What a great story! Many thanks to the Atlantic, David, and Billy.
came across this today about billy barr and ecolog-l's david inouye.
>
> who would have guessed? not me...
>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/billy-barr-climate-change/512198/
>
> thank you...
>
> mike
That may be the case, David, but I can think of two factors that may alter
it:
1. more and more ecologists spending all their time indoors in front of a
computer screen rather than in nature
2. attitudes and pressures from dept. chairs/deans etc. who may value
molecular/cell biologists more highly
For a change, this is not a job ad!!
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/life-sciences/animal-behaviour/biological-invasions-and-animal-behaviour?format=HB
Too bad Ben Carson's medical school didn't re
> There are quite a few books out there entitled "Evolutionary Medicine" and
> variations on that theme. I used one of them in our senior seminar
> course. There is an incredible wealth of material that has been well
> researched in these books.
Courses like that Ecology for citizens - including pollution,
sustainablility etc. have been around for decades for non-majors - called
environmental science or similar.
> I've been thinking for a long time now that we need an "Ecology for
> Citizens" type class in high school and for
It was around 1990 that the American Society of Zoologists changed its
name to Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology. In addition to
sounding "trendier" it also allows for inclusion of some plant biology.
> This kind of ârebrandingâ has been happening for some time. In
>
Not many departments named "Zoology" any more either. It appeared
antiquated a couple of decades before "Botany" did (for some reason).
> Hi Chris,
>
> Our Department at NC State University changed its name from Botany to
> Plant Biology (not Plant Science) a number of years ago. We did so
>
I was particularly impressed by the amount of work for the outside
opposition - much more than for any committee member here. Do they give
a generous honorarium?
O That was a REALLY INTERESTING read.
I think some aspects of the Swedish defense would scare the bajeezes out
of
doctoral
It's really unfortunate that the first, longest and most detailed answer
to this student's questions was so very negative and discouraging. That is
not a typical experience and many of us are happy we followed our
interests.
where should i click on the like buttom for this last answer?
Eve
Look into the Xerxes Society.
Organizations that promote public awareness (education) about invertebrate
animals?
Hello Ecolog-Listers:
In addition to the American Association of Zoos and Aquariums (
https://www.aza.org/ and http://www.titag.org/ ,
http://www.titag.org/ieccmain.html ,
, Judith S. Weis jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu
wrote:
I haven't looked at it lately, but last I knew, the Bio Dept at
Brandeis
was not interested in anything outside the cell membrane - which would
explain some of these policies. I would suggest transferring to a
school
that appreciates ecology
I haven't looked at it lately, but last I knew, the Bio Dept at Brandeis
was not interested in anything outside the cell membrane - which would
explain some of these policies. I would suggest transferring to a school
that appreciates ecology.
Dear Matt,
What a crazy biology department you
.
Best regards,
Alexandre Chausson
On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 2:18 AM, Judith S. Weis
jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu
wrote:
I frequently get messages like this from journals I've never heard of.
The
stilted English writing suggests it's not written by an American, yet
the
address is given
How can this happen when the editors of the journal invite the reviewers?
That's the type of peer review I'm familiar with.
I hope this hasn't been an issue in ecology.
Editors need to vet them for appropriate expertise in the field, and use
them carefully and sparsely.
Many journals ask the authors for up to five recommended referees. Those
arent always the only ones chosen, but in my experience it happens often.
On Mar 27, 2015, at 11:51 AM, Judith S
The system is falling apart - so many people decline to do reviews these
days (well, maybe for Science or Nature..) that editors have to keep
looking for more. And lots of the folks who decline to do reviews don't
recommend another potential reviewer.
I usually do a Google Scholar search and
/a
quaculture-and-research
Dear Dr. Judith S Weis,
Warm greetings from Jacobs Publishers
Quality research and its access are important to Scientific Community!
We, Jacobs Publishers are committed in association with the research
community and our motto is to serve the scientific
oo
1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert
1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and
pollution.
2000's: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction
MAY help restore populations.
Dr. Judith S. Weis
Dept
The adversarial relationship of these House members with the NSF is caused
by their adversarial relationship with science itself.
There is an unfortunate adversarial relationship between some members
of the House Science Comittee and the National Science Foundation,
described in an article
Yes, but
I have had a number of foreign students who could not write English very
well and I had to do a lot of re-writing on their dissertations - but the
research itself was excellent and we produced many publications. Just more
work on the major professor's part.
