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Synthesis has become ubiquitous in ecology. Despite its widespread application to a broad range of research topics, it remains unclear how synthesis has affected the discipline. Using a case study of publications (n = 2304) from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis compared with papers with similar keywords from the Web of Science (n = 320,000), we address several questions about the comparative impact of synthesis, the role of synthesis in driving key research themes, and whether synthesis is focused on different topics than is the broader ecological literature. We found much higher citation rates for synthesis papers overall (fivefold more) and within eleven key topic themes (e.g. species richness, biodiversity, climate change, global change). Synthesis papers often played key roles in driving, redirecting, or resolving core questions and exhibited much greater cross-theme connectivity. Together, these results indicate that synthesis in science has played a crucial role in accelerating and advancing ecological knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graph: English Brook, which parallels New York State Route 9 for miles, flows into Lake George, the Queen of American Lakes, ferrying a huge load of salt to the lake. A road salt primer Road salt "is a general term for chloride-based deicing products", explains Brendan Wiltse, a limnologist at Paul Smith's College in the Adirondacks. Another study in Orleans, New York, 434.5 kilometers northwest of East Fishkill, revealed that the highest chloride levels were in private wells "downgradient of a road salt storage facility [a salt barn], followed by wells within 30 meters of a major roadway", writes Kelsey Pieper, of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in a 2018 paper in I Environmental Science and Technology i . [Extracted from the article]

According to a recent survey, ecologists and evolutionary biologists feel that theoretical and empirical research should coexist in a tight feedback loop but believe that the two domains actually interact very little. We evaluate this perception using a citation network analysis for two data sets, representing the literature on sexual selection and speciation. Overall, 54%–60% of citations come from a paper's own category, whereas 17%–23% are citations across categories. These cross-citations tend to focus on highly cited papers, and we observe a positive correlation between the numbers of citations a study receives within and across categories. We find evidence that reviews can function as integrators between the two literatures, argue that theoretical models are analogous to specific empirical study systems, and complement our analyses by studying a cocitation network. We conclude that theoretical and empirical research are more tightly connected than generally thought but that avenues exist to further increase this integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed 27,234 publications published since the rise of the field of invasion science in 1980 to evaluate the presence of gender differences in research productivity, the extent of collaboration, and the research impact of those differences. Our analysis revealed significantly fewer female than male authored publications, both per capita and as a group, and the underrepresentation of women as first and single authors persists despite improvements in the gender gap. At the current rate of increase, gender parity in first authorship will not be achieved until 2100, and men will continue to constitute the principal voice of first or single authors in invasion science. Women collaborate with fewer coauthors and are cited less frequently than men, on average, which may influence recruitment and retention to more senior academic positions. These gender disparities in this aspect of research performance suggest that, although the gender gap is lessening, women experience barriers in invasion science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been widespread discussion of biases in the sciences. The extent of most forms of bias has scarcely been confronted with rigorous data. In the present article, we evaluated the potential for geographic, taxonomic, and citation biases in publications between temperate and tropical systems for nine broad topics in ecology and evolutionary biology. Across 1,800 papers sampled from 60,000 peer-reviewed, empirical studies, we found consistent patterns of bias in the form of increased numbers of studies in temperate systems. Tropical studies were nearly absent from some topics. Furthermore, there were strong taxonomic biases across topics and geographic regions, as well as evidence for citation biases in many topics. Our results indicate a strong geographic imbalance in publishing patterns and among different taxonomic groups across a wide range of topics. The task ahead is to address what these biases mean and how they influence the state of our knowledge in ecology and evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scientists strive to accurately communicate their research, disconnects can arise between results and rhetoric. Some have regarded invasion scientists as particularly prone to using value-laden language incommensurate with the scientific facts or results. We addressed how authors used 10 near synonyms (words for which usage is similar but not completely overlapping) of the negative-value word invasive. We asked whether study findings (effect sizes) or other