By David Tosh @DavidGTosh The insatiable appetite for rhino horn has, surprisingly for an issue concerning wildlife, gained a large amount of media attention of late. No one can have missed the depressing images of the once impressive rhino reduced to a bloodied mess for what is, in effect, a human demand for hair. […]
Above image is an image generated by the COBE microwave survey of the cosmic background. Image source: NASA By Keith Farnsworth I got into trouble at school for asking what energy was and not accepting the answer. At university (for astrophysics) I was given a more sympathetic […]
By Georgina Milne A decade long interest in botany and a bachelors degree in plant science has been the catalyst for a rather unusual hobby – I collect deadly plants. Plants (being somewhat stationary) can’t exactly run away when under attack so come primed with toxins to ward off things trying to eat them or […]
Guest blog by Matthias Rillig @mrillig What do a kiss, a flooded meadow, a disintegrating soil aggregate, and leaf falling on a soil surface have in common? Not much, unless you consider the microbial communities involved. In these cases, it seems that entire microbial communities and their environment (in some cases) collide and mix; until […]
By Hannah White @hannah_wht and Katie Leach @lagomorpha I’m not sure there is currently a collective noun for a group of macroecologists but after attending EU Macro 2015 I think it might be something like a guild* of macroecologists. Last week a large number of macroecologists (whatever one of those exactly is can take an […]
By Fiona Lavelle @fi_lavelle There is no way I would have ever believed I could have been a desk based researcher (studying cooking skills – are people forgetting how to cook?), scratch that, desk based at all. With a strong background in […]
By David Tosh @David GTosh “They’re here!” (In the style of the girl from Poltergeist). Last week, Thomson Reuters released its latest Journal Impact Factors (JIFs). JIFs are magic numbers that allow scientists to compare the quality of a journal within a specific […]
Very happy to receive the shark release protocol! (the current Treasurer for the Fair Trade Committee) By Deirdre Duggan @NiDubh Having completed my PhD at QUB in December last year, I packed my bags once again and headed south of the border to Bali, Indonesia. Given my penchant for colder climates, and […]
By Kyle Green @KyleDG89 It’s no secret that invasive species are a leading cause of global biodiversity loss and ecological change. My PhD focusses on predicting the impacts of damaging invasive species by examining their functional responses (FRs) compared to those of similar native species. […]
By Jim Provan As two large islands at the northwestern edge of continental Europe, Britain and Ireland have long been of interest to biogeographers. They were separated from the rest of Europe by rising sea levels following the last glaciation, with Ireland […]