Research and Field Notes — Page 35

Good science writers – as with all reporters – should verify the validity of their stories before publishing, making sure to cite the peer-reviewed research detailing a new discovery. But as in the case of the purported cane toad-eating frog, an exciting enough fact with weak empirical support can sometimes take off like….well, an invasive species. In 2005 and 2006,…

With all the potential sources of alternative energy now being bandied about, how’s a green-minded citizen to really know which technologies to throw their support into? Energy sources from wind and solar to biofuels to “clean” fossil fuel technologies receive major attention in the news. Yet these views are often  propelled by the interests of industry stakeholders, and we also…

Invasive species often succeed in new environments because they can outcompete native species within an area for some resource, such as food, mates or habitat. What’s less clear is exactly what gives them this edge over local species that should be experts at living in their home territory. A study by Joshua King and Walter Tschinkel published online in the…

ESA ecologists have released a new map of the biosphere based on global patterns of ecosystem form and process created by humans- a 21st century challenge to the now classic biome maps that appear in nearly every ecology textbook.

Over the last year it has become increasingly apparent to me that ecologists and environmental scientists must take a more active role in providing access to both data and the analytical techniques used to analyze those data.

Much work is being done in the field of plant responses to climate change, where manipulative experiments (e.g., soil warming, elevated CO₂) and correlative approaches (e.g. climate envelopes) are the norm. However, we ecologists are largely failing to report on the biggest experiment on climate change: the last few decades of global warming and rising atmospheric CO₂.

In response to several requests, ESA is making several letters exchanging views about China and Tibet, originally published in the February and April issues of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, available to the general public. To read these letters, click on Frontiers letters on Tibet. Readers who wish to add comments may do so in the comment section of…

Steve Beissinger discusses his and Zachariah Peery’s article “Reconstructing the historic demography of an endangered seabird” in the February 2007 Ecology (88(2): 296-305). Read the full article at https://esa.org/esablog/blog_docs/Beissinger_article.pdf.

Throughout National Wildlife Week (April 21 – 29), which intersects Earth Day, about 30 bloggers (signed up in a mere three days since the announcement) will be spending the week conducting bioblitzes across the world – the US, Panama, Canada, etc. – compiling the information gained into tallies and grand totals of species, then georeferencing the whole bit on an interactive world map, showing our results spatially.

When you are out in the cold, taking samples and measurements, do you sometimes get “jiggy with it” to keep warm? Then perhaps pole dancing is for you—dancing at the North or South Pole that is. March 1, 2007 marks the beginning of International Polar Year (IPY), an international and multidisciplinary effort involving 50,000 people from more than 60 countries in Arctic and Antarctic research.

ESA’s News and Views Blog is something that is long overdue. Its mission to engage students is especially valuable. For academics in particular, however, the ESA Blog presents some intriguing and important implications and consequences for the process of publication. I would like to encourage some discussion of this.