Since 2003 my group has been conducting a set of long-term observations and experiments up at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab. It is a fantastic place filled with an impressive set of visiting scientists and colleagues as well as a diverse, lush, and striking mountains. It is typical Colorado – green and filled with flowers in the summer. However, during the […]
Even the best ecoinformatics tool requires a skilled hand: Best practices for taxonomic name resolution in biodiversity science Increasingly, informatics approaches in biology and ecology are realizing that ‘Names are key to the big new biology‘. Did you know that in many large biological, ecological, and evolutionary datasets and databases contained on the order of 50% of their species names […]
New! Postdoctoral position in Tropical Forest Ecology, Trait-based ecology, and Macroecology at the University of Arizona. Starting late 2015/2016 A two-year post-doctoral position is available (start date flexible, can start as early as Fall 2016) in the group of Dr. Brian Enquist (https://brianjenquist.wordpress.com) in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona as part of an NSF Ecosystems Grant to study impacts of drought and climate change in the Amazon. The post-doc’s main responsibility will be to lead the implementation of new field experiments in the Andes and Amazon in Peru, as well as manage and analyze the data from these experiments. He/She will work closely with other post-docs and PIs on the project from UCLA (Dr. Van Savage), Carnegie Institution (Stanford/Carnegie Insituttion – Global Ecology Labs; Dr. Greg Asner), and the University of Oxford (United Kingdom; Dr. Yadvinder Mahli). As such, work may also involve theory development for trait-based models, analysis of large datasets for plant traits, as well as numerical simulations for how plant traits determine forest dynamics, carbon production. Results from this project will: (1) lead to a deeper understanding of how climate change and individual plant traits influence forests and forest ecosystems and (2) allow for projections of future productivity, diversity, and the functioning of tropical forests. Candidates are expected to be collaborative yet independent, highly motivated problem solvers who communicate well and enjoy working both in the field and in a […]
Source: A Big Database and Big Models Pave the Way for Big Questions in Ecology
Something odd and very worrisome caught my eye scrolling through my photos of my labs work up at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab . . . Every year since 2002 I and my lab have been heading up to the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab in Gothic Colorado to conduct repeated measures across an elevational gradient. Here we measure diversity, ecosystem […]
How to be a good reviewer (a view from an editor) I’m on the editorial board of two journals and over the years have seen many reviews come in. What I have been impressed with is the overall quality of the reviews. Many of you are excellent and constructive reviewers. I have consistently learned from you on how to be a […]
“Biological research is in crisis…. Technology gives us the tools to analyze organisms at all scales, but we are drowning in a sea of data and thirsting for some theoretical framework with which to understand it.” – Sydney Brenner. 2012 “The harmony of the world is made manifest in form and number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry […]
How much can a leaf tell you about the environment in which is grows? Can ecology become more predictive? We have been working on a variety of approaches to assess the ‘predictive nature’ of leaves. The idea is that that the constellation of traits that define a leaf actually reflect a set of coordinated shifts to maximize carbon gain and minimize […]
UA professor Brian Enquist and postdoctoral researcher Sean Michaletz, along with collaborators Dongliang Cheng from Fujian Normal University in China and Drew Kerkhoff from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, have combined a new mathematical theory with data from more than 1,000 forests across the world to show that climate has a relatively minor direct effect on net primary productivity, or the amount of […]
An introduction to scaling and overview of the critical methods, questions, and debates
Chasing after the wind: Sharing science with a green twist
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA - SFI: Synthesizing Functional Biology, Ecophysiology, Community Ecology, Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity Science
Research, teaching, and mentorship in the sciences
Ethan White and Morgan Ernest's blog for discussing issues and ideas related to ecology and academia.
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA - SFI: Synthesizing Functional Biology, Ecophysiology, Community Ecology, Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity Science
Multa novit vulpes
Blog of the Division of Environmental Biology, NSF
