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Have our Friday linkfests become pathological? | Dynamic Ecology
This week: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, engineers vs. lawyers, impossible man, literacy vs. literalism, and more. In case you weren't aware, non-ESA members can submit nominations for most ESA awards. So whether you're an ESA member or not, the award nomination process is currently open. Wildlife Photographer of the Year award winners. Strong cohort…
Why don’t ecologists predict probability distribution shape more often? | Dynamic Ecology
Ecologists often predict various things, for various purposes. They develop theoretical models that predict the relationships between two or more variables, such as Bob May's famous prediction that large complex ecosystems won't be stable. They forecast how species' geographic ranges will shift in future in response to climate change. They model the likely consequences of…
This Friday linkfest has achieved the goals of both political tribes simultaneously, without any of the ideological warfare (UPDATED to fix incorrect link) | Dynamic Ecology
This week: nominations sought for new ESA mentorship award, butterfly heist, noise vs. overfitting, can you spell "peer review" without "I", 100 years of QRB, LLMs vs. copyright (but probably not how you're thinking), visualizing Halloween, and more. The ESA is soliciting nominations for the new Fakhri A. Bazzaz and Steward T. A. Pickett Mentorship…
You heard it here first: sample sizes of ecological correlation coefficients are declining | Dynamic Ecology
Last year I polled readers of this blog on whether/how sample sizes in ecology have changed over the last several decades. And then I revealed the answer, or at least a partial answer: sample sizes of one common and important sort of ecological data--correlation coefficients--are slowly declining. The typical sample size of a correlation coefficient…
Poll results: geographically restricted job searches by people on the North American ecology faculty job market | Dynamic Ecology
Recently I polled current and former ecology faculty job seekers in North America, asking some questions about whether, and how, their searches were geographically restricted. The results were very interesting! Here they are. Sample size and demographics: We got 134 respondents--thanks to everyone who responded! Obviously not a perfectly random or totally representative sample of…
Replacing Friday linkfests with AI is harder than it seems (UPDATED) | Dynamic Ecology
This week: the beatings cattle prods will continue until morale theoretical physics improves, LLMs vs. reproducibility, good annoyance, the past degrowth is never dead; it's not even past; accidental inventions, and more. How common is accidental invention? I was surprised that there seem to be some patterns here. Accidents are (somewhat) predictable! An important part…
I updated my crude analysis asking whether the pandemic reduced the number of EEB faculty job seekers and/or the number of jobs they’re applying for | Dynamic Ecology
Last year I used data from ecoevojobs.net to do an admittedly crude analysis asking whether the pandemic reduced the number of EEB faculty job seekers and/or the number of jobs the typical job seeker applies for in a year. I've now updated the post with an additional year's worth of data, from the 2024-25 ecoevojobs.net…
Poll on geographically restricted job searches by people previously or currently on the North American ecology faculty job market | Dynamic Ecology
My recent poll didn't get many responses, but among the respondents so far it seems like there's some interest in data on the geographic mobility of ecology faculty job seekers. So let's start to compile a bit of data on that. If you're currently on, or have ever been on, the market for tenure-track ecology…
What would you like to know about the North American ecology faculty job market, that my previous data doesn’t address? | Dynamic Ecology
As most readers will know, I spent several years collecting a lot of data on the ecology faculty job market in North America. I stopped because it got boring. The data came out the same every year. Even the pandemic didn't change things, except for the number of positions on offer and possibly the number…
Belated perfect pop song of the week | Dynamic Ecology
Forgot to include this in yesterday's linkfest. We go from They Might Be Giants last week, to a band most famous for being covered by They Might Be Giants this week. But although "New York City" is a good pop song, it's not perfect. This is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ZJ1xp2zzQ
This Friday linkfest is performance art | Dynamic Ecology
This week: scientific fraudster sued, despair signalling, grue jay, whale vs. squid, paleontology fail, and more. Experiments are performance art, not a source of generalizable knowledge. This is good trolling. Uses social science examples, but the argument generalizes to ecology. Population and disease ecologist John M. Drake, writing in Science on why the human case…
Transparency vs. trust | Dynamic Ecology
Over the years, this blog often has been praised by readers for making the unwritten "rules of the game" (aka "hidden curriculum") of academia explicit and transparent. Especially, but not exclusively, the unwritten "rules" of the academic job market for ecologists in North America (for instance). And over the years, my own research, teaching, and…
Yawn: when “best practices” become standard practice | Dynamic Ecology
I'm going to start with an anecdote, but I don't really care about the anecdote per se--it just happened to get me thinking about a broader topic. Here's the anecdote, along with some background information: Recently I attended a grant-writing workshop put on by my university for applicants to the NSERC Discovery Grant (DG) program.…
The desperation of Friday linkfests in ecology | Dynamic Ecology
This week: magical systems thinking, useful AI and who uses it, modeling scientific risk-taking, con man vs. molecular biology, Islamic law vs. a 1989 Honda Civic, the need for explainable AI humans, an idea from theoretical physics that ecologists should either definitely copy or definitely not copy, and more. Lizzie Wolkovich on the desperation of…
What’s the core of ecology? | Dynamic Ecology
