SNIM This is a C++11 implementation of a stochastic multispecies model. The model has multiple applications to investigate the relationship between ecological interactions (competition, predation) and diversity. It involves a discrete definition of individuals belonging to a given set of species. The dynamics are essentially probabilistic at the microscopic scale, but it leads to recognizable macroscopic patterns both in space and time. The model in is actual version is spatially implicit but a spatially explicit version is planned (never did it).
Scaling is a central theme in ecology, well this is my opinion, but there are others that think like me, for example Brian Enquist, that organized a symposium for the 100th anniversary of the Ecological Society of America Scaling in Ecology. He mentioned that two of the most influential papers from ESA were about scaling: Simon Levin The Problem of Pattern and Scale in Ecology and J.H. Brown The Metabolic Theory of Ecology.
One can think of different ways that biodiversity can be regulated in the framework of food-webs or more generally networks of interactions:
Top-down: the effect of predation, hervibory, parasitism
Botton-up: food/nutrients
Disturbance:
In a more microscopic way could also have stabilizing influence or not
Trophic interactions
Competitive or negative interactions
Mutualistic or positive interactions
No interactions (Neutral)
I am thinking of writing in Spanish because Spanish is my mother language, but there seem to be not many people writing about ecological science in Spanish. In the end, I started to think in English and then write in English, so the next one should be in Spanish, who knows.
I have a sensation about metacommunity theory, it divides things too much. Each of the concepts in the following image tries to keep different processes in its own box.
Definitive answers are scarce in biology 1 2 but if we want the advance of ecological knowledge we should reach a point where we have a theory we can trust and can be used for prediction.
Besides that the use of experimental micro/mesocosmos has been criticized I advocate for its use in testing and generating ecological theory, using the following steps:
Do a experimental microcosm with a temporal and spatial homogeneous environment
This is not a sex bomb, but who knows. A couple of weeks ago I was giving a talk at the Escuela Argentina de Matemática y Biología about neutral and non-neutral models in ecology. I was pointed to the paper of Clark 2012 The coherence problem with the Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity with the commentary: the neutral theory is uninformative.
And the paper basically says that neutral models or neutral theory is based on ignorance and that they are incoherent.
Aggregation of objects is widespread phenomena in several sciences and of course in biology and ecology. Two cases I found and seem interesting to me are: the aggregation in niche space: The clumping transition in niche competition, and the aggregation in neutral models: Clustering in neutral ecology.\
This seems to depend only on the discreteness and finiteness of the objects and space. And in both cases the clumps have sizes distributed as power laws.
I had a hard day, lots of data, many papers, many ideas crossing my mind, all ended in confusion, nothing was clear.
I went home and my wife said why do not you take a bath?
Under the shower, soaping me, suddenly, everything was fixed in my head.
But this always happens to me, the best ideas come while I am taking a shower.
It looks like someone did the experiment and found the same:
Ok, nobody’s gonna tell you that.
But I was about to drink a relaxing glass of black wine and reading some papers, the rest of the world was sleeping. And I found this: “Characterizing a scientific elite: the social characteristics of the most highly cited scientists in environmental science and ecology”
I like things that are not exactly as supposed to be.
How to be a successful scientist, I don’t know.
These are my ideas about self-publishing a poster. There are tons of places on the Internet about how to write the best poster, but I think that most of them don’t apply their guidelines for its own publication, I mean the web page where the guidelines are published.\
A poster should have three levels:
A visual level: the visual impact, something attractive like a flower for its pollinator. This is like a commercial advertisement.