EcoEvo@TCD

15/11/201306/11/2013

How Good is the Fossil Record?

One of the projects I’ve been working on recently has concerned diversity in the fossil record. In broad terms I’m looking at how diversity has changed over the last 540 million years, a period known as the Phanerozoic which starts at the Cambrian explosion and continues to this day. I want to try and understand what causes the periodic increases and decreases in diversity.

I’m not a palaeontologist, so this work has involved a massive learning curve in order to understand how we know what we know about the fossil record. What I’ve learned has led me to have an enormous respect for palaeontologists, but to also wonder whether some of the claims made on the basis of evidence from the fossil record may not be slightly overstated.

If we compared the fossil record to a court trial, I’d argue that the public perception is that the fossil record is rather like the court transcript: a full and complete record of the history of life on earth. Scientists outside the field of palaeontology probably understand that this is not true, and may liken it to more of a newspaper report on the trial: summarising, missing some details but the key facts are in place. The more I look into the fossil record, the more I think it seems like the hear-say testimony of an unreliable witness: heavily biased, missing important facts and giving probably erroneous information.

Before I get angry palaeontologists shouting at me I want to emphasise that that for short timescales or small areas I think the fossil record is brilliant and we can learn a lot about species turnover and ecosystem development. My concern comes from combining these short timescales and small areas and then using them to produce long timescale, global patterns of diversity. While it may seem like this is a sensible way to produce this data – who could possibly sample the entire earth for the entirety of the fossil record by themselves? – there are a number of so-called sampling biases that I feel make this approach potentially troubling. And while I have seen a great deal written about these biases and the efforts to reduce their effects, I have also seen research that makes me think these biases are impacting the data in ways we cannot predict.

So, after all that build-up, what are these biases? You’ll forgive me if I don’t discuss them all here, there are so many. Instead I’m going to split them into two groups and discuss these groups in very broad terms, focusing on the ones I think have the potentially biggest impacts on the patterns of diversity at the global scale. Proper palaeontologists have used a variety of different groupings, but I’ve grouped them into taphonomic biases and taxonomic biases. Taphonomy is the process of fossilisation but in this discussion it will also involve the process of the discovery of fossils. Taxonomy is the naming of species and there are a surprising number of biases that result from this seemingly simple process.

The most obvious taphonomic bias is that of the potential for fossilisation. It has been estimated that less than 10% of living species would end up in the fossil record and it would be heavily biased towards those organisms with bones or shells [1],. Many of the fossil diversity analyses are performed on molluscs as they have a good fossil record, so you might think that this would remove this problem. But the type of fossilisation affects how well an organism is preserved, if at all, and this affects molluscs just as much as other animals [2]. Plus, using molluscs assumes that they are a good model and representative of all organisms over all time which seems to be asserted without much evidence.

Another taphonomic bias is that of true sampling. At one end, not all environments are fossilised and at the other, not all fossil beds are studied by palaeontologists. In between, some fossil beds may be eroded over time and others may never reach the surface to be exposed for study. This leads to an effect called the ‘Pull of the Recent’ [3] whereby diversity increases towards the present day simply because there are more rocks available to study; the oldest ones have eroded, and the ones left are fewer in number the further from the present you go.

This sampling is not only biased in time, it is biased in space. There is a global trend in biodiversity, with highest levels at the equator and lowest at the poles, called the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient (LDG) [4]. This trend occurred throughout much, if not all, of the Phanerozoic and means comparisons of fossils between time periods must be from similar latitudes otherwise changes will say nothing about global diversity. While we may talk in terms of ‘global diversity’ it is often based on limited samples that may be predominantly from the tropics in one time period and temperate latitudes in another, yet this is rarely considered as a compounding factor when diversity is discussed.

