“Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.”
So George Orwell began his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, which is still relevant today as both a guide and a warning. Reading it now (the whole thing is available online courtesy of the Orwell Foundation), it strikes me that the decline Orwell saw in the English language might be blamed on science as much as politics. Three of his “five specimens” of poor writing come from academia (one of them written by a prominent zoologist), and many of the specific writing habits he criticises are ones I see regularly in modern papers. One of our recent “NERD Club” discussion sessions was based on Orwell’s essay and related topics, as we looked for the conscious actions that might help us to write clearly and accurately.
At the start of each year we ask the EcoEvo contributors to share their favourite scientific publications from the past year and why they found them interesting, inspiring, or otherwise worthy of inclusion in the Hall of Fame. Keeping with tradition, here are the EcoEvo Hall of Fame entries for 2020! And if you enjoy reading about our favourite papers from 2020, remember you can also check out our favourites from 2017, 2018 and 2019, too!
I really enjoyed this paper because it tackles a really difficult topic at the intersection of poverty, human rights, development, conservation, and sustainability. It is important to remember that conservation will never meet its objectives without considering how people depend on nature for their needs and livelihoods. The areas of richest biological diversity (and therefore conservation potential) are usually in developing countries with communities experiencing poverty. This paper collects responses from conservation practitioners to examine their viewpoints on poverty in the context of their work.
They found some areas of agreement such as the poorest people should not be expected to shoulder the costs of preserving a global public good (the conservation of biodiversity). However, they also identify differences between responses: Is the focus placed on meeting the needs of people or more closely aligned with the “do no harm” principle? Is poverty a driver of nature’s decline, or is it the over-consumption that drives environmental degradation? This paper was a great opportunity to question my own views on these very complex ideas and to appreciate the wide diversity of thought going on across the world of conservation.
Fisher, J.A., Dhungana, H., Duffy, J., He, J., Inturias, M., Lehmann, I., Martin, A., Mwayafu, D.M., Rodríguez, I. and Schneider, H. (2020). Conservationists’ perspectives on poverty: An empirical study. People and Nature, 2 (3), pp.678-692.
This paper is based on a truly colossal undertaking: to collect their data on dispersal ability, Sheard et al. measured the wings of 10,338 bird species, i.e. 99% of all bird species on Earth. They used the Hand-Wing Index, a measure that correlates with aspect ratio and basically tells you how long and pointed the bird’s wing is. The higher this number (i.e. the pointier the wing), the better the bird will be at dispersing and flying long distances.
This is important for evolution, as the more birds that are able to fly between distant populations the more gene flow there will be and the less likely the populations are to diverge. Sheard et al. found important links between dispersal ability and geography and ecology, as tropical and territorial birds, had lower Hand-Wing Indices and migratory species had higher ones. It’s fascinating to see how these traits affect the ability of a species to move around, which in turn dictates where that species will be found in the world. The authors have made this incredible dataset freely available and it is sure to inform new insights into bird ecology and evolution for years to come.
Sheard C., Neate-Clegg M. H. C., Alioravainen N., Jones S. E. I., Vincent C., MacGregor H. E. A., Bregman T. P., Claramunt S. & Tobias J. A. (2020) Ecological drivers of global gradients in avian dispersal inferred from wing morphology. Nature Communications, 11 (2463).
The COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely challenging for many, so it was great to see some excellent science coming from the ‘natural experiment’ offered by COVID-19 movement restrictions. The authors show that during the COVID-19 restrictions anthropogenic noise (from vehicles etc.) in the San Francisco Bay Area reached a 70-year low, characteristic of the mid-1950s. They use a long-term dataset of White-Crowned Sparrow recordings to show that during the COVID-19 lockdown, when human noise pollution was minimal, Sparrows exploited the emptied acoustic space (usually occupied by human-related noise) by producing higher-performance songs at lower amplitudes, to maximise song distance. The authors highlight the rapidity with which behavioural traits (song characteristics) adapted to changes in human activity, suggesting incredible plasticity and potential resilience to pervasive anthropogenic pressures like noise pollution. To me, this study is a perfect example of nature’s resilience, and also on finding opportunity from tragedy (research made possible by a global pandemic).