factors predicted language use. The use of negative-value words such as invasive was not associated with study findings but, instead, with contextual factors. For example, plant and invertebrate biologists used more negative language to describe nonnatives than did those studying vertebrates. The authors also tended to use more negative language in recently published papers than in older studies. Although many have called for impartial language when communicating research, some scientists use language imbued with value that may be inappropriate. Such use may affect how the public perceives scientific findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hallmark of the media publicity surrounding COVID-19 has been the message that land change causes zoonotic diseases to spill over from wild animals to humans. The secondary peer-reviewed literature sends a similar message. However, as indicated in the primary peer-reviewed literature, the complexity of interacting variables involved in zoonotic disease spillover makes it unlikely for such a claim to be universally applicable. The secondary peer-reviewed literature and the mainstream media also differ markedly from the primary peer-reviewed literature in their lack of nuance in messaging about the relationship between land change and spillover risk. We advocate accurate, nuanced messaging for the sake of the local communities at greatest risk from zoonotic disease, for the sake of scientific credibility, and so that proportionate attention may be given to other possible drivers of spillover risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scale of ecological research is getting larger and larger. At such scales, collaboration is indispensable, but there is little consensus on what factors enable collaboration. In the present article, we investigated the temporal and spatial pattern of institutional collaboration within the US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network on the basis of the bibliographic database. Social network analysis and the Monte Carlo method were applied to identify the characteristics of papers published by LTER researchers within a baseline of papers from 158 leading ecological journals. Long-term and long-distance collaboration were more frequent in the LTER Network, and we investigate and discuss the underlying mechanisms. We suggest that the maturing infrastructure and environment for collaboration within the LTER Network could encourage scientists to make large-scale hypotheses and to ask big questions in ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen science involves the public in science to investigate research questions. Although citizen science facilitates learning in informal educational settings, little is known about its use or effects in postsecondary (college or university) settings. Using a literature review and a survey, we describe how and why citizen science is being used in postsecondary courses, as well as the impacts on student learning. We found that citizen science is used predominantly in biologically related fields, at diverse types of institutions, to improve student engagement and expose students to authentic research. Considerable anecdotal evidence supporting improved student learning from these experiences exists, but little empirical evidence exists to warrant any conclusion. Therefore, there is a need to rigorously assess the relationship between citizen science participation and postsecondary student learning. We highlight considerations for instructors planning to incorporate citizen science and for citizen science projects wanting to facilitate postsecondary use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

100 pressing scientific questions on global fish migration "Failure to understand how, why, when, and where different fishes migrate limits our understanding of migratory fish and their roles in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems", state Robert Lennox of the NORCE Norwegian Research Center AS in Bergen, Norway, and coauthors in a 2019 paper in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. MAP: Scientists are creating global maps of fish migration routes, or swimways. "The management of fish migration was developed primarily to restore the free movement of fishes in systems fragmented by dams and other in-stream infrastructure", Lennox and colleagues report. [Extracted from the article]

Over decades, pesticide regulations have cycled between approval and implementation, followed by the discovery of negative effects on nontarget organisms that result in new regulations, pesticides, and harmful effects. This relentless pattern undermines the capacity to protect the environment from pesticide hazards and frustrates end users that need pest management tools. Wild pollinating insects are in decline, and managed pollinators such as honey bees are experiencing excessive losses, which threatens sustainable food security and ecosystem function. An increasing number of studies demonstrate the negative effects of field-realistic exposure to pesticides on pollinator health and fitness, which contribute to pollinator declines. Current pesticide approval processes, although they are superior to past practices, clearly continue to fail to protect pollinator health. In the present article, we provide a conceptual framework to reform cyclical pesticide approval processes and better protect pollinators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction is frequently asserted to be the sine qua