Taxonomic biases are no less concerning. Naming fossils is more complex than naming living organisms, as the names must be based purely on the (potentially incomplete) skeleton. It is increasingly common to find living organisms that look identical but are genetically distinct species, and conversely organisms that look very different but are simply displaying phenotypic plasticity [5] yet fossils are named on the basis of their (potentially misleading) morphology which can significantly affect diversity estimates. Then there are problems of widespread fossils being given different names in different countries, or long-lived fossils being given different names in different geologic periods. Finally, there is the fundamental problem that the fossil record shows species evolving, and someone has to decide if and when a new species has formed and a new name applied. This will present itself in the data as an extinction and origination event, even when the population may not have changed in size or location.

These are just the very tip of an iceberg of biases. It may well be that palaeontologists have answers to all these biases and I have just failed to find the relevant literature. So far all I have found seems to be the claim (hope?) that all the biases will cancel each other out, leaving the true biological signal visible. I can’t be so certain. Indeed, my greatest fear is that the patterns of diversity are nothing more than the product of these biases and have little relation to the actual changes of diversity over the history of life on Earth. Reassurances to the contrary would be most welcome!

1. Nicol, D. (1977) The number of living animal species likely to be fossilised. Florida Scientist. 40, 135–139

2. Martill, D. M. (1998) Resolution of the fossil record: The fidelity of preservation. In The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (Donovan, S. K. and Paul, C. R. C., eds), pp. 55–74, John Wiley & Sons

3. Raup, D. M. (1972) Taxonomic diversity during the Phanerozoic. Science. 177, 1065–1071

4. Hillebrand, H. (2004) On the generality of the latitudinal diversity gradient. The American Naturalist. 163, 192–211

5. Bennett, K. D. (2013) Is the number of species on earth increasing or decreasing? Time, chaos and the origin of species. Palaeontology. in press,

Author and Picture Credit:

Sarah Hearne: hearnes[at]tcd.ie, @SarahVHearne

11/11/201306/11/2013

Conference season madness!

Over the last month or so you’ll probably have noticed that a lot of posts on EcoEvo@TCD are essentially “what I did on my summer holidays” essays. Luckily, I think most of us did quite a lot of interesting and scientifically relevant things! My summer this year seemed to be full of conferences, so I thought I’d write a quick post describing them, and what I liked or disliked. This post was inspired by Britt Koskella’s excellent post on the same subject; although Britt attended NINE conferences this summer so is clearly completely insane.

Over the summer I attended four international conferences: Evolution 2013 in Utah, BES Macroecology in Sheffield, International Mammalogical Congress in Belfast, and ESEB 2013 in Lisbon. This involved 15 days of conference going, four plenaries, one prize talk, eight invited talks, 103 standard talks, and 56 lightning talks. So in total I spent about 40 hours in talks, not including questions or people running over time…

Evolution 2013, attended by around 1500 people, was in late June, and was probably my favourite conference academically. I’ve been going to Evolution since 2006 and have only missed three meetings in that time, so it’s the conference I know the most people at, and is most closely aligned with my interests in macroevolution. Most of the top names in the field were there, and I saw some excellent talks. I particularly enjoyed the plenaries. Richard Lenski’s plenary reviewed 25 years of experimental evolution using E.coli in his lab, Dolph Schluter’s discussed ecological opportunity as a factor in increasing rates of diversification, and Jack Sullivan talked about advances in systematics since the last meeting at Snowbird (although this talk was mainly notable for the “dirty chipmunk sex” and pictures of ground squirrel bacula – look them up on Google!). The plenaries at Evolution are generally entertaining and thought provoking, and in recent years there seems to be a trend to talk about something controversial. This is great and I think that’s how plenaries should be! The other big highlight was the location. It was up in the ski resort of Snowbird at 8,000 feet, so we were surrounded by snowy mountains, cheeky ground squirrels, marmots and even the occasional moose. On the flip side, this year’s Evolution was smaller than usual (or felt smaller) because fewer European scientists made the trip. With ESEB (the European equivalent of Evolution) and INTECOL happening in August many people decided to attend these instead. This made it feel a bit more US-centric than usual.

