2,131 research outputs found
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Fire in the Top End: Coupled Human/Natural System Conservation
One of the things I am really enjoying about this semester is teaching my graduate seminar in conservation biology. It has been fun going back and reading the classics and also expanding out into the newer literature. Since I am also teaching a class in marine conservation I am trying to pay special attention to non-marine topics for regular flavor conservation biology
There are few topics I consider more ānon-marineā than fire ecology, and this recent paper by Trauernicht et al. in Ecology and Evolution does a great job of looking at a conservation issue with multiple moving points. In this paper āCultural legacies, fire ecology, and environmental change in the Stone Country of Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park, Australiaā they look at the interactions between (pay attention now) Aboriginal cultural practices including both 1) fire management via prescribed burning and 2) incorporation of Water Buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) and 3) Australian government prescribed fire management across two areas. Get all that? Right, itās a complex story
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Not how I wanted to spend spring break
Itās spring break and Iām ostensibly on vacation. This means Iām working, but Iām doing so while looking at the ocean and as a marine biologist thatās not a bad way to do things. While checking Twitter this morning I saw an article in the Journal of Proteomics raising a stir. Like many journals JoP has graphical abstracts, essentially a single figure which is supposed to best sum up the science being done. The reason why this article was causing a stir had absolutely nothing to do with the science, rather the authors had decided that a scantly clad woman holding two coconuts would be the best way to describe the science contained in āHarry Belafonte and the secret proteome of coconut milkā
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#ICCB2013 Nautiluses, Endemic Fishes and Twitter ā a wrap up
I am sitting in the Baltimore Amtrak station, trying to wrap my head around the diversity of events, talks and conversations that occurred during the past week at the Society for Conservation Biology meetings.
The ICCB is the biggest meeting for Conservation Biologists and I honestly love going to them. More than any other meeting I attend, I find the ConBio meetings feel like family reunions. Theyāre a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and to make new acquaintances and contacts. The meeting also provides an opportunity to see new research and get a sense for emerging trends in conservation
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Using Anthropological Holdings to Reconstruct Historic Apex Predator Communities
Talk on shark tooth weapons of the Gilbert Islands for the Ecological Society of America
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Impostor Syndrome lecture
I teach a class for first year MA students, entitled āMA Thesis Development Seminarā in which I focus on helping students succeed in their time here. I not only focus on them doing good science, but also on the process by which one does science. That means that I need to talk about mental health.
Today I gave my lecture on the Impostor Syndrome. This is a pernicious aspect of doing graduate work (and beyond) that can impact my studentsā ability to do good science by limiting their willingness to secure funding, reducing their networking and professional involvement and ultimately by having them sell themselves short
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Defending Collections
I come from a museum background, and therefore recognize the inherent bias in this post. However I also feel that coming from that background, but now working outside of a museum, has provided me a unique perspective into the value of collections. I hadnāt planned on blogging today, but the recent cuts at The Field Museum in Chicago, my former home institution, strike me as rather personal. While a postdoc there I published an article on the value of natural history collections, which you can see here. Today Iād like to expand those themes a little
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Men in the Movement ā A weeklong discussion about sexual violence
I am a strong advocate for womenās rights and proud to be involved in the anti-rape movement. (The fact that there even needs to be a movement against rape is pretty shocking when you think about it.) To be honest itās not like there is a pro-rape party out there, rather to me, the anti-rape movement is more about raising awareness of a pernicious suite of ideas and cultural norms which propagate permissive or enabling attitudes towards rape. So rather than having a group advocating for rape which we oppose, we stand against actions which facilitate sexual violence
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A shark from the past
One of the topics I find incredibly exciting is the idea of historical ecology. Briefly, historical ecology is essentially the study of what ecosystems looked like and how they functioned at any time in the past. This can take place at any temporal scale, from paleoecology to (in theory) last week. However the area that I look at is the time prior to full-scale commercial exploitation of coral reefs. These data are hard to come by because in the Pacific exploitation often predated full-scale scientific exploration. This often means we have to be creative in how we generate inferences into past ecosystems. One of the sources of data that I love to use are museum collections, and I my colleagues and I have been using these collections to reconstruct apex predatory communities in the Gilbert Islands in the country of Kiribati
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Why you should consider doing a Masterās first
A major part of my job at Columbia is directing the MA in Conservation Biology program, and I have spent the better part of this past week going through applications. One of the biggest challenges I am facing is getting the students I want in my lab to come here. Columbia is expensive and I am often competing for students who are probably going to get into Ph.D. programs. Discussing this with my peers over Twitter has brought me to a debate over the relative value of getting a Masterās degree first versus going directly into a Ph.D. program. Iām hoping one of you takes up the Ph.D. option and we can have an honest discussion. As for me, Iām going to present the case for getting a MA/MS first
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