non of science, but prediction means different things to different people in different contexts. I organize and explain this diversity by addressing five questions. What does it mean to predict something? To answer this question, I describe concepts of prediction as prophecy, diagnosis, history, repeatability, and fate. What are we trying to predict? Here, I describe how predictions vary along several axes: general to specific, qualitative to quantitative, relative to absolute, point to range, and continuous to discontinuous. Where do predictions come from? In this case, I focus on deductive versus inductive reasoning. How do we test predictions? The answer here is not straightforward and I discuss various approaches and difficulties. How good are predictions? Not surprisingly, it depends on what is being predicted and how we judge success. Importantly, I do not espouse a "best" way to approach prediction but, rather, I outline its diverse manifestations so as to help organize practical thinking on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When producing species classifications, taxonomists are often confronted with gray-area cases. For example, because of incipient or shallow divergence, it can be scientifically valid both to split groups of organisms into separate species and to lump them together into one species. It has been claimed that, in such cases, the ranking decision is, in part, subjective and may differ between taxonomists because of differences in their conceptions of species or even in conservation values. In the present article, we use a vignette study to empirically test this claim and to explore the drivers of taxonomic decision-making in gray-area cases. For three fictional taxonomic scenarios, we asked the opinion of a sample of taxonomists on one of slightly different versions of an abstract containing a decision on species status. The cases were explicitly designed to represent gray-area cases, and the differences between versions related to potential drivers of decisions, such as information on conservation status, different kinds of additional evidence, and information on the presence or absence of gene flow. In general, our results suggest that taxonomists tend to disagree at least moderately about species-ranking decisions in gray-area cases even when they are presented with the same data. We did not find evidence that species concepts or conservation values are strong drivers of taxonomic disagreement. Instead, operational concerns, such as the presence or absence of different kinds of data, seemed to be more important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic pressures are causing the widespread loss of wildlife species and populations, with adverse consequences for ecosystem functioning. This phenomenon has been widely but inconsistently referred to as defaunation. A cohesive, quantitative framework for defining and evaluating defaunation is necessary for advancing biodiversity conservation. Likening defaunation to deforestation, we propose an operational framework for defaunation that defines it and related terms, situates defaunation relative to intact communities and faunal degradation, and encourages quantitative, ecologically reasonable, and equitable measurements. We distinguish between defaunation , the conversion of an ecosystem from having wild animals to not having wild animals, and faunal degradation , the process of losing animals or species from an animal community. The quantification of context-relevant defaunation boundaries or baselines is necessary to compare faunal communities over space and time. Situating a faunal community on the degradation curve can promote Global Biodiversity Framework targets, advancing the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals are continuously exposed to pathogens but rarely get infected, because pathogens must overcome barriers to establish successful infections. Ongoing planetary changes affect factors relevant for such infections, such as pathogen pressure and pathogen exposure. The replacement of wildlife with domestic animals shrinks the original host reservoirs, whereas expanding agricultural frontiers lead to increased contact between natural and altered ecosystems, increasing pathogen exposure and reducing the area where the original hosts can live. Climate change alters species' distributions and phenology, pathogens included, resulting in exposure to pathogens that have colonized or recolonized new areas. Globalization leads to unwilling movement of and exposure to pathogens. Because people and domestic animals are overdominant planetwide, there is increased selective pressure for pathogens to infect them. Nature conservation measures can slow down but not fully prevent spillovers. Additional and enhanced surveillance methods in potential spillover hotspots should improve early detection and allow swifter responses to emerging outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recovery of wild tigers in India and Nepal is a remarkable conservation achievement, but it sets the stage for increased human–wildlife conflict where parks are limited in size and where tigers reside outside reserves. We deployed an innovative technology, the TrailGuard AI camera-alert system, which runs on-the-edge artificial intelligence algorithms to detect tigers and poachers and transmit real-time images to designated authorities responsible for managing prominent tiger landscapes in India. We successfully captured and transmitted the first images of tigers