Bayesians v. Frequentists: A Tale as Old as Time
Tag Archives: distribution
The Challenges Facing Community Ecology
Community ecology, as a relatively new discipline, is fraught with challenges. Here, we look at why an hour spent talking about those challenges may make you feel like the PhD student pictured above (Image Credit: Lau Svensson, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)
Anyone who has forayed any small distance into academia will probably understand the following quote by Aristotle.
“The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”
According to Stewart Lee, participating in further education means embarking on a “quest to enlarge the global storehouse of all human understanding”. This might be true, yet venturing into academia also means that the more answers you learn to challenging scientific questions, the more questions get opened up. It’s the circle of academic life.
Bob O’Hara: The Rise of the Ecological Modeller
Image Credit: Internet Archive Book Image, Public Domain, Image Cropped
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.
Tim Robertson: The World of Ecological Data
Image Credit: GBIF, CC BY 4.0, Image Cropped
When I was a child, I’d often study books of Australian birds and mammals, rifling through the pages to see which species lived nearby. My source of information were the maps printed next to photos of the species, distribution maps showing the extent of the species range. These days, many of these species ranges are declining. Or at least, many ecologists believe they are. One of the problems with knowing exactly where species exist or how they are faring is a lack of data. The more data we have, the more precise an idea we get of the future of the species. Some data is difficult to collect, but yet more data has been collected, and is simply inaccessible.
At the Living Norway seminar earlier this month I sat down with Tim Robertson, Head of Informatics and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. GBIF is an international network that works to solve this data problem worldwide, both by making collected data accessible and by helping everyday people to collect scientific data. I spoke with Tim about the journey from a species observation to a species distribution map, the role of GBIF, and the future of data collection.
Johanna Schmitt: Climate Change and Plant Life
We sometimes ignore the effects of climate change on plant life, but the potential severity of these effects isn’t something that should be ignored for long (Image Credit: Pisauikan, Pixabay licence, Image Cropped)
From the California wildfires to the recent strikes across Australian primary schools, climate change is a topic that only seems to grow in its ubiquity. Yet whilst humans are increasingly focused on more obvious repercussions, such as extreme weather events, animal extinctions and shifting coastlines, we sometimes forget that climate change will have severe repercussions for plant life as well.
I spoke to Professor Johanna Schmitt of the University of California earlier this year to discuss some of those repercussions. Johanna’s team is working to determine how well certain plant species will be able to adapt in the face of rapid climate change.
Gretta Pecl: Climate Change in Coastal Waters
Image Credit: Gretta Pecl, University of Tasmania, CC BY 2.0
So often the effects of climate change are somewhat intangible to us; the weather may grow warmer, but it’s a slow and gradual process, which can seem entirely at odds with the alarm bells that things like the IPCC report seem to be constantly clanging. As such, demonstrating tangible environmental changes to a community whose livelihood may depend on such changes is a great weapon in the fight against the effects of a warming climate.
With this in mind, marine biologist Gretta Pecl founded the Range Extension Database and Mapping project, also known as Redmap. Redmap aggregates public sightings of fish to show shifts in the distributions of Australia’s marine species, including some that are crucial to our fishers. At the recent ASFB 2018 conference, I sat down with Gretta to talk about changes in marine species distributions, how they’ll affect Australia, and how they might help the public understand the effects of climate change.
Species Associations in a Changing World
Species associations will change as the climate rises. So how can we attempt to predict these changes (Image Credit: Charles J Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, Image Cropped)
Using joint species distribution models for evaluating how species-to-species associations depend on the environmental context (2017) Tikhonov et al, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12723
The Crux
Statistical modelling is a crucial part of ecology. Being able to provide an (admittedly simplified) mathematical description of the relationship between species abundance, range or density and the surrounding environment is a huge help in taking proactive steps to manage an ecosystem, or predicting species numbers in other areas.
Historically models have used environmental variables to explain population or evolutionary developments in species. When modelling a single species, many ecologists have taken into account that the presence of other species (for example competitors or predators) may influence the presence of this single species. This has led to the rise of joint species distribution models (JSDMs), which take into account environmental variables, as well as the interactions between certain species. These models have become increasingly useful, and with environmental change now being the norm in many ecosystems, this week’s authors produced one such model that accounts for changes in species interactions in the face of changing environmental factors.
Episode 3: A Quiet Place
Image Credit: A Quiet Place, 2018, Image Cropped
We dive into the quiet B O I S from 2018’s A Quiet Place. Dave think lions are from Antarctica, Adam gets too damn excited by Alligator gar and Sam’s stepson ruins the episode.
Movie History/Movie Any Good – 6:28
Quiet Physiology – 17:16
Quiet Ecology – 44:40
A Quiet BOI vs. Dwight Schrute – 1:09:46
Listen to the full episode below. For a more detailed breakdown, head over to Cinematica Animalia.
Invasive Species and Climate Change
Image Credit: TheDigitalArtist, Pixabay licence, Image Cropped
Ecology for the Masses 