What's the core of ecology as a scholarly field? What's the "heart" of the field? What defines the discipline and distinguishes it (at least fuzzily) from other disciplines? Back in the Pleistocene grad school, I thought I knew, because I thought my own research topic (joint effects of competition and predation on community structure) was…
Are recent TT ecology hires at “elite” R1 universities different in any measurable way from recent hires at “non-elite” R1s? | Dynamic Ecology
For many years, I had a side project in which I tried to identify every ecologist newly hired into a tenure-track (TT) assistant professor position in North America. You can find summaries of the results, links to the posts, and a paper summarizing much of the data here. I think and hope that the data…
Why Spanish Friday linkfests rarely start with F | Dynamic Ecology
This week: best math video ever, ecology book blogging, against averaging, how everything everywhere is going, and more. This is the greatest math (and abstract art) explainer video I've ever seen. I know it's an hour long, but drop whatever you're doing and watch it. So well done in terms the script, the narrative flow,…
Who are the top science influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts? And are any of them scientists? | Dynamic Ecology
Way back in 2021, I asked who or what is the "public face" of ecology. What defines "ecology" in the minds of the largest mass of people? University courses that cover ecology aren't the right answer. Most people don't take them, because most people either don't go to university, or go but don't take any…
Highlights from recent comment threads | Dynamic Ecology
Our commenters are still the best! If you haven't been reading our comment threads recently, you missed: Rich Lenski on why his famous Long-Term Evolution Experiment hasn't inspired many imitators (although it has inspired a few). Erik Pedersen on how to run a lab exercise in which you have lab members read and discuss a…
This Friday linkfest can sing all the lyrics to “It’s the End of the World” (UPDATEDx2) | Dynamic Ecology
This week: the self-handicap principle, COPE vs. retractions, terrible activism and terrible science in one convenient package, separation theorems, one album wonders (?), and more. Stephen Heard and Bethann Garramon Merkle's new book on teaching and mentoring scientific writing now has a cover and blurbs. New Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for journal retraction…
I wish journals didn’t ask for ms revisions with tracked changes | Dynamic Ecology
At some point (not sure when), some ecology journals began asking authors to submit revised mss with changes tracked. I wish they wouldn't. As a reviewer, editor, and author, I find this useless at best, and often worse than useless. As a reviewer and editor, I don't see what's wrong with the old-fashioned practice of…
Studies that didn’t start bandwagons, even though you’d think they would have (UPDATED) | Dynamic Ecology
Way back in 2011, one of my first posts for Oikos Blog (my OG blogging home) was about bandwagons in ecology.* Specifically, what gets them going. My not-especially-original thought was that bandwagons get going when somebody invents a promising research approach that's easy for others to apply themselves. You just have to follow the template,…
This Friday linkfest can swim at a low Reynolds number | Dynamic Ecology
This week: leaving evolutionary biology, economics vs. LLMs, current events vs. John Adams, llama vs. Napoleon Dynamite, and more. I'm a bit late to this. Writing in the March 2025 issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution, Avarez-Ponce and Vesper compiled data on over 49,000 papers from eleven leading evolution journals, and found that the peer-review…
Bleg: how do you tell a funding agency about your most significant research contributions over the last six years, when the biggest one is a book that hasn’t come out yet? | Dynamic Ecology
I'm currently writing an application to renew my NSERC Discovery Grant, the federal grant that funds 100% of my research program. As part of the application, I need to describe my most significant research impacts over the past six years. NSERC Discovery Grants are meant to fund high-quality long-term research programs, and so in order…
Friday linkfests peaked in 1958-1963 | Dynamic Ecology
This week: ecology faculty job market advice, beyond graphical abstracts, The New Yorker vs. Mark Vellend, against prediction markets, weird obsessions, going long, ultimate frisbee > korfball, sheepdogs vs. sheep, visual anagrams, and more. Lots of links this week, strap in. This ESA Bulletin piece by Clarkson University's Tom Langen is a couple of years…
Noble lies about the sixth mass extinction | Dynamic Ecology
Years ago, I polled readers on the most controversial ideas in ecology. Or at least, ideas I thought would be controversial among our readers. A few of them turned out not to be controversial at all. The least controversial idea in the entire poll was that the Earth is "currently undergoing" a sixth mass extinction.…
You wanna be where everybody knows your name | Dynamic Ecology
As I was walking towards the ESA meeting registration desk on Sunday to pick up my badge, a staff member recognized me and got my badge out for me before I even got to the desk, much less said my name! That is the first time I've ever had that experience, but I assume it's…
The tower of Friday linkfests | Dynamic Ecology
This week: revisiting sociobiology, what can a cell remember, LLMs vs. the Kelly criterion, questioning the friendship recession, how and why air travel is getting worse, the Diet Coke test, and more. Also: Jeremy is traveling today so comment moderation will be slow. Revisiting the sociobiology debate 50 years on. What can a cell remember?…
Here’s the first copy of my book! | Dynamic Ecology
Well, the first copy of the uncorrected page proofs. Which were still exciting to finally hold! If you are at the ESA meeting in Baltimore, you too should head over to the University of Chicago Press booth and hold my book. As a prelude to ordering a copy, of course. :-)
Where to eat and drink in Baltimore for the ESA meeting | Dynamic Ecology
Back in 2015, we ran a couple of guest posts from Baltimore locals on where to eat and drink during the ESA meeting in Baltimore. They're here and here. I can't promise they're still totally up to date, but just offhand I think most of the suggestions are still good.