using cameras with embedded AI and detected poachers. Notifications of tiger images were received in real time, approximately 30 seconds from camera trigger to appearing in a smart phone app. We review use cases of this AI-based real-time alert system for managers and local communities and suggest how the system could help monitor tigers and other endangered species, detect poaching, and provide early warnings for human–wildlife conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fungi in general and aquatic fungi in particular are also being overlooked when it comes to conservation. Considering that microbes make up around 90% of the weight of living organisms in the sea and that fungi - by some estimates - might outweigh the biomass of bacteria in at least some locations, it is likely that we have discovered less than 5% of marine fungi in existence so far. Amend, the researcher at the University of Hawai'i, also has his eyes on marine fungi when it comes to plastics such as polyurethane that are now part of the "plastisphere", the new and growing habitat in the ocean. When researchers pulled up the piece of wood - a log from a tree called ubame oak - it had spent 1302 days on the bottom of the ocean. [Extracted from the article]

Value inclusion is critical for effective ecosystem science policy and largely emerged from critiques of the value-exclusionary attributes of ecological and economic approaches to value assessments and valuations. But whether and how value is excluded during social–scientific approaches to the assessments and valuations of ecosystem features has not received adequate attention. We identify and discuss instances of when and how value is excluded during social–scientific approaches to the assessments and valuations of ecosystem features to which people ascribe value. We illustrate the implications of value exclusion on social compliance with ecosystem management and policy recommendations, a vital overlooked aspect of policy effectiveness. We also extend the meaning of value exclusion beyond value omission to include misidentification and misattribution of salience to valued ecosystem features. We offer suggestions for enabling value inclusion where ways to minimize exclusion are inapparent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invasive alien species are a major driver of global environmental change. Escalating globalization processes such as international trade and long-distance transport have contributed to an increase in the ecological, economic, and sociocultural impacts of biological invasions. As a result, their management has become an increasingly relevant topic on environmental policy agendas. To better understand the role of policy in invasion science and to identify trends and gaps in policy-oriented research, a systematic literature review was conducted covering 2135 publications. The results highlight that international policy instruments are contributing to an increased interest in pursuing policy-oriented research. Specifically, key historical periods in policy development (e.g. the Convention on Biological Diversity's COP10 in 2010) coincide with periods of active policy-focused research in invasion science. Research is, however, more applied to local scales (i.e. subnational, and national) and is more focused in places with high research capacity or where severe environmental or economic impacts are well documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Their Own Words chronicles the stories of scientists who have made great contributions to their fields. These short histories provide our readers a way to learn from and share their experiences. We will publish the results of these conversations in the pages of BioScience and on our podcast, BioScience Talks (https://bioscience-talks.aibs.org) This history is with Daniel Simberloff, who is the Gore-Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies in Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, at the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville, in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization can profoundly alter socioecological relationships, but its influence on how people perceive and value ecosystem services (ES) is poorly understood. We reviewed an emerging literature in which sociocultural valuation of ES is compared among urban and rural dwellers. This research suggests that, although regulating and cultural ES were highly valued by both rural and urban dwellers, urban dwellers tended to value provisioning ES less than rural dwellers did. Differences in ES valuation could result from different experiences, uses, and needs for ES of urban and rural dwellers. We also identified two key gaps in the literature that relate to understanding how diverse ES contribute differently to the well-being of rural and urban populations (and the relevance of these differences for environmental education and policy) and the changing roles of ES in developing countries and vulnerable ecosystems, such as small islands, that face pressing environmental, social, and economic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Scientific Papers Made Easy" by Stuart West and Lindsay Turnbull is a comprehensive guide to writing academic papers in biology. The book covers all aspects of constructing a paper, including abstracts, introductions, methods, results, and discussions. The authors emphasize the importance of clear and concise writing, and provide practical tips and examples to help researchers improve their writing skills. While the book is primarily aimed at biologists, scientists from other disciplines can also benefit from reading it. However, the book does not cover collaborative writing or other forms of scientific writing, such as blogging or op-eds. Overall, "Scientific Papers Made Easy" is a valuable resource for researchers looking to improve their scientific writing abilities. [Extracted from the article]