Derryberry E.P., Phillips J.N., Derryberry G.E., Blum M.J., Luther D. (2020). Singing in a silent spring: Birds respond to a half-century soundscape reversion during the COVID-19 shutdown. Science, 370, 575-579.
This paper looked at the human behavioural responses to a blanket ban on thresher shark fisheries in Sri Lanka and fisher’s perceptions of different aspects of the ban. A blanket ban means a complete prohibition on exploitation of a species, and Thresher sharks are considered to be the most vulnerable species of pelagic sharks. A blanket ban might therefore seem like a straightforward and easy conservation measure to protect them. But this study looked at the human impact behind such a drastic policy decision. A ban like this has consequences for the livelihoods of fishers – particularly smaller fishermen who rely highly on thresher shark landings to provide for their families. The study clearly shows the disparity in the impact this conservation policy has had between fishers who rely on these catches to survive and those for whom they are not the primary catch.
The biggest message I took from this paper is how important it is that human lives are taken into account when making conservation decisions; and more importantly that scientists and policymakers need to involve communities early on in the process, communicate better and work together, not against each other if we want conservation to be effective – and supported. This is a message I think more scientists need to hear and integrate into their work and one I hope to take forward in my future career.
Collins C., Letessier T. B., Broderick A., Wijesundara I., Nuno A. (2020). Using perceptions to examine human responses to blanket bans: The case of the thresher shark landing-ban in Sri Lanka. Marine Policy, 121 (104198).
Every year, contributors to the blog look back on their favourite papers of the previous year and tell us what it was about these publications that stuck in their mind so much. With a range of different topics and reasons, it’s always great to see what each of us thinks makes for a great paper! Find out what we elected as our favourite papers in 2018 and 2017, and read on for this year’s entries:
Perrot-Minnot, M. J., Guyonnet, E., Bollache, L., & Lagrue, C. (2019). Differential patterns of definitive host use by two fish acanthocephalans occurring in sympatry: Pomphorhynchus laevis and Pomphorhynchus tereticollis.International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife, 8, 135-144.
Read the full International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife paper here
Graphical abstract from paper
Sometimes a paper doesn’t have to make huge waves in the broader ecology world to be a great paper and sometimes a paper comes along at just the right time to answer the questions you need answering. Perrot-Minnot et al. 2019 did both for me this year. Since the taxonomic revision of the acanthocephalan parasite Pomphorhychus laevis by Špakulová et al in 2011 resurrected the closely-related species Pomphorhynchus tereticollis, the systematics of the genus in Europe has been something of a taxonomic dumpster fire. It also left one of my PhD chapters with a bit of an identity crisis since,
The species-area relationship is considered one of the only ‘rules’ in ecology. We have observed more species on larger ‘islands’ (whether true islands or simply some habitat patch of interest) in studies of different plants and animals all around the world. When MacArthur and Wilson (1967) proposed this pattern and the pioneering biogeographical principles which underpin it, they acknowledged that a piece of the puzzle was missing: species identity.
During my first week in Dublin, Ireland, I was more shocked by the countless sunny-rainy shifts within one single day than its natural beauty, although I had been warned of its fickle weather in advance. That was something totally new to me. Born and raised in a small inland town in North China, I had grown accustomed to taking for granted that a whole sunny day could be prophesised by bright morning sunlight through the window. Then I started to imagine that, if fitting a curve to the weather, the curve of my birth village would surely be much smoother than Dublin, even though the former has four much more distinct seasons. But, at that moment, I had neither realized that this thought actually reflected the difference in the temporal autocorrelation of environmental conditions in the two places nor how this could be linked to the dynamics and stability of ecosystems.
As we launch into another year of research, we thought it would be interesting to look back on some of the work that came out in 2018, so we asked the School of Natural Sciences what papers they would like to induct into our second annual Hall of Fame. Read on for the papers we thought were fascinating, notable, or just cool. When you’re finished, you can check out 2017’s Hall of Fame here.
Every now and then you stumble on a paper that changes everything for you. Typically something of a personal zeitgeist moment, it opens your eyes to a whole new world of potential and can spin your own research out in new directions, or encourage a complete re-orientation of your goals. In this new series, we are going to profile some of our favourite papers and maybe share the inspiration a little wider.
