In the news:

First Farmers Were Also Sailors, by Michael Balter in Science.

John Bostock: The man who ‘discovered’ hay fever, by Justin Parkinson in BBC News Magazine.

DNA study shows yeti is real (sort of) – and Oxford scientist prepares expedition to find it, by Adam Withnall in The Independent.

Tibetan altitude gene inherited ‘from extinct species’, by Paul Rincon BBC News Website

Scientific articles:

Bonatelli, I.A.S., Perez, M.F., Peterson, A.T., Taylor, N.P., Zappi, D.C., Machado, M.C., Koch, I., Pires, A.H.C. & Moraes, E.M. (2014) Interglacial microrefugia and diversification of a cactus species complex: phylogeography and palaeodistributional reconstructions for Pilosocereus aurisetus and allies. Molecular Ecology, 23, 3044-3063.

Bush, M.B., Restrepo, A. and Collins, A.F. (2014) Galápagos history, restoration, and a shifted baseline. Restoration Ecology, 22, 3, 296-298.
Summary (Nick): A concise and pithy look at how a robust long-term ecological system can be transformed rapidly by human impact. The paper demonstrates how the fossil pollen record is fundamental if a near-natural vegetation state is to be restored to the Galápagos islands, to avoid restoration to a shifted baseline.

Froyd, C.A., Coffey, E.E.D., van der Knaap, W.O., van Leeuwen, J.F.N., Tye, A. & Willis, K.J. (2014) The ecological consequences of megafaunal loss: giant tortoises and wetland biodiversity. Ecology Letters, 17, 144-154.

Giguet-Covex, C., Pansu, J., Arnaud, F., Rey, P.-J., Griggo, C., Gielly, L., Domaizon, I., Coissac, E., David, F., Choler, P., Poulenard, J. & Taberlet, P. (2014) Long livestock farming history and human landscape shaping revealed by lake sediment DNA. Nat Commun, 5

Gillson, L. & Marchant, R. (2014) From myopia to clarity: sharpening the focus of ecosystem management through the lens of palaeoecology. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29, 317-325.
Comment (Will): For a good example of feeding palaeoecology into management see Bush et al. above.

An interview with Phil Jardine

July 1, 2014
philjardine

Well, we’ve heard from Wes and Adele, and now it’s my turn (Phil Jardine) for a bit of a chat on the “Ecology of the past” YouTube channel. Similar to the previous interview videos, I’m talking about my role on the Bosumtwi pollen chemistry project, and what I’ve done (academically speaking) prior to coming to the Open University. Enjoy!

For more videos check out the “Ecology of the past” YouTube channel.

News articles:

Unesco to rule on Tasmania forest and Great Barrier Reef, BBC News Asia.

Climate change will ‘cost world far more than estimated’, by Tom Bawden, The Independent.

Scientific articles:

Heslop-Harrison, J. (1979) Aspects of the structure, cytochemistry and germination of the pollen of Rye (Secale cereale L.). Annals of Botany, 44, 1-47.
Summary (Adele): Sometimes, the old ones are the best, and this behemoth of a paper contains a huge amount of useful information on the chemical structure and development of Rye pollen grains. As I am working on the chemistry of grass pollen at the moment, it is incredibly useful to know that this sort of information exists and can be used to inform both my experimental protocol and interpretations.

Michelutti, N., Blais, J.M., Cumming, B.F., Paterson, A.M., Rühland, K., Wolfe, A.P. & Smol, J.P. (2010) Do spectrally inferred determinations of chlorophyll a reflect trends in lake trophic status? Journal of Paleolimnology, 43, 205-217. doi: 10.1007/s10933-009-9325-8
Summary (Frazer): Quick and easy way to extract data from lake sediment cores.

Rossetti, D.F., de Toledo, P.M and Góes, A.M. (2005) New geological framework for Western Amazonia (Brazil) and implications for biogeography and evolution. Quaternary Research, 63, 78 – 89. doi: 10.1016/j.ygres.2004.10.001.
Summary (Hayley): Research discussing the importance of understanding the underlying geological processes in order to correctly identify the mechanisms controlling modern biodiversity in Western Amazonia, Brazil.