We examined the effects of different types of collaboration on the citation rates of 837 research papers published in Oecologia from 1998 through 2000. Multiauthored papers had higher annual citation rates, but also higher self-citation rates, than single-authored papers. Interdisciplinary collaboration between institutions increased citation rates, whereas in-house collaboration reduced them. Contrary to our predictions, international collaboration had no effect on the citation rates of ecological papers, and US ecologists benefited from collaboration more than their European colleagues. Altogether, our results indicate that scientific collaboration in ecology has a rather minor effect on the impact of the resulting publications, as measured by their citation rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extreme events have increased in frequency globally, with a simultaneous surge in scientific interest about their ecological responses, particularly in sensitive freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems. We synthesized observational studies of extreme events in these aquatic ecosystems, finding that many studies do not use consistent definitions of extreme events. Furthermore, many studies do not capture ecological responses across the full spatial scale of the events. In contrast, sampling often extends across longer temporal scales than the event itself, highlighting the usefulness of long-term monitoring. Many ecological studies of extreme events measure biological responses but exclude chemical and physical responses, underscoring the need for integrative and multidisciplinary approaches. To advance extreme event research, we suggest prioritizing pre- and postevent data collection, including leveraging long-term monitoring; making intersite and cross-scale comparisons; adopting novel empirical and statistical approaches; and developing funding streams to support flexible and responsive data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms in the environment (i.e. environmental microbiomes) provide vital ecosystem services and affect human health. Despite their importance, public awareness of environmental microbiomes has lagged behind that of human microbiomes. A key problem has been a scarcity of research demonstrating the microbial connections across environmental biomes (e.g. marine, soil) and between environmental and human microbiomes. We show in the present article, through analyses of almost 10,000 microbiome papers and three global data sets, that there are significant taxonomic similarities in microbial communities across biomes, but very little cross-biome research exists. This disconnect may be hindering advances in microbiome knowledge and translation. In this article, we highlight current and potential applications of environmental microbiome research and the benefits of an interdisciplinary, cross-biome approach. Microbiome scientists need to engage with each other, government, industry, and the public to ensure that research and applications proceed ethically, maximizing the potential benefits to society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) impact factor has become an important standard for assessing journal quality. Here we propose that impact factors may be subject to inflation analogous to changes in monetary prices in economics. The possibility of inflation came to light as a result of the observation that papers published today tend to cite more papers than those published a decade ago. We analyzed citation data from 75,312 papers from 70 ecological journals published during 1998-2007. We found that papers published in 2007 cited an average of seven more papers than those published a decade earlier. This increase accounts for about 80% of the observed impact factor inflation rate of 0.23. In examining the 70 journals we found that nearly 50% showed increases in their impact factors, but at rates lower than the background inflation rate. Therefore, although those journals appear to be increasing in quality as measured by the impact factor, they are actually failing to keep pace with inflation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that fire acts as an evolutionary force contributing to shaping species traits started a century ago, but had not been widely recognized until very recently. Among the first to realize this force were E dward B. Poulton, R. D ale Guthrie, and E dwin V. Komarek in animals and W illis L. Jepson, W alter W. Hough, T om M. Harris, P hilip V. Wells, and R obert W. Mutch in plants. They were all ahead of their time in their evolutionary thinking. Since then, evolutionary fire ecology has percolated very slowly into the mainstream ecology and evolutionary biology; in fact, this topic is still seldom mentioned in textbooks of ecology or evolution. Currently, there is plenty of evidence suggesting that we cannot understand the biodiversity of our planet without considering the key evolutionary role of fire. But there is still research to be done in order to fully understand fire's contribution to species evolution and to predicting species responses