Ecological Thoughts

  For us ecologists, publication of our findings is a key aspect of doing science. We conceptualize questions, plan and execute experiments and then we need to report them to our peers. However, nowadays, the landscape of publication is seeing rapid change. Open science is out there; an important transformation to democratize science. Pre-print servers based on a ‘crowdsourcing’ model are an interesting and growing development that, however, also brings up much debate 1 . And then, we have recently a number of papers shouting out the problems with inequities in access to scholarly publication by researchers working in less developed world economies, or more often termed, the Global South  2,3  (I admit I’m not a big fan of this term, as I disagree with the geographical implication as well the grouping of wealthy vs poor nations, especially so in the sciences). This brings-up a much called for problem. Are we scientists from the Global South hindered to publish and have an...

This semester I teach again at the Universidad Nacional del Comahue. This year, it is the turn of Population Ecology. I normally deliver this course every other year, alternating it with one on Behavioral Ecology.   I find the contrast between both courses quite interesting. Most topics I teach in animal behaviour have a clearer theoretical background (e.g., optimal foraging theory, the marginal value theorem, local mate competition or clutch size) and there are good textbooks that allow organizing students’ work. In addition, biology students are typically fascinated by what animals are capable of doing and on how evolution has modeled behaviour.   In population ecology things are less clear. For starters, there few if any updated proper textbooks. There are of course a number of books on the subject matter, but the focus is set on either the methods (best ways to estimate animal abundance, software tools, etc.), looking into specific aspects (such as population genetics), or...

Recently, I attended (if virtually) the Annual Meeting of the British Ecological Society (BES), termed this year,“Festival of Ecology”. A really nice meeting, amazingly well organized and with an attractive program. Among a variety of activities which I was interested in, there was the obvious one: a visit to the BES stand where societal publications are traditionally exhibited. Because of my interest in applied ecology, I was rapidly attracted to a new journal aimed at improving the linkage between science and solution of the increasing environmental issues related to anthropogenic activities. This is the 7th BES journal which states that the way in that scientific data and information may reach practitioners is, among several changes,  by including new article types (such as “Data Articles”) in a flexible format1. An additional aspect in this sense, is avoiding the paywall by making the journal fully open access. This latter issue got me thinking. In fact I have  been rumina...

Last weekend, while tiding an old trunk full of notes and papers and other stuff that sits in our lounge under a zillion plant pots, I came across this Newsweek cover I show above.  The leading title: “No more hot air. Its’ time to talk sense about the Environment” caught my eye immediately. The issue is dated June 1992, that is 28 years ago and referred to a United Nations Earth Summit (actually the first one) that was held in Rio de Janeiro that year. Among a list of issues that were on the table then, I noted and agenda (named Agenda 21) through which industrial nations would help poor countries develop their economies without damaging their environments. The IPCC was created in 1988 (and was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007) and the Kyoto protocol was signed by many countries in 1997. Yet, I often wonder how much has been achieved since then or if we have done enough. We see glaciers melting, droughts and floods more often than expected or in new areas, and several biological grou...

  “Como te gustan las citas”, pregunta el caballero, acodado en la barra, a una señorita a su lado. Ella contesta sin dudarlo, “Apellido, Título y Año,…y vos?”   In scientific writing, recognizing others work when it is due, is very important for a variety of reasons. For starters, it is the right thing to do, but also, it relates to the idea that scientific knowledge builds upon earlier acquired information, very much like each brick of a wall is set upon a previously laid brick. When we write a paper, we acknowledge previous work by citing it.   Now, having said this, why is it that more often than not, students or junior scientists struggle when it comes to appropriately citing in their texts and in using the “right” reference list? One common issue-the use of too many references- could be assigned to some degree of lack of confidence in some statements. When one is writing your own first papers, you may often feel the need to refer to all that literature you have been...

On what is “good” question. “Nothing shocks me, I am a scientist” (Indiana Jones, in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”) Early on, as students of the natural sciences we learn the scientific method. The principle behind it is hypothesis testing, a process through which a conjecture or hypothesis is put to test with some experiment that allows us to manipulate factors.  In ecology, the application of this approach took a little longer than in other fields, probably because the discipline has a strong background of natural history: describing species, where they lived and what they did. We can easily picture the first ecologists as thoughtful observers of nature.  Also, manipulating factors, carrying our controls and assuring repeatability are high, often difficult to achieve, goals. It was in the late 1950’s, and through the strong influence of researchers such as Robert Mc Arthur, that hypothesis testing has become more of rule in the ecological scienc...

The combination of a generalized lockdown with a snowy winter got me in the mood of starting this blog in July 2020. I wish to share some of my thoughts on ecological science from Southern Argentina, via this blog. I have also led the International Journal of Pest Management since 2012 and as from 2021 will be Editor-in-Chief of Ecological Applications, one of five journals managed by the Ecological Society of America (ESA).  I will  write on random things, all ecology. I expect to write some comment on those papers published in EA that have, for some reason caught my eye. Of course all thoughts and opinions will be solely mine. Finally, because I teach Population Ecology and Behavioural Ecology at the Universidad del Comahue in Bariloche, I will write about the experience of teaching ecology to graduate students.  I enjoy teaching no end...but Zoom clases...well this is another story, soon to begin for me. Our second term, when I will be teaching starts on Augu...