I agree with this
Why should some ecologists look down their noses at other ecologists when
we already have the molecular biologists looking down their noses at all
of us?
To adapt a well-known aphorism, ALL ECOLOGY IS LOCAL. That is, the outcome
of all ecological interactions â and thus, the abundance of
On a slightly different topic about PNAS, I found the article very
interesting in this week's issue that showed that gender bias can be
lethal: people don't take hurricanes with female names as seriously as
those with male names, so don't take enough precautions and are more
likely to be killed or
If you're not tagging a huge number of fishes there are dyes that can be
injected subcutaneously in various colors, quantities, and places that
could be used to identify individuals.
Hello,
I need to tag small amphibious fishes (2-10 cm) for individual
identification on a behavioural study.
Epigenetics!!
(not brand new, but much more beginning to be learned)
I'm planning to end my ecology/evolution courses this semester with a
section on what we have learned as recently as this year, which might
cause the course to be taught differently next year. Some examples
I've thought of
I've never heard of pea crabs being consumed on purpose. It's usually when
you pop a mussel in your mouth, get a surprise, and go pfah and see the
little crab on your plate!
At a dinner conversation with Carl Zimmer (author of Parasite Rex,
etc.) the question came up of whether there are any
Absolutely right! But how do you give essays in a very large class?
Grading them is an enormous job. And that's not what TA's are paid for
(unless the university provides a grader which I've never come across)
J
Use short answer and essay questions. It's more work, but students can't
cheat and
Here's an article about Tyrone Hayes, an environmental biologist at
Berkeley (who is probably not a member of ESA) who has had considerably
worse treatment from industry people who don't like his findings. Scary
...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/10/140210fa_fact_aviv
A nice
The existence of many good and rewarding jobs outside academia - in
federal agencies (EPA, NOAA, FWS, USGS, FDA etc.) as well as in state
agencies, the private sector (e.g. consulting firms) and non-profits
(environmental groups) or for those who love teaching, teaching in K-12
seems to be ignored
Since women generally live longer than men, what reason, aside from
discrimination, does China have for requiring them to retire 5 years
earlier?
In China academics (at least ecologists) have a mandatory retirement
age of 60 for men (can be extended to 65 if you're actively advising
graduate
This whole report and the skunk apes (which I never heard of before) could
inspire another hilarious book from Carl Hiaassen.
An Unstoppable Anaconda Invasion in Florida? What Slate Got Wrong.
Photo By Dave Lonsdale, Wikimedia
by Dr. David Steen from his Living Alongside Wildlife blog.
I trust (hope) that your paper on insects will not result in the vicious
attacks that Tyrone Hayes of Berkeley has been subjected to by the
manufacturers of atrazine because of his findings on amphibians.
If any of you are interested in sexual selection, endocrinally active
chemicals, or
Respectable journals won't publish applied material??? I can't let that
pass unanswered. There are numerous respectable journals that focus on
applied areas such as pollution, aquaculture, agriculture, silviculture,
invasion biology, environmental management and so forth. Even ESA has a
journal in
My fourth book, and first technical one, has just been published, even
though the official date is 2014!
http://www.springer.com/environment/environmental+toxicology/book/978-94-007-6948-9
Is this true??
Given the situation with wifi at ESA 2013 (as in, there isn't any except
in the lobby),
This is unheard of. How in the world did they let this happen How did
they choose a meeting site without wifi available all over?
Hello Ecologists!
If you're attending ESA, you may be
Ecolog-l is not meant to be a jobs board, though it functions well as one,
for both jobs and course announcements. But it's supposed to be more than
that, and now and then some very interesting conversations arise, the most
recent being an intense discussion about a month ago about the importance
Original Message
Subject: [Fwd: Join the Impact Factor Insurrection; Sign DORA]
From:Edward M. Bonder ebon...@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Date:Tue, May 21, 2013 4:20 pm
To: nabon...@andromeda.rutgers.edu
There's also a fish-sci list for ichthyophiles, and a crust-l list for
crustophiles.
