Keeping up with the literature is part of being a researcher. A few years ago, the #365papers hashtag started on Twitter, as a way to encourage academics to read more papers in a calendar year.
In reality, very few academics would actually read 365 full papers over a single year. #260papers, a paper every work day, was suggested as a compromise and, more recently, #230papers goes one step further to account for public holidays etc.
Two things strike me about these hashtags: Continue reading
Have you ever felt underappreciated? As if people assume you can only contribute one skill to the world, and not much else…?
Imagine how bees feel. Not only do 99.9% of bee species live in the shadow of the European honey bee, most of the time they only get credit for pollinating flowers. And a few make honey. That’s all they do, right?
Actually, no. Bees do a lot of other things in their ecosystems. They have a very active life outside their relationship with flowers.
The stingless bees (Tribe: Meliponini) are some of the most intriguing. There are about 500 species of stingless bee around the world, mostly in tropical and subtropical regions. Like honey bees, they also make honey; albeit in gourmet, rather than commercial, quantities. (Their honey also has a very different flavour to the honey you buy in the supermarket.)
‘Tis the season for countdowns and annual nominations! Nature and Ecology rarely rate a mention in such frivolities, although some sites have listed insightful round-ups of the top environmental stories of 2013. Most scientific countdowns for 2013, or predictions for 2014, are dominated by gadgetry and technological fancy. So, I hereby doubly-nominate ecosystem services as the “most influential” ecological concept of 2013, and the “most likely to inspire positive change” in 2014! Continue reading
Wild pollinator insects, especially bees, like diversity in their life. It’s not that they’re fussy, they just like to have different resources for nesting and foraging to choose from – just like us. This diversity in resources is important because wild pollinator communities aren’t just made up of bees, they include multiple species. We’ve (almost) figured out what honeybees like, and it’s easy to accommodate one species when you know the ins and outs of their biology. But ‘wild pollinators’ could mean solitary bees, bumblebees, huge hairy flies, delicate wasps, tiny midges, thrips, beetles, bugs, weevils, moths or butterflies. Some of these insects, particularly wasps and flies, may also control outbreaks of herbivorous insects, so they can provide multiple ecosystem services. Continue reading
Ecology is not a dirty word 