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Our May Issue is out now! – Methods Blog
This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution. Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured Impact of acoustic index parameters on soundscape comparisons Ecoacoustic indices are often used to characterise specific aspects of the acoustic environment. For several commonly used indices, the impacts of…
The best of both worlds: a predictive home range model for colonial animals combining biological realism with minimal data requirements. – Methods Blog
Post provided by Holly Niven. I’m Holly, an ecology PhD student at the University of Glasgow, with a background in mathematics and physics. My research is in quantitative ecology, with a current focus on investigating the exposure of animals to disturbances in their environment and understanding the drivers of their population dynamics. What are home…
Robert May Prize 2024: Winner announced for early career researcher award – Methods Blog
We’re excited to announce Maëlis Kervellec as the winner of the 2024 Robert May Prize, celebrating the best article in the journal by an author at the start of their career. Winner: Maëlis Kervellec Research: ‘Bringing circuit theory into spatial occupancy models to assess landscape connectivity‘ About the research One of the wonders of ecological research is…
Expanding Our View: The Benthic Observation Survey System (BOSS). – Methods Blog
Post provided by Brooke Gibbons. Marine scientists often rely on underwater cameras to survey seabed habitats, but traditional methods come with limitations—small fields of view, restricted coverage, and logistical constraints. Enter the Benthic Observation Survey System (BOSS): a new wide-field, self-righting drop-camera system that significantly expands our ability to survey and map the seafloor. The…
Fay Morland: Including the invisible fraction in whole population studies: A guide to the genetic sampling of unhatched bird eggs – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Fay Morland's article' Including the invisible fraction in whole population studies: A guide…
Becky Heath: Spatial ecosystem monitoring with a Multichannel Acoustic Autonomous Recording Unit (MAARU) – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Becky Heath's article 'Spatial ecosystem monitoring with a Multichannel Acoustic Autonomous Recording Unit…
Our April Issue is out now! – Methods Blog
This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution. Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured The fallacy of single imputation for trait databases: Use multiple imputation instead The past few years have seen the publication of many new trait databases. However, trait databases usually have…
Grace Ridder: Generating spatially realistic environmental null models with the shift-&-rotate approach helps evaluate false positives in species distribution modelling – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Grace Ridder's article 'Generating spatially realistic environmental null models with the shift-&-rotate approach…
Benjamin Van Doren: Nighthawk: Acoustic monitoring of nocturnal bird migration in the Americas – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Benjamin Van Doren's article 'Nighthawk: Acoustic monitoring of nocturnal bird migration in the…
Maëlis Kervellec: Bringing circuit theory into spatial occupancy models to assess landscape connectivity – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Maëlis Kervellec's article 'Bringing circuit theory into spatial occupancy models to assess landscape…
Alba Motes Rodrigo: Precise tactile stimulation of worker ants by a robotic manipulator reveals that individual responses are density- and context-dependent – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Alba Motes Rodrigo's article 'Precise tactile stimulation of worker ants by a robotic…
Jonathan Sauder: Scalable semantic 3D mapping of coral reefs with deep learning – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Jonathan Sauder's article 'Scalable semantic 3D mapping of coral reefs with deep learning'…
Nicolas Mongiardino Koch: Chronospaces: An R package for the statistical exploration of divergence times promotes the assessment of methodological sensitivity – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Nicolas Mongiardino Koch's article 'Chronospaces: An R package for the statistical exploration of…
Omar Saif: Fieldwork in conservation organisations–A review of methodological challenges, opportunities and ethics – Methods Blog
Throughout March and April, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2024 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. Omar Saif's article 'Fieldwork in conservation organisations–A review of methodological challenges, opportunities and…
2024 Robert May Prize Shortlist: Methods Ecology and Evolution’s Award for Early Career Researchers – Methods Blog
The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution written by an early career author. With entries spanning the 15th Volume of the journal, our Senior Editors carefully shortlisted the following 10 papers: Natasha Klappstein: Step selection functions with non-linear and random effects Omar Saif:…