Here is what I learned from member replies (thanks!), and from some other
digging regarding listservs like ECOLOG. Specifically, I was seeking open
interactive discussion lists (like ECOLOG), that allow any
Today's paper has an op-ed relevant to the recent discussions here.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/opinion/natures-case-for-same-sex-marriage.html?ref=global_r=0
I remember getting advice back in the '70s and '80s that it would be a
good idea to publish using only your initials, thus preventing bias. There
had been a couple of studies in which the identical manuscript was
submitted with a female name or with initials, and guess which one got
more favorable
:
Doesn't a requirement that a salaried employee work more than 40 hours
(literally or de-facto) violate labor laws? Maybe it's just a matter of
a greater need for professors, sit down for this one law enforcement,
accountability and transparency?
On 2/14/2013 3:08 PM, Judith S. Weis wrote
It should be strongly recommended to all grad school applicants to learn
about their potential advisors ahead of time by talking to grad students
in that lab and in other labs. That way you can find out about the
person's attitudes towards grad students having a life, having a family
etc. and
oo
1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert
1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and
pollution.
2000's: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction
MAY help restore populations.
Dr. Judith S. Weis
Dept
Hi all - I hope effects of Sandy did not do much damage to your homes and
labs.
This is a shameless plug for my new book that's coming out this month -
it's a natural history book about crabs.
Here's the link:
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100864250
Best,
Judy
Let me echo that some of us academics are involved in working with
environmental groups, serving on advisory committees to EPA, NOAA, and
state environmental agencies etc.
I am spending this week in the DC area on an advisory committee to NOAA
Sea Grant. (It's better to be here than in NJ/NY.)
Original Message
Subject: [AAASFellows] New program: Emerging Leaders in Science Society
From:Melanie Roberts roberts@gmail.com
Date:Sun, October 21, 2012 10:49 pm
To: aaasfell...@listserv.aaas.org
In my experience, search committees also look for individuals who have
published while in graduate school. This usually requires motivation and
efforts by both the student and the advisor.
I'm very sorry to see that a few folks have had bad experiences in grad
school. Many of us had very
The NJ shore has lots of beaches and marshes but is very short on rocks!
And rocks are found largely in man-made jetties. There is one on the
Belmar beach that I took my class to for many years as the best example I
could find of rocky habitat in the northern half of the state.
Maybe the kids
I agree 100% !!
With sincere respect to all of you in the fields of microbiology,
genetics, and other laboratory-based disciplines of the life sciences, I
contend the Campbell Essential Biology approach is exactly what is wrong
with biology education today.
Nearly all undergraduate and
I published an article last year on the role of behavior in the success of
invasive crustaceans.
Dear Ecologgers:
I would like to prepare a lecture for students on the behaviour of
invasive species
As a behavioural biologist I'am convinced that behavioural traits of
Some non-indigenous species don't cause problems in their new environment
- but they are not called invasive. This term is for those that cause
trouble one way or another.
A couple of months ago we were snorkeling in the Turks and Caicos islands,
which are less developed than many other places, so
At the risk of tooting my own horn a book I co-authored with Carol
Butler, Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History, (Rutgers University
Press 2009) could be a good introduction to the subject. We do focus on
Atlantic coast marshes, have chapters on various ways in which humans have
altered
I've been thinking of chiming in before and will do so now.
As someone who is now a grandmother, I can say yes - you can do it all,
but not exactly all at the same time. Kids do not stay babies that long.
You can cut back when they are, and when your kids are a bit older, you
can plunge back into
stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and
pollution.
2000's: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction
MAY help restore populations.
Dr. Judith S. Weis
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Rutgers University
Newark NJ 07102
Phone 973 353-5387 FAX 973 353-5518
http
What you are leaving out is the quality of the reviews. Just as with
papers, some reviews are of much higher quality than others.
Perhaps there should also be included in the index how many times the
editors had to send reminders to the reviewer - before all the on-line
journal review systems were
HOWEVER, ecologists may have a way do accomplish research at schools with
high teaching loads plus research expectations. You can do your research
in the summer. This is the best time for studying a lot of the systems
here in the states. My estuarine organisms, for example, are sleeping
all winter
Another element is that now faculty earn a reasonable living wage, while
several decades ago they didn't.
One element in the increase in college costs, not just research, is
accountability. Congress has passed laws that had good objectives
(protecting human subjects, protecting animals,
This article from the AWIS newsletter is pertinent to recent discussions
on this list.
