Posts from qaecologists- COVID-19 dynamics October 20, 2020
- Discover the beauties (and oddities) of the avian world, rate some birds and help science September 28, 2020
- Get Productive with an Easy Weekly Reset September 28, 2020
- COVID counterfactuals September 27, 2020
- PhD position modelling species range dynamics September 22, 2020
- Recent QAECO Posts
- Virtual #ISEC2020 June 22, 2020 Michael McCarthy
- QAECO’s favourite papers of 2018 April 12, 2019 qaecology
- What is HPC and why would I use it? April 4, 2019 qaecology
- Kickstarting the year with HGAMs February 25, 2019 qaecology
- Philosophical discussions in the lab: Žižek criticises ideological ecology June 5, 2018 qaecology
Category Archives: Reading Group
Kickstarting the year with HGAMs
To start off Reading Group for 2019, we dove headfirst into 43 brilliant pages on hierarchical generalised additive models (HGAMs) by Pederson et al. 2018, a pre-print titled “Hierarchical generalised additive models: an introduction with mgcv“. Although at first intimidated … Continue reading
Posted in generalised additive models, pre-print, Reading Group, Statistics
Tagged GAMs, hierarchical models, mgcv
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Philosophical discussions in the lab: Žižek criticises ideological ecology
In a recent reading group, QAECO discussed a criticism of ecology from the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek, as represented in two online resources: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/opinion/global/02iht-GA12zizek.html https://io9.gizmodo.com/5627925/slavoj-iek-wake-up-and-smell-the-apocalypse?IR=T Slavoj Žižek [photo by By Amrei-Marie, from Wikimedia Commons] Žižek is a strongly left-leaning critic … Continue reading
Grappling with reproducibility in science?
As a lab, we’ve made it a priority to increase the standards of our code to align with best practices for reproducibility and repeatability of our science. In keeping with this goal, this week in reading group Saras Windecker and … Continue reading
Qaeco’s favourite papers of 2017
We asked our lab members to nominate a paper published in 2017 that they had enjoyed. Recommendations ranged from the skill-based (scientific writing, reproducible coding, camera-trapping) to global reviews (plant traits, climate change, size-based models) and some great case studies … Continue reading
Posted in Papers, Qaecologists, Reading Group
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Sense of place: the ecosystem service to align social and conservation values?
Many conservation issues are influenced by a complex mix of environmental, social, economic and cultural processes. At times, conservation decision-making can be complicated by opposing social and ecological values. In this week’s reading group, Anja Skroblin led a discussion on … Continue reading
Posted in Reading Group
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Culling animals “ethically”
In reading group earlier this month Linda Riquelme led a discussion on the issue of wildlife culling. This is something that relates to projects a few of us in the lab work on. For example, the management of endangered Buloke Woodlands in … Continue reading
Life in corrupt science: when metrics become targets
‘Publish or perish’. The overused phrase describing career aspects in today’s academia. Whereas day-to-day work is rarely quite as grim, we all learn early on that our performance as scientists is very much measured by the number of publications, citations, … Continue reading
Posted in Reading Group
Tagged Australia, competition, metrics, misconduct, science, scientific rigour
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Reading group: An Italian wolf in Switzerland
In reading group this fortnight (March 16th) we talked about the social acceptability of Italian wolves in Switzerland based on a recent article available online at Journal of Applied Ecology: Behr, D.M., Ozgul, A. & Cozzi, G. (2017). Combining human … Continue reading
Qaeco’s favourite papers of 2016
A little late off the mark this time around, we asked people in the lab to nominate a paper they had enjoyed in 2016. This year, we based one of our fortnightly reading groups on this topic and everyone gave … Continue reading
Posted in Papers, Qaecologists, Reading Group, Uncategorized
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Soft ecology
Ecologists are multi-talented folk (if we do say so ourselves!). A diverse set of skills are required to write grants, heft field-gear over mountains, code statistical analyses, run simulation models, draft manuscripts and chat with the media. Less obvious, however, … Continue reading