Simpson, J. (2011) On the Ambiguity of Elves. Folklore, 122, 76-83. DOI: 10.1080/0015587X.2011.537133
Summary (Will): Elves depicted in modern literature have a grounding in ancient literature.

Trenkamp, R., Kellogg, J. N., Freymueller, J.T. and Mora, H.P. (2002) Wide plate margin deformation, southern Central America and northwestern South America, CASA GPS observations. Journal of South American Earth Sciences. 15, 157 – 171. PIL: S0895-9811(02)00018-4.
Summary (Hayley): GPS data used to detect plate boundary convergence, subduction and collision within the north west of South America. GPS data between 1991 and 1998 was used to work out rates of movement for plates.

An interview with Adele Julier

May 26, 2014
philjardine

Following on from Wes Fraser’s insightful and revealing interview, cactus-hugger Adele Julier tells us about her academic background and her role on the Lake Bosumtwi pollen chemistry project.

 

For more videos check out the “Ecology of the past” YouTube channel.

Newspaper articles:

Exclusive: Found after 500 years, the wreck of Christopher Columbus’s flagship the Santa Maria by David Keys, The Independent.

Scientific articles:

Cole, L.E.S., Bhagwat, S.A. & Willis, K.J. (2014) Recovery and resilience of tropical forests after disturbance. Nat Commun, 5, Article number 3906.
Summary (Will): Varying factors have disturbed tropical forests which have recovered at varying rates.

Hoorn, C., Wesselingh, F.P., ter Steege, H., Bermudez, M.A., Mora, A., Sevink, J., Sanmartín, I., Sanchez-Meseguer, A., Anderson, C.L., Figueiredo, J.P., Jaramillo, C., Riff, D., Negri, F.R., Hooghiemstra, H., Lundberg, J., Stadler, T., Särkinen, T. & Antonelli, A. (2010) Amazonia Through Time: Andean Uplift, Climate Change, Landscape Evolution, and Biodiversity. Science, 330, 927-931.

Montade, V., Ledru, M.-P., Burte, J., Martins, E.S.P.R., Verola, C.F., Costa, I.R.d. & Magalhães e Silva, F.H. (2014) Stability of a Neotropical microrefugium during climatic instability. Journal of Biogeography, 41, 1215-1226.
SUMMARY (Will): Thoughts on what happened to species when in Amazonia.

African ecology in context

May 14, 2014
WDG

afqua-logo-header-copy

I am delighted to be organizing a focus session at the first AfQUA meeting. The session seeks to bring together ecologists and palaeoecologists working in Africa. If you are interested in getting involved please contact me (William Gosling) directly. For further information on the conference visit the AfQUA website or twitter feed.

Focus session 1: African ecology in context
The African continent spans over 80 degrees of latitude, nearly 6000 m of altitude and around 30 million km2 consequently it contains a vast array of unique ecosystems. Many of the African ecosystems are under direct pressure from human activity and are threatened by on-going and projected climate change. However, management and conservation of the modern African ecosystems is hampered by a paucity of data on their natural history. Studies of observations of ecosystems spanning >30 years are rare so we are heavily reliant on examination of the fossil record to place modern ecology in a long-term (>50 year) context. Information on past ecosystems can be extracted through the examination of a range of biological indicators (e.g. pollen, carbon isotopes, charcoal) found within marine and lake sediments. However, interpretation of the sediments and the proxies they contain with the ecosystems observed today is challenging because of timescale and interpretation issues. The aim of this session is to bring together modern ecologists and paleo-ecologists working in Africa to present the state-of-the-art understanding of ecosystems past and present, and explore how we can improve understanding of timescales and proxy interpretation to place these threatened ecosystems in context.

