Tag Archives: data

“Wait, What Am I Even Saying?” Communicating Statistics To A Wide Audience

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If we write about our statistical methods behind our ecology work, and none of our readers understand it, have we really communicated at all?

This month I’m getting meta. It’s been about a year and a half since I started writing the Stats Corner for this blog with the goal of demystifying some of the statistical methods that are used by ecologists every day. At the same time, I’ve been writing a book with Deborah Nolan called “Communicating with Data: The Art of Writing for Data Science.” The book was released this spring, so it seemed like a good time to reflect on writing about statistics accessibly. 

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Can Humans and Wild Ungulates Live Together in a European Landscape?

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Guest post by Benjamin Cretois (Image Credit: Wer Mei, CC BY 2.0)

The challenges and opportunities of coexisting with wild ungulates in the human-dominated landscapes of Europe’s Anthropocene (2020) Linnell, Cretois et al., Biological Conservation, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108500

The Crux

The “land sparing vs land sharing” debate is not new to wildlife conservation and is more relevant now than ever. Land sparing entails creating areas distinctly for wildlife, commonly referred to as Protected Areas. The science of spared landscape is well developed and its principles were fundamental to early conservation biology. On the other hand, the confinement of wildlife into human-free area is possible on a very limited in a highly anthropogenic landscape like Europe. Hence, the coexistence movement, which requires both wildlife and humans to share their landscape, leading to a wide range of interactions between the too. This is especially true when it comes to charismatic large mammals including large carnivores and ungulates, whose range has large overlaps with ours.

We wanted to summarise the knowledge on wild ungulate distributions and examine wild ungulate-human interactions. Ungulates are quite varied in Europe, and this study included species such as the wild boar, European bison, moose and roe deer.

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Turning Students Into Scientists with Professor Vigdis Vandvik

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Ask any two researchers what separates a student from a scientist and you’ll likely get two completely different answers. Often I hear people writing their PhD thesis being referred to (and even referring to themselves) as scientists-to-be, which is surely ridiculous, considering the amount of time they spend creating data and publishing research (NO I’M NOT BITTER). But even below that level, I know plenty of Master’s students who have put together singularly impressive datasets or papers that must qualify them for the seemingly subjective title of scientist.

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Worrying Trends in North America’s Bird Populations

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Birds like this American tree sparrow are declining rapidly, shows a study which looks at huge declines in North American bird populations

Birds like this American tree sparrow are declining rapidly, shows a study which looks at huge declines in North American bird populations (Image Credit: Ryan Hodnett, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped)

Decline of the North American avifauna (2019) Rosenberg et al., Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw1313

The Crux

When we talk about species loss, we generally focus on extinctions. Too often, when we start to rally around a species, it’s because there are a particularly low number of that species left. In many cases, they’ve often crossed a threshold, from which it’s impossible to pull them back from the brink of extinction.

Often this draws attention away from non-threatened species. Often that’s fine – they’re non-threatened right? But downward population trajectories in these species can still damage ecosystems by lessening the impact of their ecological function, lead to local (if not total) extinctions, and of course, leading them to eventually be threatened.

This week’s authors wanted to look at bird population declines in America, but from the perspective of total abundance, as opposed to a more species-specific view.

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#PruittData and the Ethics of Data in Science

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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?

Image credit: Bernard Dupont, CC BY-SA 2.0, Image Cropped

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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The Changing Face of Ecology: Part Five

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Image Credit: rumpleteaser, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped

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.

Over 2019 we got to sit down and talk to some pretty exciting people. And whether they were at the forefront of genomics, the science-policy interface, or the wave of inclusivity currently sweeping ecology, they all had some great comments on how ecology has changed over the last few decades.

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The Modern Biologist’s Challenge: Data Management

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Modern biologists often do most of their most integral work not deep in a forest, but sitting behind a laptop while fuelling their caffeine addictions (Image Credit: gdsteam, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

When you are asked to picture a biologist, chances are that many will picture someone like Jane Goodall or David Attenborough: a determined scientist wearing a zip-off pants and a pair of sturdy boots making their way through the thick vegetation of a remote Pacific island to study the intricate social behaviour of an elusive ground-dwelling mammal. Yet these days a large portion of modern biologists embark on very different journeys. Equipped with a computer full of code and mathematical models, they venture through a jungle of spreadsheets and tables filled with row upon row of data.

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The Changing Face of Ecology: Part Four

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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.

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Why Warmer Winters Don’t Always Help Geese

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Image Credit: MaxPixel, CC0 1.0, Image Cropped

Contrasting consequences of climate change for migratory geese: Predation, density dependence and carryover effects offset benefits of high-arctic warming (2019) Layton-Matthews et al., Global Change Biology, DOI: 10.1111/gcb.14773

The Crux

Most of us know that climate change will bring warmer, shorter winters to most parts of the world. For many species in areas like the Arctic, it would be easy to interpret this as a good thing – plants grow earlier, so animals get more food, right? Naturally it’s never that simple. Many herbivorous species have evolved in sync with climate cycles so that their reproduction peaks when food becomes available. If season start dates change, these species may not be able to change their own cycles in time. Additionally, what happens if populations of their predators suddenly boom?

Today’s authors wanted to know what role a warming climate played in the population fluctuations of migratory barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis).

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