The Department of Wildland Resources at Utah State University is offering a post-doctoral fellowship in ecology and/or natural resource management. Applicants must contact a sponsoring scientist from within the department’s faculty (http://www.cnr.usu.edu/wild/htm/faculty-staff) and then jointly develop a one-page research proposal. Applications are due April 1, 2010. Duration of funding is one year, renewable to two years subject to satisfactory performance and continued availability of funds. The salary is $40,000 in addition to the standard benefits package for USU employees. Contact Johan duToit (johan.dutoit@usu.edu) for more details on the application process.

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The Department of Biology at Utah State University invites applications for a postdoctoral position in Dr. Ethan White’s research group. Research in Dr. White’s group has a strong focus on ecoinformatics and macroecology. The postdoc will collaborate on research using entropy maximization methods to study macroecological patterns. Entropy maximization uses tools from physics to understand the most likely state of ecological systems given knowledge of a small number of environmental/ecological constraints. The project aims to 1) evaluate the performance of maximum entropy models using broad scale data on at least three major taxonomic groups (birds, plants, and mammals); 2) determine which ecological constraints are most important in controlling these ecological systems; and 3) combine maximum entropy models with broad scale statistical models of ecological and environmental factors to explain continental scale variation in community structure. The postdoc will also be involved in the development of a new ecoinformatics initiative developing the use of computational and web-based tools to facilitate the understanding and use of ecological data. In addition to these defined goals there will be ample opportunity for independent and collaborative research in related areas of macroecology, community ecology, theoretical ecology, and ecoinformatics.

Applicants from a broad variety of backgrounds including ecology, mathematics, statistics, physics and computer science are encouraged to apply. The position is for one year with the possibility of extension. The successful applicant will benefit from interactions with USU researchers in Dr. White’s lab, the Weecology Interdisciplinary Research Group, the Ecology Center and with Dr. John Harte’s lab at the University of California Berkeley.

Specific responsibilities will include: 1) working in a collaborative team on projects related to the use of entropy maximization methods in ecology; 2) participating in the development of social media (i.e., wikis, forums and blogs) and computational tools to facilitate the understanding and use of ecological data; 3) data management and analysis; and 4) publication.

Requirements include: 1) A PhD in biology, ecology, computer science, statistics, mathematics, physics or a related field by the time of appointment; 2) Strong quantitative or computational skills; 3) Excellent oral and written communication skills; and 4) An ability to work both independently and in a collaborative team.

Preference will be given to candidates with expertise in any of the following areas:

1. Macroecology
2. Entropy Maximization methods
3. Computer programming
4. Database design and management
5. Use of social media: in particular wikis, forums, and blogs

Salary will be $38,000 per year (which goes a really long way in Logan), plus a generous benefits package. Utah State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer, and seeks to attract and retain a highly qualified and diverse faculty and staff.

To see the formal advertisement, and to apply, go to the job page at Utah State’s site. If you have any questions, or just want to let me know that you’ll be applying, you can email me at epwhite@biology.usu.edu, or leave a comment on this post.

I have seen a lot of discussion of how the web is going to revolutionize publishing, but to quote one of my favorite movies “Talking ain’t doing.” Cell Press is actually doing.

I’d strongly encourage you to check out their blog post and video and then go play around with one of the articles in the new format. This is really exciting stuff.

Maturing through the career arc, I care less for this [the ability of the exam to protect the university's reputation by preventing the graduation of incompetent hacks]. Mostly because I’ve come to realize nobody that is judging me now gives a rat’s patootie what University or Department of -ology appears on my doctorate. They care about the papers I have published. Period. Full freaking stop.

So if I were dictating a graduate program, I’d be looking to enhance the ability of the students to publish papers. This would pretty much rule out the examination approach.

While you’re over at his pad I’d recommend browsing around a bit. He and co-blogger Physio Prof aren’t ecologists but they are very sharp thinkers when it comes to life in academia. Plus, they introduced us to this, so what more can you ask for.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 – 1860)

Via Signal vs. Noise.

1) Report a p-value for a test. 2) Do not assign it significance, but rather refer to the level of support it gives for rejecting a null – strong, weak, moderate, practically non-existent. Make sure this statement of support is grounded in the design and power of the experiment. Suspend judgement on rejecting a null if the p value is high, as p-value testing is NOT the same as giving evidence FOR a null (something so many of us forget). 3) Use this in accumulation with other lines of evidence to draw a conclusion about a research hypothesis.

Go check out the full post. It’s well worth the read.

The American Naturalist is testing a new online forum, starting with the March issue, which allows readers to post comments about a particular article.  The forum is in its beta phase as we work out the best configuration that serves the community.  Please help test it out and start the conversation!

The idea of rapid, open dialog about published papers is certainly exciting, and the possibility that whole community review and feedback could take the place of the necessarily more restricted peer review and publication process is a regular topic of conversation at places like Scholarly Kitchen and academHack.