My second conference of the summer happened two days after I got back from Utah and was in the less exciting location of Sheffield (sorry Sheffield, you just don’t have enough moose). This was a much smaller conference with only 60 attendees. The great thing about this was that I was able to briefly chat to almost everyone at the conference. In addition, many of the attendees are old friends of mine so it was lovely to catch up with them. This was a British Ecological Society special interest group meeting on Macroecology (if you’re UK or Ireland based I’d definitely recommend checking out any of the BES special interest groups, they’re friendly and full of enthusiastic people!). We spent the two day meeting listening to five minute talks from anyone who wanted to present, then had panel discussions after the talks which worked really well. We also had some “break out” groups to discuss the future of the field. The most interesting of these for me was – “If we got £20 million from the government today what would we spend it on?” Amusingly this mostly boiled down to people wanting more, and better quality, data! The highlight of this meeting for most people was Ethan White’s excellent plenary. I’m sure it would have been mine too but I had issues with my train and ended up being two hours late and missing his talk (sorry Ethan!). The train also “ate my homework” (I had to stand all the way on the later train so didn’t get chance to write my talk). I promise to do better next year!

My third conference was the 11^th International Mammalogical Congress in Belfast. Full disclosure – I’m not really a mammalogist (I work on mammals, but just because the data is good) so this was an odd one for me. But Belfast is only two hours away on the train and my PhD students thought it would be fun to present their posters more than once. Organisationally this was a strange conference (no offence intended). The talk program wasn’t online so there was a lot of frantic flipping through the booklet to try and find talks. There had also been a change to the program that removed the second poster session, meaning that one of my students turned up a day late to present his poster. However, I saw some really interesting talks, particularly in the disease ecology symposium. I also saw the worst set of PowerPoint slides I’ve seen in a long time – lemon yellow background, brown text with shadows, no pictures and text completely covering each slide! Yeurgh!

My final conference of the summer was ESEB 2013. This was a lot of fun and I saw some excellent talks. I also discovered that I don’t understand population genetics. At all. I think by this point I was “conferenced-out” so it was a difficult conference for me. Also because of the overlap between INTECOL and ESEB, a lot of people I would normally catch up with there were at INTECOL instead. This was particularly reflected by the paucity of macroevolution talks and attendees with macroevolutionary interests. In fact, our delegation (myself and five students) from TCD was probably the biggest group of macro-people there! This meant there were a few days where I found it hard to find many relevant talks. I still attended some very interesting talks, but I also spent a lot of time feeling very stupid because I attended lots of talks I didn’t understand at all! The highlight of this conference for me (partly due to my macroevolutionary interests, partly due to my love of pretty slides) was Rich FitzJohn’s JMS prize talk. The content was good but the slides (all made in R apparently!) were gorgeous. I also really enjoyed Hannah Kokko’s talk where she was able to describe quite complex maths in a really accessible way. The other, less academic, highlight was tweeting a picture of some Superbock – a local beer – and the beer company replying, thus ruining the conference twitter feed by filling it with pictures of beer! Oops!

My conclusions:

1)Four conferences in a summer was too many conferences! Each was fun in it’s own way, but conferences are exhausting both mentally and physically (often talks start early and social events end late) so I ended up feeling totally wiped out for weeks afterwards. Next year I think I’ll focus on two or three at most.

2)Feeling stupid at a conference is inevitable at some point, but it doesn’t mean that you are stupid. When I was a PhD student I felt stupid all the time, but as I’ve become more seasoned I’ve realized that often it’s because the speaker isn’t explaining themselves properly, or because it’s so far out of my field that I don’t know the background. If you don’t understand, try and discuss it with others afterwards. We’ve been doing this a lot after seminars recently and it’s really helped my understanding of the trickier bits.

3)Big conferences are great for meeting lots of people you know already, but terrible for making new connections. From now on I’ll try and go to one big conference a year to catch up with old friends, and one small conference where I can meet new people.