to rapid global changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biological invasions are a global challenge that has received insufficient attention. Recently available cost syntheses have provided policy- and decision makers with reliable and up-to-date information on the economic impacts of biological invasions, aiming to motivate effective management. The resultant InvaCost database is now publicly and freely accessible and enables rapid extraction of monetary cost information. This has facilitated knowledge sharing, developed a more integrated and multidisciplinary network of researchers, and forged multidisciplinary collaborations among diverse organizations and stakeholders. Over 50 scientific publications so far have used the database and have provided detailed assessments of invasion costs across geographic, taxonomic, and spatiotemporal scales. These studies have provided important information that can guide future policy and legislative decisions on the management of biological invasions while simultaneously attracting public and media attention. We provide an overview of the improved availability, reliability, standardization, and defragmentation of monetary costs; discuss how this has enhanced invasion science as a discipline; and outline directions for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reshaping conservation biology practices While researching lemurs in Madagascar, Wynn-Grant witnessed a glaring problem in the practice of conservation biology. "Hawaiians have called me a sellout and a puppet of the colonizer, and there's American scientists who say I'm not a scientist", Winter says. Graph: The He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve hosts a workshop that brought together Indigenous knowledge holders and university researchers to discuss equity in authorship. [Extracted from the article]

Managing marine nonindigenous species (mNIS) is challenging, because marine environments are highly connected, allowing the dispersal of species across large spatial scales, including geopolitical borders. Cross-border inconsistencies in biosecurity management can promote the spread of mNIS across geopolitical borders, and incursions often go unnoticed or unreported. Collaborative surveillance programs can enhance the early detection of mNIS, when response may still be possible, and can foster capacity building around a common threat. Regional or international databases curated for mNIS can inform local monitoring programs and can foster real-time information exchange on mNIS of concern. When combined, local species reference libraries, publicly available mNIS databases, and predictive modeling can facilitate the development of biosecurity programs in regions lacking baseline data. Biosecurity programs should be practical, feasible, cost-effective, mainly focused on prevention and early detection, and be built on the collaboration and coordination of government, nongovernment organizations, stakeholders, and local citizens for a rapid response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More strikingly, for common nighthawks, "outside of urban areas, where artificial light levels don't get that high, even a small increase in artificial light corresponded to a 55% decline in the number of nesting nighthawks", says Adams. "Bats don't perceive red light as intense as the blue light", says Spoelstra, due to their eye sensitivity. In a 2021 review for I Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution i , Spoelstra, Longcore, and nine others summarized 11 of the pressing research questions: How do we harmonize light measurement methods across disciplines? The sun has long set as we descend from the benchlands, a low ridge paralleling Jasper, the picturesque town clinging to a straightaway of railway tracks against a backdrop of jagged Rocky Mountain peaks. [Extracted from the article]

Nature conservation is underresourced, requiring managers to prioritize where, when, and how to spend limited funds. Prioritization methods identify the subset of actions that provide the most benefit to an actor's objective. However, spending decisions by conservation actors are often misaligned with their objectives. Although this misalignment is frequently attributed to poor choices by the actors, we argue that it can also be a byproduct of working alongside other organizations. Using strategic analyses of multi-actor systems in conservation, we show how interactions among multiple conservation actors can create misalignment between the spending and objectives of individual actors and why current uncoordinated prioritizations lead to fewer conservation objectives achieved for individual actors. We draw three conclusions from our results. First, that misalignment is an unsuitable metric for evaluating spending, because it may be necessary to achieve actors' objectives. Second, that current prioritization methods cannot identify optimal decisions (as they purport to do), because they do not incorporate other actors' decisions. Third, that practical steps can be taken to move actors in the direction of coordination and thereby better achieve their conservation objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the bushfires swept through the Stirling Range, a mountainous national park in Western Australia, during the final days of 2019, Sarah Barrett was waiting anxiously. Graph: Elinor Breman, who runs the seed conservation team at the Millennium Seed Bank, examining a newly arrived batch of seeds under a microscope. "They thought, originally, that this would hold 75% of the world's plant species that have orthodox seeds", Breman says, referring to seeds that can withstand drying and freezing. [Extracted from the article]

