Next-Gen Peer Review: Solving Today’s Problems with Tomorrow’s Solutions

Post provided by Jess Metcalf and Sean McMahon The primary challenge Associate Editors face is finding Reviewers for manuscripts. When times get desperate, it may feel like anyone with a pulse will… Source: Next-Gen Peer Review: Solving Today’s Problems with Tomorrow’s Solutions Continue reading Next-Gen Peer Review: Solving Today’s Problems with Tomorrow’s Solutions

What is the future of peer review in ecology?

Peer review is critical to the research process, but is also the subject of much criticism and debate. Review bias, reviewer recognition and the discovery of peer review rings are recent examples of topics widely discussed by the scientific community. Many peer review models and experiments have emerged across scientific disciplines with the aim of improving the review process, often leading to more questions than … Continue reading What is the future of peer review in ecology?

What Makes a Good Peer Review: Peer Review Week 2016

For many academics, especially Early Career Researchers, writing a review can seem like quite a daunting task. Direct training is often hard to come by and not all senior academics have the time to… Source: What Makes a Good Peer Review: Peer Review Week 2016 Continue reading What Makes a Good Peer Review: Peer Review Week 2016

Peer review week: Encouraging collaborative peer review

Post from Managing Editor Emilie Aimé. Check out the methods.blog later in the week for some of the Methods in Ecology and Evolution Associate Editors’ perspective on collaborative peer review. It’s Peer Review Week 2016 and the BES journals are celebrating with a series of blog posts on how much we value our reviewers. Here at the BES we love Early Career Researchers. We give out grants… Continue reading Peer review week: Encouraging collaborative peer review

Thank you to our reviewers

For Peer Review Week 2016 we are working with the other BES Journals  on a series of blog posts, which will feature across the Journal blogs every day. You can read all of these posts over the course of the week here. At the start of every year we post a list of those who have reviewed for Journal of Applied Ecology in the previous … Continue reading Thank you to our reviewers

The birds and the Bayes – new statistical approaches to modelling seabird flight heights

In this post Viola Ross-Smith discusses her recent paper ‘Modelling flight heights of lesser black-backed gulls and great skuas from GPS: A Bayesian approach‘. Although the need for renewable energy and its benefits are now widely recognised, this technology does not come without implications for biodiversity and the environment. For this reason, it’s important to assess and quantify the potential risks of renewables to wildlife … Continue reading The birds and the Bayes – new statistical approaches to modelling seabird flight heights

A new look at an old problem: Measuring the importance of dispersal in human-impacted systems

In this post Angela Strecker discusses the recent paper ‘A fresh approach reveals how dispersal shapes metacommunity structure in a human-altered landscape‘, by Barbara Downes, Jill Lancaster, Alena Glaister and William Bovill. One of the largest challenges that ecologists face is understanding the importance of dispersal across patches in ecosystems.  In the process of dispersal, organisms move to different habitats, allowing them to potentially escape … Continue reading A new look at an old problem: Measuring the importance of dispersal in human-impacted systems

African forest elephants are really slow breeders

In this post, Associate Editor Johan du Toit discusses new Policy Direction “Slow intrinsic growth rate in forest elephants indicates recovery from poaching will require decades” by Andrea Turkalo, Peter Wrege, and George Wittemyer, published today. Intrinsic population growth is related to body mass The rate at which a population grows (r) under ideal conditions with no resource limitation, disease, or predation, is governed by … Continue reading African forest elephants are really slow breeders

Landscape structure influences urban vegetation vertical structure

In this post Matthew Mitchell discusses his recent paper ‘Landscape structure influences urban vegetation vertical structure‘. The importance of urban vegetation Odds are that you’re reading this in a city. More than half of humanity today lives in cities, and this is expected to increase to two-thirds by 2050. Living in a city, you almost certainly rely on urban vegetation for key ecosystem services like … Continue reading Landscape structure influences urban vegetation vertical structure

Invasion Biology needs assessment of current policies and measures

In this post Associate Editor Céline Bellard discusses the recent paper ‘Managing the risk of wildlife disease introduction: pathway-level biosecurity for preventing the introduction of alien ranaviruses‘, by Pablo García-Díaz, Joshua Ross, Andrew Woolnough and Phillip Cassey. Invasive alien species are one of the major drivers of global biodiversity loss. Among the most notorious invasive species, emerging wildlife diseases like the chytrid fungi are a globally widespread threat to … Continue reading Invasion Biology needs assessment of current policies and measures