Come find me at the ESA meeting, especially if you want to talk about my book. ;-) | Dynamic Ecology
I am at the ESA meeting in Baltimore. I'll be here all week. Feel free to ask me about my book*, or just come say hi. *An uncorrected proof of which will be on display at the University of Chicago Press booth! I'm very excited. :-)
Tenure-track Asst. Professor of freshwater ecology at the University of Calgary – please apply! | Dynamic Ecology
The Dept. of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary (my dept.) is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the area of freshwater ecology. Link goes to the ad. Below are a few key details, plus a bit of information and perspective from someone (me) who's been in the department for over 20 years and…
This Friday linkfest is a criminal enterprise run by monkeys | Dynamic Ecology
This week: Geekologist, arguments about geology, arguments about arguments about anthropology, a good null hypothesis test, and more. Also, note that I'm traveling today, so comment moderation will be slow. Geekologist is the blog of Bruno Silva, Frederico Mestre, and Vinicius Bastazini. I applaud their attempt to get blog-reading ecologists today (already an old fashioned…
Can you schedule individual presentations in the ESA 2025 meeting app? And do you really need to get a new login link via email every time you log in? | Dynamic Ecology
On the ESA 2025 meeting website (which I'm accessing via my laptop), I can't figure out how to add individual presentations to my schedule, only entire sessions. Is there a way to schedule individual presentations? If not, that's super-annoying (to put it mildly). Also, every time I visit the meeting website to look at my…
Pre-order The Ecology of Ecologists from University of Chicago Press at the ESA meeting and get a 30% discount and free US shipping! You can do this even if you won’t be at the meeting! Plus, check out the great blurbs from Mark Vellend and Stephen Heard! | Dynamic Ecology
You can pre-order my forthcoming book, The Ecology of Ecologists: Harnessing Diverse Approaches for a Stronger Science, from the University of Chicago Press at the upcoming ESA meeting and get a 30% discount and free US shipping. Click that link for a summary of the book, and great blurbs from Stephen Heard and Mark Vellend.…
Science finally retracted that controversial arsenic-based life paper from 15 years ago. Does that really “draw a line” under the controversy? | Dynamic Ecology
Last week, the famous and controversial "arsenic-based life" paper was been retracted, 15 years after it was published. The authors disagree with the decision and continue to stand behind the paper. Link goes to a news article in Science, that summarizes the controversies around both the paper itself and the retraction. Note that the controversies…
The Friday linkfest sings of love | Dynamic Ecology
This week: remembering Margaret Davis, the academic coalface, paradigms in psychology (or the lack thereof), sluggard waker, human population growth versus climate change, Anonymous 4Chan Poster et al., and more. Including a rare link from Brian! From Jeremy: Writing in the ESA Bulletin, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Sarah Hobbie, and Elizabeth Borer remember pioneering paleoecologist Margaret Davis,…
Generative AI vs. graduate supervisory committees | Dynamic Ecology
Lizzie Wolkovich will no longer chair defenses, or sit on supervision or examining committees, for graduate students who use generative AI as a writing aid. I was interested in this because my own department is planning its own AI use policy for grad students. One proposed policy (which hasn't yet been fully fleshed out, much…
Most Friday linkfests become Friday linkfests because they want to be Friday linkfests, not because they want to share links | Dynamic Ecology
This week: climbing the magic mountain, condensing the iceberg, replicating the replication crisis, information vs. attention, #appropriatelyhonestmethods, location, location, location (scientific research edition), and more. A new NBER working paper (which I haven't read, just passing news of it along) compares scientists' research outputs before vs. after moving from one institution to another, and finds…