Citizen science is fundamentally shifting the future of biodiversity research. But although citizen science observations are contributing an increasingly large proportion of biodiversity data, they only feature in a relatively small percentage of research papers on biodiversity. We provide our perspective on three frontiers of citizen science research, areas that we feel to date have had minimal scientific exploration but that we believe deserve greater attention as they present substantial opportunities for the future of biodiversity research: sampling the undersampled, capitalizing on citizen science's unique ability to sample poorly sampled taxa and regions of the world, reducing taxonomic and spatial biases in global biodiversity data sets; estimating abundance and density in space and time, develop techniques to derive taxon-specific densities from presence or absence and presence-only data; and capitalizing on secondary data collection, moving beyond data on the occurrence of single species and gain further understanding of ecological interactions among species or habitats. The contribution of citizen science to understanding the important biodiversity questions of our time should be more fully realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the methods adopted to measure the quality of a science journal. The published contributions of a scientist or of a scientific community are measured in terms of quantity as well as quality. The number of publications by a scientist or scientific community is generally taken as the measure of quantity. Many research organizations and institutions have devised weighting systems to reflect these differences in forms of publication when assessing quantitatively the productivity of their members. It is recognized that there are considerable differences in the quality of published papers, even among those published in the same journal. It is also admitted that any manuscript reporting scientific research can get published, no matter what its quality is.

Addressing food security in high mountains is a multidimensional conundrum because of complex climate patterns and environmental attributes. These conditions affect water supplies, biodiversity, droughts, and other hazards. The climate change–land degradation nexus, although it is difficult to disentangle, poses formidable challenges. Isolated mountain villages, coupled with poverty, a strained subsistence existence, conflict, and marginal lands make the residents vulnerable to malnutrition, stunting, and food access. Because the arable land is mostly in confined valleys, food production is insufficient. The soils are typically infertile, with little organic matter; on hillslopes, thin soil and rock cover, coupled with short growing seasons, restrict crop production. High-elevation pastures are overgrazed, and the natural hazard impacts on food security are often overlooked. We examine food security through these multifaceted stressors, instead of merely focusing on production and distribution, and present an integrated approach to assess natural and anthropogenic stressors and feedback loops affecting food security linked to planning, mitigation, and coping strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New graduate students in biology programs may lack the quantitative skills necessary for their research and professional careers. The acquisition of these skills may be impeded by teaching and mentoring experiences that decrease rather than increase students' beliefs in their ability to learn and apply quantitative approaches. In this opinion piece, we argue that revising instructional experiences to ensure that both student confidence and quantitative skills are enhanced may improve both educational outcomes and professional success. A few studies suggest that explicitly addressing productive failure in an instructional setting and ensuring effective mentoring may be the most effective routes to simultaneously increasing both quantitative self-efficacy and quantitative skills. However, there is little work that specifically addresses graduate student needs, and more research is required to reach evidence-backed conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How the relative impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the natural environment vary between different taxonomic groups, habitats, and geographic regions is increasingly well established. By contrast, the times of day at which those pressures are most forcefully exerted or have greatest influence are not well understood. The impact on the nighttime environment bears particular scrutiny, given that for practical reasons (e.g. researchers themselves belong to a diurnal species), most studies on the impacts of anthropogenic pressures are conducted during the daytime on organisms that are predominantly day active or in ways that do not differentiate between daytime and nighttime. In the present article, we synthesize the current state of knowledge of impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the nighttime environment, highlighting key findings and examples. The evidence available suggests that the nighttime environment is under intense stress across increasing areas of the world, especially from nighttime pollution, climate change, and overexploitation