New job: Paleo & Landscape Ecology

February 21, 2014
WDG

IBED-UvA-logoI am delighted to announce that later this year I will be moving to the Institute of Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. I will be taking up an Associate Professor position as head of the Paleo & Landscape Ecology group. I am excited, and honoured, by this appointment and look forward to intergrating my ongoing program of research with the world class team in Amsterdam. Over the next few months I am sure further details will appear on the blog about the move as plans evolve towards my start date in September. Exciting times…

In the light of my departure, at that of Emma Sayer (bound for Lancaster), The Open University, Department of Environment, Earth & Ecosystems is now advertising two posts (details below). I have enjoyed my time at the OU and I think there are still good teaching and research opportunities for academics here. If anyone whats to contact me about the posts then I am happy to discuss.

Lectureship  Environmental Science (Advert)
Lectureship / Senior Lectureship in Earth or Environmental Science (Advert)

BES Macroecology meeting

August 5, 2013
philjardine

BES Macroecology SIG

BES Macroecology SIG

Last week I attended the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society Macroecology Special Interest Group (or BES Macroecology SIG for something a bit more manageable) at the University of Sheffield. Macroecology deals with ecological patterns and processes that occur over large spatial and temporal scales, and so is a natural fit for a lot of palaeoecological data.

The organisers deliberately moved away from the standard conference format of back-to-back talks, and instead built in lots of time for discussions around several themes (‘provacations’) that addressed the current status of macroecology and possible future directions for it. Several areas for progress were identified here, including finding more efficient ways of generating, curating and accessing large (global scale) datasets, increasing dialogue between numerical modellers and empirical ecologists, and more statistical and computational training for undergraduate ecologists and biologists.

Sessions of presentations were also formulated to encourage discussion and debate, with either rapid, five-minute presentations or longer methodological talks forming the starting point for further discourse. I struggled enormously with the five-minute time limit during my talk (conference talks are often built around a 15 minute slot) but hopefully interested a few people in the uses of 60 million year old pollen for addressing macroecological questions.

 A workshop on ‘Spatial analysis in R’ followed the two-day meeting. This was taught by Barry Rowlingson, and was co-organised by the Macroecology and Computational Ecology SIGs. Barry started by introducing the programme R and then went on to demonstrate its uses for handling, mapping and analysing spatial data. This type of analysis was largely new to me, and this workshop was a brilliant introduction to what R can do with geographical data.

To join these British Ecological Society SIGs and find out about other groups visit the BES SIG pages by clicking here.

Dead heads

July 30, 2013
encarnimontoya

DeadHeads12th International Workshop on Subfossils Chironomids
10-13th June, New Forest, UK

Last month Frazer and Encarni attended the 3-days “dead heads” workshop that was held at the Beaulieu Hotel , in the New Forest National Park (UK). It was perfectly organised by Pete Langdon and Steve Brooks,  and was a great opportunity for both of us who are relatively new to the midges’ community. With around 40 participants from Europe, America and Asia, we greatly enjoyed the discussions that came up about the state-of-the-art for this interesting proxy and the implications for palaeoclimatology, palaeolimnology, and different aspects of ecology like conservation, restoration or community assemblages. In addition, useful topics such as current methodological problems with age-depth model uncertainties, the usefulness and limitations of transfer functions, and taxonomy were also debated.

Besides oral and poster presentations, the workshop offered several tutorials during the afternoons, key amoung these were an introduction to R carried out by Richard Telford and Steve Juggins, and taxonomic support for head capsules ID leaded by Steve Brooks and Oliver Heiri.

In our specific case, Frazer contributed with an oral presentation titled “Understanding the modern distributions and ecological tolerances of the Neotropical Chironomidae fauna: The potential as a palaeoecological proxy” base on his PhD research. We were both so glad to make contact with other people working in South America, in particular Julieta Massaferro and Alberto Araneda presented very interesting data from Argentina and Chile.

Although these meetings are normally biannual, next conference location and date is yet to be decided, but we hope to have the chance to join this very friendly and supporting community again. We encourage people with all kind of experience (or lack of) to attend any further events.

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