Work-Life Balance and Success in a Scientific Career
Work-life balance in a rigorous academic career is slowly being adopted as
part of the scientific communitys lexicon, although some resist its
I would suggest that this famous evolutionary biologist is stuck back in
the Cretaceous period when it comes to attitudes.
Both women and men need to have a life besides science. Choices need to be
made in life, and sometimes family has to come before doing that other
experiment right away, or
And many many thanks to David for tending to this list for almost 20 years!
A few days ago the number of ECOLOG-L subscribers reached 13,000. I
started the list in 1992. It reached 6,000 in September 2006, 7,000
in November 2007, 8,000 in October 2008, 9,000 in March 2009, 10,000
in April
Venus fly traps would definitely appeal to middle school kids.
I nominate:
1. Trigger plants (Stylidiaceae - Australia). They slap pollinators
with their reproductive parts to effect pollination.
2. Resurrection plant (Selaginella)- desert species and eastern
epiphytes. Yes, they look
There was a widely cited article some years back by Pimentel et al. that
estimated economic impacts, but it turns out that it included the costs of
controlling/removing the invasive species, which does not seem appropriate
to me.
Since there seems to be some confusion as to what
invasion
http://www.truth-out.org/pesticides-and-politics-americas-eco-war/1307539754
IMHO, they are attacking a straw man. I haven't seen many scientists,
managers, policy-makers etc. getting all worked up about non-indigenous
species who integrate well into the environment, get a green card, pay
their taxes etc. The ones that are being attacked and for which they are
spending
and
it would be through such new thinking that the issue would receive a fresh
understanding.
Esat Atikkan
--- On Fri, 6/10/11, Judith S. Weis jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu wrote:
From: Judith S. Weis jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] EcoTone: Speaking
It's not just flooding wildlife habitat, it's totally changing the aquatic
habitat and blocking the migration of salmon, eels, etc. Dams are a major
factor in the dramatic declines of migratory fishes.
Certain water planning regions in Texas have proposed new dams/reservoirs
and I'm just
Recognizing this problem (which is not just marine-related!) Paul Ehrlich
and others started the Millenium Assessment of Human Behavior - MAHB - a
few years ago. Here's the website:
http://mahbsustainability.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/paul-ehrlichs-invitation/
Operating from sampling platforms
I wouldn't care at all which degree they had. I would care about what they
knew and what they could do.
Hello Ecologgers!
I'm wrapping up my fourth-year in environmental sciences at UC Davis and
have been looking at graduate schools. I notice that different schools
will
offer either an
Most plants put and store most of the metals in their roots. But the
percentage varies and you would have to look it up for particular species
and a particular metal. So plants where roots are eaten would not be
advised, but usually there would be much less in the stems, leaves or
fruits.
I am
?
Fascinating Answers to Questions about Fishes
Judith S. Weis
Fish, fish, and more fishfrom minnows to sharks, mountain streams to ocean
bottoms, and teeth to tail fins, if it's a fish question, it's answered
here.
John Waldman, author of Heartbeats in the Muck: The History, Sea Life
Original Message
Subject: MFCN Seeking New Executive Director
From:Bruce Stedman bsted...@conservefish.org
Date:Wed, January 12, 2011 11:59 am
To: Board of Directors boardofdirect...@conservefish.org
But why would this affect just red-winged blackbirds and not other birds?
Dear ECOLOG-L Members,
I have an ornithologist friend who works for the Dept. of the Environment
in
D.C., and in a recent correspondence I asked for his opinion on the mass
bird kills in the news. Here is his reply
Maybe taxonomists should stick to labeling species with objective rigor
instead of labeling other scientists with snobby scorn.
Maybe this is really just a defensive attitude since for so many years
they were looked down on by other branches of biology - including
ecologists - as being just stamp
Just because fish can metabolize oil doesn't mean that it doesn't have
toxic effects on them. Oil and its breakdown products, while they are
still around, can still have negative effects. But it does mean that fish
won't store it in their body over a long period of time (like DDT or PCBs
or
This article is spot on. It is way too premature for anyone to make
pronouncements about the effects of this oil. The overall effects and time
needed for the environment there to clean itself up will not be known for
a very long time - if ever, since so much of the dispersed oil is below
the
Original Message
Subject: Announcing the President's National Ocean Policy
From:NOAA Office of Communications and External Affairs
external.affa...@noaa.gov
Date:Mon, July 19, 2010 6:06 pm
To: jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu
I think there are still a number of programs out there where students can
graduate without any courses dealing with what goes on outside the cell
membrane.
