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Videos and podcasts

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Volume 1 Issue 1: video | podcast ||Issue 2: video 1 |video 2 | podcast 1| podcast 2 ||Issue 3: video 1 | PowerPoint Presentation | podcast|| Issue 4: podcast 1| podcast 2|video

Volume 2 video

 

Issue 1

Interview with Corey Bradshaw

Graziella Iossa interviews Corey Bradshaw, University of Adelaide, on his work with colleagues on reducing invasive animal density.
Read Corey Bradshaw and co-authors' work.

Summary: Corey Bradshaw answers what is the main idea behind his work with co-authors, "Spatially explicit spreadsheet modelling for optimising the efficiency of reducing invasive animal density". Further, he explains how their model advances methodology in ecology and evolution and finally shows how it could be applied by wildlife manager and practitioners with basic knowledge of computer models. Their Excel-spreadsheet 'Spatio-Temporal Animal Reduction' (S.T.A.R.) model is designed specifically to optimise the culling strategies for feral pigs, buffalo and horses in Kakadu National Park (northern Australia), but Corey explains how their aim was to make it easy enough for anyone to use and modify it so that it could be applied to any invasive species anywhere.

Podcast with Matt Baker

Graziella Iossa, MEE Journal Coordinator, interviews Matt Baker, University of Maryland-Baltimore County about his work with co-author Ryan King, Baylor University. Matt explains about TITAN, their new method for measuring ecological community thresholds that should be able to inform about conservation of rare and threatened species.

Read Matt Baker and Ryan King's work.

Art cover created by Matt Baker, shows a graph on a background of pines overlooking a river

Click on the play button to listen to this podcast or listen to the podcast here. Artwork and copyright, Matt Baker

If you are experiencing any problem listening to the podcast, please download flash player

 

Issue 2

Interview with Douglas Barron

Graziella Iossa interviews Doug Barron, University of Illinois, USA, on his work with colleagues on a meta-analysis on transmitter effects on bird ecology and behaviour.
Read Doug Barron and co-authors' work.

Summary: Doug Barron answers what is the main idea behind his work with co-authors, "Meta-analysis of transmitter effects on avian behaviour and ecology. Further, he explains how their meta-analysis advances methodology in ecology and evolution and finally shows how the findings of their study could be applied by anyone using transmitters on birds.

Interview with Aaron Ellison

Graziella Iossa interviews Aaron Ellison, Harvard Forest, Harvard University, USA, on his work with colleagues on experimentally testing the role of forest foundation species.
Read Aaron Ellison's and co-authors' work.

Summary: Aaron Ellison answers what is the main idea behind his work with co-authors, "Experimentally testing the role of foundation species in forests: the Harvard Forest Hemlock Removal Experiment". He states that there are two key pieces to his work: foundation species are key species that really 'make' ecosystems, secondly, they are studying an an adelgid that is killing the hemlocks in North America. Further, he explains how their large-scale controlled experiments, which are very difficult to conduct in normal circumstances, advance methodology in ecology and evolution. He explains how the findings of their study could be applied by theoretical researchers and the management community. Finally he encourages other researchers to use their facilities at Harvard Forest.

Podcast with Jean-Pierre Moussus

Graziella Iossa, MEE Journal Coordinator, interviews Jean-Pierre Moussus, MNHN - EGB about his work with co-authors Romain Julliard and Frederic Jiguet. Jean-Pierre explains about their article 'Featuring ten phenological estimators using simulated data' and how it will be able to inform anyone using phenological estimators.

Read Jean-Pierre and co-authors' work.

Figure created by Jean-Pierre Moussus and colleagues, shows a graph with two frequency distributions overlapping each other

Click on the play button to listen to this podcast or listen to the podcast here. Figure and copyright, Jean-Pierre Moussus, Romain Julliard and Frederic Jiguet.

If you are experiencing any problem listening to the podcast, please download flash player

Podcast with Karen Strier and Susan Alberts

Karen Strier, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, and Susan Alberts, Duke University, USA and Institute of Primate Research, Kenya, talk with Graziella Iossa, MEE Journal Co-ordinator, about their work with co-authors: 'The Primate Life History Database: A unique shared ecological data resource'. This is a database based on long-term datasets that researchers at several institutions in North America have created to make data comparable across studies. It will aid future comparative analyses of primate data and the creation of easily archivable output. The most important features of this database, as Susan points out, are its structure and the use of a common vocabulary. Karen and Susan hope that it will be applicable to studies of most vertabrates and certainly of mammals.

Read Karen Strier, Susan Alberts and co-authors' work.

Visit The Primate Life Histories website.

Image created by Karen Strier and colleagues, shows a collection of images of primates

Click on the play button to listen to this podcast or listen to the podcast here. Figure and copyright, D.K. Brockman, C.B. Possomai, F.A. Campos, S.C. Alberts, Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund International, M. Cords, M. Wilson.

If you are experiencing any problem listening to the podcast, please download flash player

 

Issue 3

Interview with Arnaud Tarroux

Graziella Iossa interviews Arnaud Tarroux, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Canada, on his work with colleagues on the sensitivity of stable isotope mixing models to variation in isotopic ratios.
Read Arnaud Tarroux' and co-authors' work.

Summary: Arnaud Tarroux answers what is the main idea behind his work with co-authors, "Sensitivity of stable isotope mixing models to variation in isotopic ratios: evaluating consequences of lipid extraction". He states that in some systems it appears to be better to extract lipid before isotopic analysis and in other systems the contrary is true. Moreover, lipid extraction is costly, so their method is potentially really useful as a predictive tool in preliminary analyses. Their work is an important step in the issue of lipid extraction in stable isotope analysis and more generally, isotopic variation, which can be due to other factors. Arnaud then proceeds to show with a presentation his novel method and how the researchers using it can assess whether to extract lipids or not. Anyone working on stable isotope analysis with a goal to reconstructing diet could use their method.