This idea is the basis of PLoS ONE (a journal that started vigorously pursuing these ideas in 2006)

Each submission will be assessed by a member of the PLoS ONE Editorial Board before publication. This pre-publication peer review will concentrate on technical rather than subjective concerns and may involve discussion with other members of the Editorial Board and/or the solicitation of formal reports from independent referees. If published, papers will be made available for community-based open peer review involving online annotation, discussion, and rating.

and it is good to see other journals including AmNat and the new Methods in Ecology and Evolution journal experimenting with these ideas. One of the things I’ve learned from watching PLoS ONE a bit over the years is that it is difficult to get scientists to engage in this kind of discussion. I almost never see articles actually rated (a quick survey of 10 articles from late 2008 this morning revealed a 0% rating rate). Comments are more frequent (30% of articles in my tiny sample), and this is encouraging for these new attempts, but PLoS ONE has a thoroughly integrated commenting system that makes it easy to post and easy to see that others have posted. The new AmNat system falls short in this regard. It is basically just a Blogger blog with a non-prominent link off of each article that takes you to a separate site with a blog post that contains the abstract where you can comment. I suspect that this will have some negative impacts on the success of the new system and my hope is that once they get it off the ground they will convert it to a more integrated solution that is tied in directly with the main site (or at least try switching over to actual forum software).

In the meantime, I’d encourage you to check it out and participate in their new experiment. For those of you unfamiliar with Blogger, if you want to subscribe to the comments feed, not the article feed (which since you probably are already receiving an AmNat TOCs, hopefully via your feed reader, is entirely redundant) you can use this link for RSS and this one for Atom. As a group you are probably much more familiar with the concept of commenting and interacting online than the average AmNat reader. So, don’t be shy, send them some feedback (via email; yes… email is the preferred feedback mechanism for their new forum system… sigh).

UPDATE: Trish Morse (AmNat’s totally awesome Managing Editor) stopped by to point out that the current Blogger based version is just a trial run to determine whether or not it is worth pursuing a more formal system. This makes it even more important to participate and provide feedback. Check out the full discussion in the comments and then send them an email (which, as Trish so wisely pointed out, is really the best way to solicit feedback from across the breadth of ecologists; my apologies for the sigh) if you have any input. You are also of course welcome to discuss the potential benefits and issues with active commenting on peer reviewed articles here in the comment thread.

Over the past 10-20 years, biology has become increasingly quantitative, and mathematical sciences have in turn been increasingly influenced by biology. It has been said that “mathematics is biology’s next microscope, only better” (Cohen, J.E., PloS Biology, 2004) because mathematical, statistical, and computational sciences will continue to reveal unsuspected and entirely new worlds within biology, just as the microscope revealed previously unseen worlds following its invention. It has also been said that “biology is mathematics’ next physics, only better” (Cohen, J.E., PloS Biology, 2004) because biology will in turn continue to spur major new developments in computation, mathematics and statistics, just as physics has done in the past several hundred years.

Recognizing this integration, the MSc in Quantitative Biology provides students of life sciences with the quantitative skills they will need to thrive in the modern discipline of biology, and provides students from a more quantitative background with the biological insight they need to apply their technical skills. The course is unique in integrating important current research questions in biology with data from ecosystems down to cells and state-of-the-art quantitative methods. Graduates will be highly trained scientists prepared for employment in any of several settings, including as PhD students in universities and institutes worldwide; in the research departments of multinational industries concerned with the environment (e.g., pharmaceuticals, biotechnology); in conservation, management and agricultural agencies; and in local and national governments.

Transient Theorist is a first year PhD student interested in quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches to ecology. How could we not love his blog. Particularly good recent posts include Ups and Downs and Intimidating questions.

Karina at Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist is a third year PhD student who travels to remote foreign lands for field work (we love her use of – Ukenzagapia – to pseudonymize the location). Good recent posts include Timescales in graduate school and Even more of my life in comics: writing to professors.

We are glad to see graduate students blogging for a variety of reasons. First, graduate school can sometimes be an incredibly isolating experience in that it can feel like some of the difficult situations are unique to you, when in fact hundreds of students are going through exactly the same thing. Having a cadre of students writing about these experiences helps their readers feel less alone in their struggles. As faculty we also appreciate the opportunity to be reminded of the graduate student perspective on academia. We’re not too far out of graduate school, but it is already difficult to recall what a committee meeting was like from a student perspective. Reading students thoughts, especially the sort of honest presentation of internal thoughts made possible by pseudonymous blogging, helps remind us that things often look very different to students than they do to us, which (we hope) helps make us better advisers, committee members, and teachers. Third, it provides opportunities for mentoring and interaction beyond the traditionally defined boundaries of one’s own department or university. Finally, and most importantly, it helps to build the nascent community of ecological bloggers. If you know of other good blogs by students studying ecology let us know in the comments.