4)Going to four conferences made me realize how cliquey a lot of evolutionary biology is. Many of the people speaking in symposia had also spoken at symposia in previous years. In some cases people spoke in symposia at multiple conferences (and gave almost the same talks). This is inevitable to some extent and shows the importance of having a good network within your subject. Next year however, instead of moaning I’m going to organize my own symposium and try to invite some people I don’t know, plus women and early career researchers. I’m also going to make more of an effort to attend small conferences where I don’t know lots of people.

5)Twitter is an awesome way to improve your conference experience (see my other blog posts on this). But don’t tweet too many pictures of Superbock…

Author: Natalie Cooper, ncooper[at]tcd.ie, @nhcooper123

08/11/201307/11/2013

Trophy Hunters

Antler collection at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology — Antler collection at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology

It may be an inconvenient truth in these conservation-focused times but we owe a debt of gratitude to the trophy hunters; the army officers and colonial-types who killed animals for sport and prestige. Without their considerable efforts, the vaults of natural history museums would be devoid of the skeletons and skins which form the bases of both exhibitions and many PhD and MSc. theses. Of course, were it not for the over-zealous efforts of hunters perhaps many charismatic animal species wouldn’t be so endangered now but let’s focus on the positives here…

Naturally, if you’re a hunter looking for a prize, bigger is usually better. It’s far more impressive to have a stag or bear’s head mounted on your wall than a hedgehog or shrew – although I would like to hear the embellished stories which might arise from tales of killing your first hedgehog! Similarly, if you are a taxidermist or museum collections manager in many ways it is easier to prepare and preserve large rather than small mammal specimens.

These collection trends are all well and good if you’re interested in the charismatic species. I, however, am studying the little shrewy-type things; hedgehogs, moles, shrews, golden moles and tenrecs – fascinating species but not prized possessions for your trophy case. Even in some of the world’s largest natural history museums it’s difficult to find intact skulls and skeletons of some of these creatures. Combined with the inherent delicate nature of these animals (some tenrecs’ limbs are tiny!) compiling a complete morphometric data set of the groups remains challenging.

Tenrec limbs with a pen for scale; teeny tiny tenrecs!

For the museum collections of these little critters that do exist; I am eternally grateful to the progenitors of carefully handwritten labels accompanying the skulls and skeletons on which my PhD research depends. Adventurers such as Major Forsyth, G.K., Creighton, and C.J., Raxworthy who donated specimens from their tropical voyages deserve special thanks in any research which arises from their collective efforts. However, I am also grateful to the back-yard naturalists, the people who collected and preserved the seemingly ordinary, every-day species of common shrews and hedgehogs which are no less important to ecological and evolutionary research than their exotic counterparts. I benefitted greatly from their collective efforts during my recent trip to Chicago’s Field Museum.

Whether naturalists or trophy hunters, the individuals immortalised by museum specimen labels couldn’t possibly have envisaged all of the diverse future research which would be based on their prized collections. It’s an important reminder that, despite the inherent appeal of flagship species, the lesser-spotted or common-something-or-others are just as deserving of our attention and study. Even if you don’t have the equipment or inclination to start posting skeletal remains of common species to your local natural history museum, there are still plenty of ways of contributing to the study of “ordinary” wildlife. Don’t be dazzled by the allure of large-animal trophy hunting and remember that, when it comes to understanding the natural world, bigger is not always better.

Author:

Sive Finlay: sfinlay[at]tcd.ie

@SiveFinlay

Photo Credits

Sive Finlay

04/11/201304/11/2013

How do Lego cars evolve?

The ESEB conference this August in Lisbon was not only about Drosophila and #superbock. Among the useful discussions and the interesting talks, a definite highlight came from our very own Kilkenny scaling man all about time perception and comparative analysis… Argh no I missed that one – apparently there was even a realistic Tiger Beetle hunting impression! There were at least eight overlapping talks at any one time and, as I had already seen Kevin’s talk, I went to listen to Folmer Bokma’s insightful talk instead.

