Oct | 2017 | ConservationBytes.com

You know you’re screwed when the insects disappear

31 10 2017

dead cicada Last Friday, ABC 891 here in Adelaide asked me to comment on a conservation paper doing the news rounds last week. While it has been covered extensively in the media (e.g., The Guardian, CNN, and Science), I think it’s probably going to be one of those things that people unfortunately start to forget right away. But this is decidedly something that no one should be forgetting.

While you can listen to me chat about this with the lovely Sonya Feldhoff on the ABC (I start chin-wagging around the 14:30 mark), I thought it prudent to remind CB.com readers just how devastatingly important this study is.

While anyone with a modicum of conservation science under her belt will know that the Earth’s biodiversity is not doing well, the true extent of the ecological tragedy unfolding before our very eyes really came home to us back in 2014 with the publication of WWF’s Living Planet Report. According to a meta-analysis of 10,380 population trends from over 3000 species of birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and fish, the report concluded that the Earth has lost over 50% of the individuals in vertebrate populations since 1970. Subsequent revisions (and more population trends from more species) place the decline at over 60% by 2020 (that’s only a little over two years away). You can also listen to me speak about this on another radio show.

If that little bit of pleasant news didn’t make the pit of your stomach gurgle and a cold sweat break out on the back of your neck, you’re probably not human. But hang on, boys and girls — it gets so much worse! The publication in PLoS One on 18 October about Germany’s insect declines might be enough to tip you over the edge and into the crevasse of mental instability. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 9 Comments »
Tags: ecological Armageddon, ecological catastrophe, ecosystem services, entomology, extinction, flying insects, Germany, insects, pollination
Categories : anthropocene, biodiversity, community ecology, conservation, conservation ecology, extinction

Postdoctoral position re-opened in Global Ecology

18 10 2017

women-are-better-coders I believe it is important to clarify a few things about the job advertisement that we are re-opening.

As many of you might recall, we advertised two positions in paleo-ecological modelling back in July — one in ecological networks, and the other in vegetation modelling.

We decided to do something a little unusual with the vegetation modelling position by only accepting applications from women. We did this expressly to increase the probability of attracting excellent women candidates, and to increase the number of women scientists in our lab.

I’m happy to say that we received many great applications for both positions, and whether or not it was related, most of the applicants for both positions were women (83%). As it turned out, we ended up offering the network position to a woman applicant, but we were unable to find an ideal candidate for the vegetation modelling job (i.e., the one that was originally targeting women only).

Our decision not to appoint anyone in the first round of applicants for the vegetation modelling position was clearly not related to the fact that it a woman-only position, mainly because we had so many excellent women candidates for both positions (and ended up hiring a woman for the position that was open to both genders). In other words, it seems to be a just one of those random things.

That said, we are still in need of a great vegetation modeller (or at least, someone who has the capacity to learn this knowledge), and so we have decided to re-open the announcement to both genders. However, it should go without saying that we particularly encourage women to apply.

The full details of the position, essential and desired criteria, and application process are available here (Vacancy Reference Number 17115). Note that the application closing date is 15 November 2017.

Please distribute this widely among your networks.

CJA Bradshaw

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: ecological modelling, ecology, employment, Flinders University, gender equality, Global Ecology, job, modelling, postdoc, Postdoctoral Fellow, science, scientists, women in science, Women in STEMM
Categories : bottom-up ecology, community ecology, ecology, modelling, palaeo-ecology, vegetation

Dangers of forcing regressions through the origin

17 10 2017

correlations I had an interesting ‘discussion’ on Twitter yesterday that convinced me the topic would make a useful post. The specific example has nothing whatsoever to do with conservation, but it serves as a valuable statistical lesson for all concerned about demonstrating adequate evidence before jumping to conclusions.

The data in question were used in a correlation between national gun ownership (guns per capita) and gun-related deaths and injuries (total deaths and injuries from guns per 100,000 people) (the third figure in the article). As you might intuitively expect, the author concluded that there was a positive correlation between gun-related deaths and injuries, and gun ownership:

image-20160307-30436-2rzo6k

Now, if you’re an empirical skeptic like me, there was something fishy about that fitted trend line. So, I replotted the data (available here) using Plot Digitizer (if you haven’t yet discovered this wonderful tool for lifting data out of figures, you would be wise to get it now), and ran a little analysis of my own in R:

Rplot01

Just doing a little 2-parameter linear model (y ~ α + βx) in R on these log-log data (which means, it’s assumed to be a power relationship), shows that there’s no relationship at all — the intercept is 1.3565 (± 0.3814) in log space (i.e., 10^1.3565 = 22.72), and there’s no evidence for a non-zero slope (in fact, the estimated slope is negative at -0.1411, but it has no support). See R code here.

Now, the author pointed out what appears to be a rather intuitive requirement for this analysis — you should not have a positive number of gun-related deaths/injuries if there are no guns in the population; in other words, the relationship should be forced to go through the origin (x, y = 0, 0). You can easily do this in R by using the lm function and setting the relationship to y ~ 0 + x; see code here). Read the rest of this entry »

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: code, evidence, forcing through the origin, gun control, guns, linear model, policy, R, R package, regression, statistical philosophy, statistics
Categories : science, statistics, USA

Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss XLIV

9 10 2017

Here’s another set of biodiversity cartoons to make you giggle, groan, and contemplate the Anthropocene extinction crisis. See full stock of previous ‘Cartoon guide to biodiversity loss’ compendia here.

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