From Kenya to Ohio – the inspiration for WildWing: an open-source, autonomous and affordable unmanned aerial system for animal behavioural video monitoring – Methods Blog
Post provided by Jenna Kline, PhD Candidate, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA The story of the WildWing project began in 2022 when I enrolled in the Experiential Introduction to Imageomics course. For the fieldwork component of the course, I travelled to the Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia,…
From Personal Reflections to Emerging Ecological Methods: My BES2024 Experience – Methods Blog
Post provided by Sthandiwe Nomthandazo Kanyile The British Ecological Society (BES) held its Annual Meeting in Liverpool in December last year, attracting over 1,600 delegates from around the world! As the oldest ecological society in the world, the BES has a rich history of promoting ecological research, serving as a vital hub for scientists, practitioners,…
The photo that got away: Camera traps may monitor less space than we think – Methods Blog
Post provided by Brendan Carswell. The lead author, Brendan Carswell, on the Saskatchewan River (Treaty 5 Lands, traditional territory of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, near Le Pas, Manitoba, Canada). Brendan (he/him/his) is currently a PhD student in Biology at the University of Calgary in the Weaving Wildlife and Land Based Knowledges lab. This paper, however,…
Para além do laboratório: estudar aprendizagem em peixes directamente no meio selvagem – Methods Blog
Post fornecido por Catarina Vila Pouca. This post is also available in English Olá! O meu nome é Catarina Vila Pouca e investigo como e por que razão os animais apresentam diferentes comportamentos e formas de aprendizagem. Sempre tive uma paixão por tubarões e pela natação, e por isso, ao longo da minha carreira, foquei-me…
From lab tanks to river banks: taking fish cognition research into the wild – Methods Blog
Post provided by Catarina Vila Pouca This post is also available in Portuguese Hello there! My name is Catarina Vila Pouca and I study how and why animals behave and learn in different ways. I have had a passion for sharks and swimming for as long as I can remember, and so in my career…
International Women’s Day 2025- Graziella Iossa – Methods Blog
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of the BES community. In each post, they discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, means to them. What work do you do? I am an evolutionary…
International Women’s Day 2025- Natalie Cooper – Methods Blog
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of the BES community. In each post, they discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, means to them. What work do you do? I'm a macroecologist and…
Our March issue is out now! – Methods Blog
This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution. Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured Bayesian views of generalized additive modelling This study aims to highlight useful links (and differences) between Bayesian and frequentist approaches to smoothing, as detailed in the statistical literature, in an…
International Women’s Day 2025 – Lydia Morley – Methods Blog
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of the BES community. In each post, they discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, means to them. What work do you do? I’m really interested in…
International Women’s Day 2025- Nomthi Khanyile – Methods Blog
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2025, we are excited to share a collection of blog posts showcasing the work of some of the BES community. In each post, they discuss their experiences in ecology, as well as what this year’s theme, ‘Accelerate Action’, means to them. What work do you do? I consider myself primarily…
From a frustrated undergraduate to a motivated PhD: The story of YOLO-Behaviour for automated behavioural coding from videos – Methods Blog
Post provided by Alex Chan Hoi Hang, PhD student, Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz The story of this project can be traced back to 2019, as a second-year undergraduate in biological sciences at Imperial College London, UK, where I took an animal behaviour course. For one of the hands-on…
Addressing observational biases in data-driven approaches of zoonotic hazard prediction – Methods Blog
Post provided by Andrea Tonelli Over the past five decades, more than half of emerging infectious diseases in humans originated from animals, with zoonotic pathogens posing a growing threat to global health. Shifts in land use, climate change, direct use of wildlife and biodiversity loss all influence human exposure to pathogens of wild animals, shaping…
Avoiding Confusion: Modelling Image Identification Surveys with Classification Errors – Methods Blog
Post provided by Jon Barry We are a group comprised of statisticians, ecologists and a computer scientist. Back in 2021 when this work started, we were all employed at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquacultural Science (Cefas) at Lowestoft, U.K. Since then, Robert, our computer scientist, has ‘jumped ship’ (no pun intended) to the…
Into the Swarm-Verse: quantifying collective motion across species and contexts – Methods Blog