I felt Bokma’s talk was a good follow-up to Gene Hunt’s excellent talk on gradualism vs. stasis which he demonstrated through his careful study of the Ostracod fossil record, recently published in the excellent August issue of Methods in Ecology and Evolution. By means of a lengthy introduction with citation of more or less unknown people such as H. Falconer and C. Darwin, Bokma emphasised the fact that examples of evolutionary stasis are well known from the fossil record and that ideas of species undergoing rapid adaptations that were not specifically linked to environmental changes have been around since the 19^th century.

Bokma argued that trait co-adaptation is an important source of evolutionary changes. He cleverly illustrated this argument by means of a Lego car; I always think that using something other than just slides in a presentation greatly improves the talk! He argued that changes in colour or shape attributes can happen “easily” over a short evolutionary period as an adaptation to environmental changes. For example, characteristics of fur in Vulpes vulpes/lagopus foxes (the colour of the Lego car) or beak sizes in Darwin’s finches (the windscreen of the Lego car) have evolved to increase the fitness of the individuals living in particular environmental conditions.

But things get trickier when it comes to major changes or adaptations. Bokma illustrated this idea by trying to change the overall shape of the car (like going from a regular car to a truck). As soon as he started to remove one wheel, the car totally lost its fitness! For non-Lego fans he also gave the example of enzymatic reactions in endotherms: if just one enzyme evolves to be more active at a temperature different to normal body temperature, then there is no increase in fitness for the organism (and probably a decrease as that precise enzyme will be less efficient). It is only when all enzymes co-evolve to be more active at a different body temperature that there might be an increase of fitness for an individual. Bokma used this example to emphasise the irreversibility of evolution and how lineages can get stuck in “evolutionary dead-ends”. In response to H. Falconer’s comment to Darwin (1862) that the Elephant remains “unchangeable & unchanged”, Bokma argued that it might be “easy” (in an evolutionary way) to become an elephant but once you’re there, climbing into trees or crawling underground becomes tricky. So for these bigger evolutionary changes (the “jumps” in punctuated equilibrium theory), one needs a “genetic revolution”; evolving from a flightless theropod to a turkey involves co-adaptation of more than just locomotory characters. There is a strong irreversibility component to evolution.

While some people were kind of miffed by Bokma’s talk and started a polite but energetic debate involving genetic mumbo jumbo, I just thought that his talk was a great illustration of the problem of stasis and jumps in evolution. As Gene Hunt demonstrated, evolutionary stasis and jumps are clearly dominant in the history of life but they are trickier to explain than gradualist evolution. However, to be objective I have to agree with some of the general comments on Bokma’s talk; “So what? We already knew that.” It reminded me of S.J. Gould’s excellent review on part of this idea in the Panda’s Thumb (1980): The Return of the Hopeful Monster. So yes, we do already know about the ideas Bokma presented and he didn’t bring any staggering new insights but I believe he illustrated it with talent and brio! And perhaps I should mention that I can’t be completely objective here; I just love Lego, sorry.

Author

Thomas Guillerme: guillert[at]tcd.ie

@TGuillerme

Photo credit

creator.lego.com

01/11/201329/10/2013

Sea Serpents off the Port Bow!

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far far beneath in the abysmal sea . . .

[Tennyson, The Kraken]

Strange things are stirring from the deep. Creatures from myths and legends, the sea serpents of old, are descending upon our shores to warn us of impending doom. . .

Well, maybe not. But the news that not one but two mysterious oarfish have been found dead and beached in California recently has spread around the world, reminding people that the oceans still harbour creatures that are stranger and more alien to us than even the most hallucinogen-induced science fiction creations.

Oarfish are members of the genus Regalecus. There are three species, R. glesne, R. kinoi, and R. russelii, found in the Atlantic, Eastern-Central Pacific and Indo-Pacific respectively. They are the largest bony fish in the world and can reach over 11m in length. Very little is known about them. Unfortunately most of the published literature concerns their meristics which are important but make for incredibly dull reading.

