GRADUATE STUDENTS ON BIODIVERSITY SCIENCE
It’s Friday the 13th, and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and black cats, broken mirrors, and ladders) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments […]
Read moreIt’s no secret that wildlife conservation is a controversial issue. Despite the best intentions of all who are involved in the process, the costs associated with nurturing a species to recovery can be too high for some. The management strategies can be complex, the newly-protected habitat vast, and the timeframe for recovery unknown. And though they represent some of the […]
Read moreIf you stepped onto a trail in the Eno River State Park in Durham, NC, what would you see? Why, just what you would see in any other forest in the Eastern U.S.: trees, bushes, some bugs, a clump of mushrooms, a couple of birds. Maybe a snake will even cross your path. How about in a city park in […]
Read moreIt’s Friday and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and other stuff) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments section! It’s been a few […]
Read moreIn the picture above, with a little bit of training, you can count the diversity of seaweed species on one hand. For most, this seems like a ‘low biodiversity’ system especially if you’ve ever poked around on rocky shores of the west coast of the United States. But what if you were to think smaller, go inside those seaweeds, into […]
Read moreAs a recent grad navigating how to use my newly minted MS, I often think about the intersection between research and communication, outreach and advocacy as well as the utility and science of biodiversity. It’s timely that these issues are currently playing out in my home state of Michigan, as a public discussion about the value of biodiversity takes place […]
Read moreHere are a few statistics: Forty-percent of all species are parasites, and more than 75% of links in natural food webs are likely to involve them. As many as 10,000 parasitic helminth species are threatened with extinction. Decreases in avian diversity due to habitat loss and climate change will contribute to even greater parasite species loss in the future. Parasites […]
Read more[Continued from Part 2] Two weeks ago, I reviewed some of the experimental evidence for the importance of diversity. In a nutshell, there’s some strong evidence to support the notion that biodiversity drives several ecosystem properties, including standing stock biomass and resource use, but rarely does the diverse assemblage exceed the best single species. Last week, I reviewed some potential […]
Read moreOn May 7th, fellow UW grad student Halley Froelich and I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Peter Kareiva, chief scientist and director of science for The Nature Conservancy for our inaugural installment of Diverse Introspectives: Interviews from Visiting Scholars and Seminar Speakers. Dr. Kareiva joined The Nature Conservancy in 2002, where his projects focus on the interplay of human […]
Read more[Continued from Part 1] On Wednesday, I reviewed some of the synthetic work by Brad Cardinale and others showing the importance of diversity (species richness) to ecosystem functioning (check it out here!). I ended by saying that mixtures of species generally did better than the average single species, but not the best single species, and asked whether this was evidence […]
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