I gave a somewhat jocular response to this question a day or so ago, but
my point was that we have a lot of diversity, and probably want
For Phragmites, there was an assumption that it was evil and lots of money
spent on removal projects long before we had studied its impacts on marsh
ecology, which are not all negative.
I don't know that subjectivity is necessarily a bad thing (of course, that
is a subjective judgement!), as
And aside from the direct toxicity that the dispersants may have, they
make the hydrocarbons in the oil more available to the marine organisms in
the offshore water that were previously not exposed to much, since most of
the hydrocarbons were concentrated above them at the surface.
In
the lousy job market has caused lots of PhDs to apply for jobs that would
otherwise gone to folks with a Masters.
So having job-hunted for the past 6 months with an MS in Fisheries
Biology, I have to agree with David that most of the interesting agency
jobs are GS-11 and require a PhD. I,
There's a lot more money to be made in this sort of biomedical and
clinical research, of course, than there is in ecology and evolution.
I recently read that the famous other fake - the midwife toad, may not
have been a fake after all, but don't remember the details at the moment.
Why, do we
Remember the old song about the old lady that swallowed a fly?
Ecolog:
Any comments?
WT
- Original Message -
From: Wayne Tyson landr...@cox.net
To: a...@lists.plantconservation.org
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 10:41 PM
Subject: Biological control of invasive species by import
It's probably a more responsible thing for the reviewers to do than to say
they will do the review and then not get around to it for 5 or 6 months,
as has happened to me several times. When I was editing a journal, there
were certain people who I stopped asking for reviews because I knew from
Martin Meiss said:
This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need
formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process,
acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators.
I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community
stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and
pollution.
2000's: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction
MAY help restore populations.
Dr. Judith S. Weis, Professor
Dept. of Biological Sciences
Rutgers University
Newark NJ 07102
Phone 973 353-5387 FAX 973 353-5518
At last!
Lubchenco Clears Senate Committee
On March 12, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
unanimously voted for Oregon State University marine biologist Jane
Lubchenco to
lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The
Committee also
unanimously
What Dave says is true, but since there is this prejudice, Jay would do
better getting a Ph.D. and avoiding the issue.
It seems the prejudice against the EdD, like most prejudices, is based
on little evidence. Unfortunately, such prejudice is fairly common in
the supposedly rational confines
Attention NJ-ites - contact Senator Menendez.
OSTP, NOAA Confirmations Delayed. The Washington Post reported last week
that the confirmations of John Holdren to be Director of the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy and of Jane Lubchenco to be
Administrator of the National Oceanic
Around Indonesia (no surprise!) there is more appreciation for Wallace
than around here. More of us should learn about him and read his books.
I strongly second this opinion. As someone who recently read The
Malay Archipelago and is now making herself read Origins as kind
of a bicentennial
There is an organization called Blue Ventures, run out of England, that
has a program utilizing mostly volunteers in studying/monitoring reefs in
a remote area in western Madagascar. This would be an example of research
tourism. They are very involved with the local community and have worked
with
Was he complaining about this study as being an earmark ? I don't
remember that particular complaint and of course support more funding for
ecological research, but I don't think we should be supporting earmarks
for ecological studies or for anything else!
Dear Ecologgers-
I was very
For a bit of whacky humor and an environmental message (especially about
development in Florida), you could include some of Carl Hiaassen's books.
Tourist Season and Skinny Dip come to mind but there are others.
The Cane Toads film also has a fair amount of humor, something generally
lacking in such documentaries. And, strange for a documentary, it has an
_actor_ who plays a now-retired colleague of mine, Dan Wilhoft, who
studied the cane toads in Australia! I never could figure that one out.
Judy Weis
One would hope that primate watchers (or watchers of anything else) would
become a bit more interested in the behaviors, life history etc. of the
creatures they watch than many birders who couldn't care less about the
biology of the birds they see, but just want to check them off their list.
Does
However, additional children in the US have a much larger footprint than
additional children in less developed countries. The combination of
population size x per capita resource use/pollution production should be
the measure of environmental stress.
I have not previously weighed in on the
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