, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, Image Cropped)
At the very beginning of my PhD, I was in the audience at the STARMUS Festival when American reef biologist Nancy Knowlton gave a talk about Earth Optimism. It came just after the American President had withdrawn his support for the Paris climate agreement, and smiles regarding the state of the planet were hard to come by. So seeing an esteemed member of the scientific community give a reminder that there was hope for one of the earth’s most vulnerable ecosystem was inspiring.
At this year’s International Barcode of Life Conference in Trondheim, I had the chance to sit down with Nancy and talk about why optimism is so important in the face of the many ongoing problems that the planet faces.
Donald Hobern: Cataloguing the Planet’s DNA
I spoke with GBIF’s executive secretary and amateur lepidopterist Donald Hobern about how DNA barcoding fits into modern conservation and ecology (Image Credit: Donald Hobern, CC BY-2.0, Image Cropped)