I don’t get out from behind my computer much, but when I do, my favourite engagement with real animals is to watch swirling flocks of starlings or trails of ants in search of food.
During my PhD I was working on the evolution of behaviours in social groups when I stumbled on a paper as I was searching through my supervisor Prof Graeme Ruxton’s publications. This was one of the first collective behaviour papers I read, and it was a huge eye-opener for me, pandering to both my love of biology and computers. Collective memory and spatial sorting in animal groups by Couzin, Krause, James & Ruxton brought home for the link between individual behaviour, self organisiation, emergent behaviour, complex biological pattern formation and how evolution could exploit this system and shortcut adaptive strategies without the need for invoking complex cognitive processes.
The concept itself wasn’t new: Craig Reynolds in 1986 demonstrated that interacting individual computer animals, which he termed boids, following three basic rules of separation, alignment and cohesion could generate a variety of complex group level patterns akin to biological swarming, shoaling and flocking. This simple computer simulation showed how the interactions themselves could create coordinated group-level behaviour without a need for centralized control, or for agents to possess any knowledge of their surroundings beyond their nearest neighbours. Instead, the patterns are an emergent property of the system of interacting agents that arise through a process of self-organisation. Craig Reynolds went further, and showed that information could be transmitted through the group so that obstacles (or predators) could be avoided by individuals responding to their neigbours avoidance, without having to actual see the obstacle or threat for themselves. Such characteristics have clear selection benefits in an evolutionary sense whereby there are cheap, effective ways to gain benefits of living in large collective groups.
What Couzin et al did was to show in even more detail the ecological and evolutionary relevance of these systems. They described in detail how subtle changes to individuals’ behaviours, manifested in adjustments to the radii that define whether they avoid, align or cohere with their neighbours, could arise in abrupt changes to the group-level pattern. A system dominated by attraction and avoidance tends to produce swarming behaviour around a relatively stationary point whereas one dominated by alignment produces shoals that move in a rather rigid, elongated diamond-like formation. In between there exists an intermediate state in which the group spontaneously starts to rotate in a torus (ring-doughnut) structure. The key point here is that no-one in these groups knows what a torus is, never mind how to achieve it, and nor is there a leader telling them to swim in a circle – rather, it is an inevitable consequence of the aggregation of the interactions between individuals with a mid-range tendency for alignment. An extra quirk to the system is that though the individuals are completely bereft of any brain or memory, the system shows evidence of memory – or hysteresis as physicists would refer to it. Individuals starting in a swarming pattern and increasing alignment will move through the rotating torus and on to the rigid diamond-like structure with individuals locked into a particular place in the group. However, if you start with the rigid structure, and reduce individuals’ tendency for alignment, they skip the torus structure and revert straight to swarming. In this manner, the group has memory of what it was doing in previous states, even though the individuals have no such memory. This is surely a rather cheap way for interacting ants, fish, birds, or maybe even the neurons of our brain to encode a sense of memory or history without having to explicitly encode and record the details of past states.
Perhaps most relevant from a behavioural ecology perspective, Couzin et al went further and explored how changes to an individuals behaviour relative to the group could alter its location. Increasing speed, decreasing turning rate or increasing one’s tendency for alignment would see an individual end up towards the front of the group. Reducing ones tendency for avoidance would see an individual move to the centre of the group. This is beautifully simple. Without any knowledge of the group structure, or where one is in the group, simple behavioural rules linked to internal state can now allow an individual to navigate the group. For example, if hungry, simply speed up and you will be at the front with first access to food. Once sated, you can seek out the relative safety of the middle by reducing your how much ‘personal space’ you require.
Prof Iain Couzin has gone on to show myriad intricacies of collective groups in terms of how they can make decisions as a group, and how locust swarms are driven by similar properties. During my PhD I had the pleasure to meet with Iain Couzin, study under the tutelage of Graeme Ruxton, share code with Richard James, and collaborate with Jens Krause (I didn’t get to meet the last author Nigel Franks, but now that I’m back on the conference tour there is still hope!)