Regalecus is one of two genera in the family family Regalecidae. The other genus, Agrostichyhtys, is monospecific and contains the species A. parkeri, commonly known as the ribbonfish or streamerfish. A. parkeri is even less well-known than the oarfish. Wikipedia says that it is known from only seven specimens, though I know this is an underestimate as I have personally seen and dissected two that are not included in that list and I’m sure there are more in museum and fisheries department basements around the world that just haven’t made it into the literature.

There are a number of reasons the Regalecids are so poorly known. They live in the open ocean and if caught at all it is usually as part of a commercial catch where scientific research is low down the list of priorities. Their delicate shape also means that they damage easily and often what is hauled on board is barely recognisable as fish, let along as a Regalecid.

Another reason is that they elude scientific surveys as they are perfectly camouflaged and are almost impossible to see. I know this may sound crazy – an 11m long shiny silver animal with a gigantic eye surely can’t be hiding, it’d be like dressing up as a mirror-ball and expect to be able to blend into the background. But actually, that’s precisely what they are doing.

Their morphology has evolved for a very specific environment: the mesopelagic zone. This zone, colloquially termed the ‘twilight zone’, is the transitional part of the ocean, where light is still visible when you look up but there is nothing but blackness when you look below. A fish that is swimming in the water column will be seen as a black silhouette against the light when viewed from below or will stand out against the black of the deep when viewed from above.

This makes mesopelagic fish vulnerable to predation so they have evolved a number of countermeasures. The first is to be laterally compressed. This means that there is less of them to block or reflect any light. If you cannot compress laterally then a second option is to countershade – make your belly light and your black dark. Pelagic sharks, fish and even birds do this – it’s why penguins wear tuxedos.

Now that attacks from above and below have been dealt with, attacks from the side must next be tackled. For this, light contrast isn’t so much of a problem, but uniformity is as fish present a uniform block of colour against a dappled background. And this is where the silver comes in. The reflective surface of the fish, combined with their undulating body, help break up the light and allow it to merge into the background. If you don’t believe me watch this video of an oarfish in its natural habitat.

These adaptations mean they are able to successfully hide from all but the luckiest of predators. Yet life is more than just about avoiding being eaten. It’s also about finding food. This is incredibly difficult in the sparsely populated open oceans. and it is here that the giant eyes come in. Unlike the bathypelagic zone where eyesight is largely redundant, here in the mesopelagic zone there is just enough light to see by. You’ll notice the large pupil which has evolved to catch every last photon of light in order to detect potential prey, who, it’s worth pointing out, have evolved the same anti-predation adaptations as the Regalecids. If you watch the video you’ll see that oarfish sit vertically in the water column, looking up towards the ocean surface so they can fully exploit their excellent vision and spot anything passing overhead. Prey are few and far between, and are constantly on guard against being eaten. To catch anything stealth and speed are essential. And this is where their weirdest adaptation comes into play.

Before I continue, I want to point out that what follows is pure speculation as I can find nothing in the literature that discusses this, the most bizarre aspect of Regalecid morphology. I thought it was unique to A. parkeri but closer inspection of photos and videos (this is R. russelii) indicates this is a feature common to the family. I am talking about their mouth.

At rest there is little of note.

It’s a bit strange in appearance, almost beak-like, but fish have evolved all sorts of weird appearances. Nothing to worry about, maybe.

Think again.

The ‘beak’ extends! It forms a sort of funnel and we (my former colleagues and I) speculated that this might be to try and change the water pressure to help suck prey in. The narrow tube quickly opens up into the wider ‘pouch’ towards the back. This suggests there will be rapid changes in water pressure but without proper study, and live observations, this is all complete conjecture which is crying out for research.

As if all that isn’t enough to pique your interest, there are reports that the live fish give electric shocks:

“Jason McKenzie reported that when he picked up the fish . . . he experienced what he described as mild but quite distinct pulsed electric shocks that passed up through his hand into the forearm at intervals of about 10 s. A companion who independently held the fish reported the same sensation.”¹

There is nothing coherent I can say about that; it just blows my mind!