Post provided by Marina Papadopoulou Authors We are three researchers interested in collective animal behaviour. Marina Papadopoulou is a postdoctoral researcher at Tuscia University in Italy, Simon Garnier is a Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (USA), and Andrew King is an Associate Professor at Swansea University (UK). As a Greek-French-Welsh team with…
Our February issue is out now! – Methods Blog
This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution. Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems This review presents 10 practical guidelines for ground-based research of terrestrial microclimates, covering methods and best practices from initial conceptualisation…
Unde Venis Species? RRphylogeography, a new accurate method finds the area of origin of species – Methods Blog
Post provided by Pasquale Raia (he/him), Alessandro Mondanaro (he/him) and Silvia Castiglione (she/her) Quo Vadis? Latin for Where Are You Going? was a huge 1951 box office hit produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. The film (which is based on an 1896 book wrote by the Polish novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz) was set in ancient Rome during…
It is only by understanding what causes sampling bias that we can correct it – Methods Blog
Post provided by Rob J. Boyd Colleagues and I recently published a paper in MEE, and its title might induce a bit of head scratching: “Using causal diagrams … to correct geographic sampling biases in biodiversity monitoring data” (Boyd et al., 2025). If you’re familiar with causal inference, you might be wondering, “What have causal…
Ten practical guidelines for microclimate research in terrestrial ecosystems – Methods Blog
Post provided by Jonas Lembrechts. Blogpost adapted from: www.the3dlab.org: Ten practical guidelines | The 3D lab Ecologists and biogeographers are increasingly recognizing the critical role of microclimate in addressing a wide range of research questions. Consequently, many researchers are incorporating microclimate sensors into their studies. While deploying these sensors might seem straightforward—simply plugging them in…
Our January issue is out now! – Methods Blog
This issue contains the latest methods in ecology and evolution, including our first Felsenstein Review! Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover! Featured Simpson's tachytely or bradytely? The importance of quantifying rate uncertainty The spectacular variation in species forms and richness across space and time can be…
From the Field to Museums: Uncovering the Hidden Insect World of the Galápagos Islands. – Methods Blog
In this series, we explore the unique experiences of field ecologists conducting research in remote field stations during the holiday season. Through personal stories and reflections, our contributors share what it's like to conduct scientific work in remote, biodiverse environments, where the challenges of research intersect with the spirit of the holidays. From the solitude…
A Remote Holiday Season: Research and Reflections at the Succulent Karoo Station. – Methods Blog
In this series, we explore the unique experiences of field ecologists conducting research in remote field stations during the holiday season. Through personal stories and reflections, our contributors share what it's like to conduct scientific work in remote, biodiverse environments, where the challenges of research intersect with the spirit of the holidays. From the solitude…
Look inside: a handy tool for casting the enclosed nest structure of birds – Methods Blog
Post provided by Jing-Chia Guo. To understand something, we often describe its appearance and shape: The ball is round, the can is cylinder, and the pillow is kind of rectangle. However, most natural creatures are irregular in shape, so it’s difficult for people to quantify or define them. Sometimes, scientists are even unable to get…
Discovering population dynamics and community interactions of migratory birds by individual-based model – Methods Blog
It has been a few weeks since the 15th Chinese Symposium on Biodiversity Science and Conservation, where the first “Seminar on Methods in Ecology and Evolution in China” was held. In these blog posts, we hear from some of the winners of the “Outstanding Young Scholar Award in Ecological and Evolutionary Methodology in China”. Here,…
For worse and for better: the complicated marriage between biologging and wild animal welfare – Methods Blog
Post provided by Michaël Beaulieu A cold Encounter in the Wild When talking about animal welfare to scientists who commonly use biologging tools to monitor the behaviour or physiology of wild animals in an ecological or conservation context, I have noticed that the first thing that usually comes to mind for them is the unwanted…
From fieldwork to theoretical modelling – my journey in measuring biodiversity – Methods Blog
It has been a few weeks since the 15th Chinese Symposium on Biodiversity Science and Conservation, where the first “Seminar on Methods in Ecology and Evolution in China” was held. In these blog posts, we hear from some of the winners of the “Outstanding Young Scholar Award in Ecological and Evolutionary Methodology in China”. Here, winner…