PowerPoint Presentation with audio by David Watson

Click on the play button to watch and listen to this PowerPoint presentation. Figure and copyright, David Watson.

Summary: David Watson, Charles Sturt University, Australia, gives an overview of the research that forms the basis for his article and of the methods involved: "Optimizing inventories of diverse sites—insights from Barro Colorado Island birds". David talks of the challenges that researchers from ecologists to taxonomists face when sampling diverse sites for a whole range of species from plants to animals. The presentation is written and presented by David Watson with whom copyright remains.

Read David Watson's work.

Podcast with Art Munson

Art Munson, Cornell University, USA, talks with Graziella Iossa, MEE Journal Co-ordinator, about his work with colleagues: 'A method for measuring the relative information content of data from different monitoring protocols'. Art presents a method to compare the information from two data sources. As often in ecology data are difficult to compare because they have been collected at different points in space and time, Art and colleagues propose using a model that summarises each of these data sources and allowing a direct comparison of the data. Their work advances methodology in ecology and evolution in two ways. At first they were analysing a citizen science project, the eBird dataset, which collects bird observations throughout the western hemisphere and there was a question of how much the biological information was being collected by this citizen science project. One outcome of their work found that eBird is collecting a lot of useful information. More generally, this method can be applied to verify data sources for lots of different purposes.

Read Art Munson's and colleagues work.

Image created by Art Munson and colleagues, shows a map of the USA and Ebird data

Click on the play button to listen to this podcast or listen to the podcast here.

If you are experiencing any problem listening to the podcast, please download flash player

 

 

Issue 4

Podcast with Jane Elith, Michael Kearney and Steven Phillips

Jane Elith and Michael Kearney, University of Melbourne, Australia and Steven Phillips, AT&T, USA talk with Graziella Iossa, MEE Journal Co-ordinator, about their work: 'The art of modelling range-shifting species'. Jane explains that this is a method to predict species distributions, whose range are shifting, like invasive species or species responding to climate change. Mike Kearney then specifies why they used cane toads as a case study for their work. By taking characteristics of the animal and putting this information together they could ask from a physiological point of view, where cane toads could not live. They also asked how to bring together this mechanistic approach with more traditional approaches. This work advances methodology by combining information from physiological models to data in the correlation-based ones; by looking at details of how you can do the modelling; and by looking at tools for understanding models and data, something that a lot of people will find interesting. Then Steven explains about MaxEnt, a programme that models species distributions based on a machine-learning approach, developed with other colleagues and freely available on the web. For example a common use of the programme is predicting how climate change will affect species distributions. Finally, Mike reports that this method should be useful to anybody trying to predict species with unequal distributions. Jane also precises that students, managers, researchers could be potentially interested, especially given that MaxEnt is freely available.

Read Jane Elith, Michael Kearney and Steven Phillips work.

Information about MaxEnt

Image created by Jane Elith and colleagues, shows a map of Australia

Click on the play button to listen to this podcast or listen to the podcast here. Figure and copyright, Jane Elith, Michael Kearney and Steven Phillips.

If you are experiencing any problem listening to the podcast, please download flash player

Podcast with Freya Harrison

Freya Harrison, University of Oxford, UK talks with Graziella Iossa, MEE Journal Co-ordinator, about her review: 'Getting started with meta-analysis'. This is a work likely to be of interest to a wide range of readers. Freya explains that meta-analysis is a statistically robust way of putting together results from different studies that test the same hypothesis. She provides in this review a 'road map' to the topic so that beginners can get a head start on meta-analysis. Meta-analysis hopefully will be more used as a result in the fields of ecology and evolution.

Read Freya Harrison's work.

Image created by Freya Harrison, shows a plot of metadata

Click on the play button to listen to this podcast or listen to the podcast here. Figure and copyright, Freya Harrison.

If you are experiencing any problem listening to the podcast, please download flash player

 

Video by José J. Lahoz-Monfort

José J. Lahoz-Monfort, University of Kent, UK, shows his fieldsite on the Isle of May (Scotland) and explains the background to his research drawing on a long-term study on the seasbirds of the island. His work with co-authors Byron J.T. Morgan, Mike P. Harris, Sarah Wanless and Stephen N. Freeman is titled "A capture-recapture model for exploring multi-species synchrony in survival".
Read José J. Lahoz-Monfort and co-authors' work.

Summary: José J. Lahoz-Monfort explains what is the main idea behind his work with co-authors, "A capture-recapture model for exploring multi-species synchrony in survival". Their work looks at survival rates of three seabird species: the common guillemot, the razorbill and the Atlantic puffin. These three species of auks have similar ecology and are subject to the same environmental stochasticity so it is reasonable to expect some synchrony in the fluctuations of their demographic parameters.

Volume 2

Video by Sara Kross and Ximena Nelson

Sara Kross, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, shows her fieldsite in New Zealand and a new "A portable low-cost remote videography system for monitoring wildlife" developed with Ximena Nelson.
Read Sara Kross and Ximena Nelson's work.

Summary: Sara and Ximena developed this method to study the nesting behaviour of the New Zealand falcon in the New Zealand High Country. Sara shows that the camera is relatively cheap and easy to transport in a backpack. The camera uses solar batteries and compressed videos so that it can be left in the field for up to 4 days at a time. The footage recovered has been used so far for research but also for conservation and education purposes.

 

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