of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rivers are efficient corridors for aquatic animals, primarily under the assumption of perennial flow. However, the recognition that river drying is a common and widespread phenomenon requires reexamining animal movement through river networks. Intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams have been overlooked when studying animal movement, even though approximately 60% of the global river network dries. In the present article, we extend the current focus of river ecology by integrating the effects of drying on the movement of aquatic and terrestrial animals. Moreover, we introduce a conceptual model that challenges the current bias, which is focused on perennial waterways, by encompassing animal movement across hydrologic phases (nonflowing, flowing, dry, rewetting) and habitats (aquatic, terrestrial). We discuss their corridor function in conservation and restoration planning and identify emerging research questions. We contend that a more comprehensive and inclusive view of animal movement in dry channels will advance ecological understanding of river networks and respective conservation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The people of three primeval cultures lived naked or nearly naked in regions where they experienced air temperatures of ± 5 degrees Celsius during cold seasons. These were the Australian Aboriginal peoples, the Bushmen of southern Africa, and the Yamana and the Alakaluf of Tierra del Fuego. Recent meta-analyses of data on human metabolic rate and metabolic endurance enable a quantitative demonstration of feasibility: Thermoregulation at winter air temperatures while naked was feasible in the three cultures for significantly longer than 50–180 days per year (sufficient for the duration of winter). Considering the life histories of the people, their estimated, time-averaged daily (24 hours) metabolic rates in winter were 2.6 times basal—similar to the highest daily rates empirically measured in extant peoples. Although the primeval peoples' way of life was metabolically expensive, it was as feasible as the lifestyles of peoples in today's world who live at the upper bound of the metabolically possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New urban models increasingly seek to create more sustainable, livable, and healthier cities by reinvigorating green space. In this article, we highlight and briefly review several main but disconnected areas of study in which the factors that frame human–environment interactions and therefore also influence the potential well-being outcomes of those interactions are studied. We then use the intersection of affordance theory and socio-institutional programming to provide a conceptual framework that ties together these spheres of research, and we discuss some critical keys for enabling different positive green space experiences. Urban communities are not homogeneous, and accounting for the intersection between individual differences and landscape programming opens up more diverse pathways for affording positive human–environment interactions and different well-being outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioblitzes are a popular approach to engage people and collect biodiversity data. Despite this, few studies have actually evaluated the multiple outcomes of bioblitz activities. We used a systematic review, an analysis of data from more than 1000 bioblitzes, and a detailed analysis of one specific bioblitz to inform our inquiry. We evaluated five possible bioblitz outcomes, which were creating a species inventory, engaging people in biological recording, enhancing learning about nature, discovering a species new to an area, and promoting an organization. We conclude that bioblitzes are diverse but overall effective at their aims and have advantages over unstructured biodiversity recording. We demonstrate for the first time that bioblitzes increase the recording activity of the participants for several months after the event. In addition, we provide evidence that bioblitzes are effective at bringing people and organizations together to build communities of professionals and amateurs, critical for conserving and protecting biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent papers have reinvigorated a chronic concern about the need for ecological science to focus more on long-term research. For a few decades, significant voices among ecologists have been assembling elements of a case in favor of long-term ecological research. In this article and for the first time, we synthesize the elements of this case and present it in succinct form. We also argue that this case is unlikely to result in more long-term research. Finally, we present ideas that, if implemented, are more likely to result in appropriate levels of investment in long-term research in ecological science. The article comes at an important time, because the US National Science Foundation is currently undertaking a 40-year review of its Long-Term Ecological Research Network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists the new science books which includes "Anthropology and Human Nature," by Ashley Montagu, "The Rat: A Study in Behavior," by S. A. Barnett, and "The Design of Electric Circuits in the Behavioral Sciences," by Tom N. Cornsweet.

Discusses biases toward citing scientific literature both before and after the widespread use of computerized databses for literature searches. Predictions and approaches; Citation patterns; Summary.