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From the archives: all the reasons why coexisting species should be similar rather than different

drupaladmin
1 March 2012
No time for any substantive posts for a little while, as I'm swamped with grant writing and teaching. So here's one of my favorite posts from the archives. It's about all the reasons why coexisting species should be similar to one another rather than (or in addition to...

Dave Vasseur and I are seeking a postdoc applicant (UPDATED - now filled)

drupaladmin
28 February 2012
UPDATE FEB. 29: Dave and I have lined someone up for this. Thanks to everyone who expressed an interest. Dave Vasseur and I are preparing a big grant application to look at the effects of demographic and environmental stochasticity on spatial population dynamics (...

More on changing your mind in science

drupaladmin
26 February 2012
A while back I asked what was the biggest scientific claim that you had changed your mind about ? At the time, I wasn't aware that hundreds of very prominent scientists had already answered a slightly broader version of this question in 2008 for the Edge website . I...

Crowdfunding long-form science journalism (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
24 February 2012
MATTER is an interesting start-up, looking to create a home for something increasingly rare: high quality, long-form commissioned science journalism. The people behind it are experienced professional journalists who've written for publications like New Scientist and...

Modeling challenge: explain sheep cyclones

drupaladmin
23 February 2012
The Art of Modelling poses a question to mathematically-inclined readers: can you build a model of individual movement that explains sheep cyclones ? Even if you're not a modeller, you should click through to find out what a sheep cyclone is.

Instrumental variables: the key to analyzing "natural experiments"?

drupaladmin
22 February 2012
Inferring causality is hard. Especially in a world where lots of factors, some of them unknown, causally affect the response variable of interest (and each other), and where there are causal feedbacks (mutual causation) between variables. It's even harder when, for...

Biggest week ever for the Oikos blog

drupaladmin
20 February 2012
Last week was the biggest week ever for the Oikos blog. No surprise, since I did a bunch of posting. But still: 3972 views, including 1124 syndicated views! That's 567 views/day for those of you scoring at home. It was also the biggest week ever just counting non-...

Another upcoming course on models in ecology

drupaladmin
17 February 2012
Friend of Oikos Blog Chris Klausmeier ("lowendtheory") writes with details of a series of one-week summer courses on Enhancing Linkages between Mathematics and Ecology (ELME), to be offered at Kellogg Biological Station (MI, USA). I know all the instructors, they're...

Must-read blog on the art of modeling

drupaladmin
17 February 2012
Amy Hurford, an ecology graduate student working a recent ecology PhD who worked with the brilliant Troy Day and Peter Taylor at Queen's University, has a new blog called Just Simple Enough: The Art of Mathematical Modelling . It's great stuff, you totally need to...

Models in ecology course to be offered

drupaladmin
16 February 2012
My northern neighbor Mark Lewis , Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Biology, will be offering a course on "Models in ecology" for advanced undergrads and grad students at Bamfield Marine Station . Marty Krkosek is the co-instructor. The course runs Apr. 30-May 18,...

What does R-squared mean?

drupaladmin
16 February 2012
Not "proportion of variance explained"! At least, that's not the most precise gloss. Nice discussion here . HT Jarrett Byrnes (via Twitter)

Mathematics and ecology survey

drupaladmin
16 February 2012
The International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists is surveying ecologists about their knowledge of mathematics and their views on how to incorporate mathematics into the training of ecologists. It's a short survey (it took me less than a minute), go take it here .

Must-read paper: how to make ANY statistical test come out "significant"

drupaladmin
16 February 2012
Just make all the usual judgment calls and conduct all the usual "exploratory" analyses that scientists conduct all the time! The linked paper is the best paper I've read in a long time. It's essential reading for everyone who does science, from undergraduates on up...

Should supervisors let student authors make mistakes? And should reviewers care?

drupaladmin
16 February 2012
Here's an issue which I've encountered occasionally as a referee over the years (though not recently, and not as a handling editor as far as I can recall). It concerns manuscripts for which a student is the lead author, and their supervisor is a co-author. Once in a...

The bright side of a zombie (ideas) apocalypse

drupaladmin
15 February 2012
One of my favorite comics asks whether we shouldn't just let the zombies win .

Want to cite the Oikos Blog? Here's how! (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
14 February 2012
My fellow editor Mark Vellend just emailed me with the fruits of his research on how to formally cite blog posts. While standards are still evolving and many ecology journals have no official policy, you can find guidance here and here . (UPDATE: second link fixed) The...

Advice: how to choose a PhD program (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
12 February 2012
Joan Strassman has a nice post at Sociobiology about how to choose a PhD program. I agree with most but not all of what she has to say. I don't agree that you just avoid M.Sc. programs if you think you might want a PhD. Unless you're sure you want a PhD, doing an MSc...

College vs. graduate school

drupaladmin
11 February 2012
Here . The diagram on the left is true. The diagram on the right isn't, but it often feels like it is.

Herding professor cats

drupaladmin
11 February 2012
I can't possibly comment on how true this is. HT Denim and Tweed .

Drilling down vs. scaling up

drupaladmin
7 February 2012
Biological Posteriors asks a good question: how far down the [mechanistic] rabbit hole should one go to get an answer to any question? For instance, if you want to understand plant distributions, do you need to study plant physiology? Or even plant biochemistry?...

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