Big fish, little fish, hump-shaped foraging curves, and the landscape of fear. by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer IN LIFE, much depends on context. The benefits accruing from the pursuit of liberty, lunch, and other forms of happiness, are tempered by the presence of risk. This is as true for small fishes as for anyone. In Lake Erie, young yellow…
Meretsky and colleagues propose a national conservation-support program to help knit together state level efforts and larger federal programs, such as the recently established Landscape Conservation Cooperatives delineated here, and prevent species from falling through the gaps.
Josh Miller is one among a small cadre of ecologists looking at living ecosystems through the relics of their dead. by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer Flags mark bone locations as field assistant Jared Singer maps a carcass near a lake in Yellowstone National Park. Credit, Joshua Miller. ________________ JOSH Miller likes to call himself a conservation paleobiologist. It’s a…
The UM-Baltimore County ecologist talks about geographical context in field research and why he thinks the value of nature is more than the sum of it’s services. by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer Listen to the podcast on the Field Talk page, or download it from iTunes. Ellis collaborated with Laura Martin and Bernd Blossey of Cornell University on the Frontiers…
By Nadine Lymn, ESA director of public affairs As the reports began coming in about the approaching “superstorm” known as Hurricane Sandy, the chatter about how and if it was connected to global warming was not far behind. Indeed, it seemed that in the days following its devastating coastal landfall, attention on climate change was revived. In his Bloomberg view…
A Colombian coal mine opens a treasure chest of fossils. By Liza Lester IT was large, that much was obvious. When Edwin Cadena first saw the fossil in 2005, he thought he might be uncovering another specimen of Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the ancient snake he and his colleagues discovered in 2004 on a Smithsonian expedition lead by Carlos Jaramillo, Jason Head,…
WE live in a human-dominated world. For many of our fellow creatures, this means a fragmented world, as human conduits to friends, family, and resources sever corridors that link the natural world. The latest installment in ESA’s Issues in Ecology series takes on models and methods for reconnecting wildlife habitat in restoration and conservation planning and management.
On the market for scientific jobs, male applicants enjoy a substantial advantage, say Yale University researchers. by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer A SUBTLE but persistent bias dogs women entering into scientific professions. A recent study in PNAS found that faculty, regardless of gender, favor male applicants over female applicants for entry level lab management positions. Though they found female…
by Liza Lester, ESA communications officer The pressures of global trade may heighten disease incidence by dictating changes in land use. A boom in disease-carrying ticks and chiggers has followed the abandonment of rice cultivation in Taiwanese paddies, say ecologist Chi-Chien Kuo and colleagues, demonstrating the potential for global commodities pricing to drive the spread of infections. Their work appears…
An August 2012 supplementary issue of Ecology explores the interface of ecology and phylogenetics. By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer Lebensbaum (Tree of Life): Detail from Gustav Klimt’s 1910/11 drawing for the immense dining room frieze at Stoclet Palace, in Brussels. Watercolor and pencil. Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna. NATURALISTS of the late 19th century tended to holistic interpretations…
Sylvia Fallon, a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, blogged about ecosystem dynamics and the key role of salmon in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed last week, in a post inspired by Peter Lisi’s presentation at ESA’s 2012 annual meeting in Portland. Peter is a postdoc in Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. Here’s an excerpt…
In the Willamette River watershed, an experiment in ecosystem economics is underway. Map of the Willamette River Basin; Temperature Effects of Point Sources, Riparian Shading, and Dam Operations on the Willamette River. Credit, Oregon Water Science Center, USGS. “What we want to do,” said Bobby Cochran, “Is take the money that we’re spending now and redirect it the way nature…