It’s a real shame the media frenzy has been so superficial. There is so little known about these animals: basic biology such as how long they live, how often they reproduce, how they find mates, what they eat and what eats them is all unknown. These new specimens will undoubtedly be studied exhaustively. The media hype will have died down by the time the results are published, but I recommend keeping an eye out as they will add so much more to the understanding of these magnificent, elusive animals.

¹ McDowall, R M & Stewart, A L (1999). Further specimens of Agrostichthys Parkeri (Teleostei: Regalecidae), with natural history notes. Proceedings of the 5^th Indo-Pacific Fish Conference, Noumea, 1997. pp165-174. Séret, B & Sire, J-Y, eds. Sociéte Française d’Ichthyologie, 1999, Paris.

Author and Picture Credits: Sarah Hearne, hearnes[at]tcd.ie, @SarahVHearne

29/10/201321/10/2013

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question…

This August I celebrated one year of being on Twitter. On the auspicious occasion of my Twitter-versary I decided it might be useful to reflect on the year. Did I get what I wanted to get out of the experience? Did I get other things I didn’t expect? Or did I just find myself an amazing way to waste a lot of time? Should I continue my affair with the Twitter-verse? (SPOILER ALERT – I’m obsessed with Twitter so of course the answer is an emphatic yes!)

What did I want to get out of the Twitter experience?

For some reason TCD doesn’t have much of an international reputation in Ecology and Evolution, despite a strong record in publishing papers in the area. In fact, when I started working here in January 2012 a lot of people were surprised that TCD had science departments! Clearly this needed to be fixed if we were going to attract high quality students and postdocs to our groups. A couple of my friends had been raving about Twitter for a while so I decided to give it a go. I also convinced Andrew Jackson to start actively using his account and over the course of the year we’ve got most of the ecology and evolution postgrads and staff on Twitter as well. The overall aim was a mixture of selfish self-promotion, and slightly more altruistic promotion of the School of Natural Sciences and our research.

Did I get what I wanted from Twitter?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and surprisingly I don’t think I did (carry on reading below for some unexpected benefits which totally outweigh this “failure”). This is mainly because I had really unrealistic expectations of what Twitter was going to do. I had visions of hordes of potential students and postdocs contacting me. However, the reality is that, at present, I have not had anyone contact me via Twitter looking for PhD or postdoc funding opportunities. When we advertised a Chair in our department I don’t think anyone who applied saw the advert on Twitter. However, I do think some of these things will happen in time. It’s important to remember that building a Twitter following requires effort and takes a long time. It’s also really hit and miss – sometimes a tweet will get loads of retweets and replies but a similar tweet will be left to float into a black hole of nothingness. And sometimes no-one comments but everyone reads your tweet and remembers it. So it’s pretty impossible to gauge your impact.

In the interests of honesty, there are also a few other downsides to Twitter that I’ve outlined below.

Downsides I: The echo-chamber effect

This has been mentioned by lots of people, but essentially you follow people with similar opinions to yours, and vice versa. So you only see tweets from people with these similar opinions leading you to believe everyone agrees with you. I have a simple way to remind myself that this isn’t the case. Every now and then I’ll look at what’s trending in Dublin/Ireland/globally. Five minutes reading tweets about Harry Stiles from One Direction (“He’s a cupcake not a man-whore!”) are more than enough to remind me that not everyone in the world thinks about things like I do.

Downsides II: Negative tendencies

I’m not sure if this is a trait common to all scientists, or if it’s that Twitter breeds gloom, but there is a lot of negativity about academia on Twitter. Mostly this revolves around the difficulties of getting a permanent academic position, the problems of being a woman or a minority, issues with scarcity of funding, or general gripes about writing up your PhD thesis. All of these problems are real and frustrating, and it’s great to vent about them from time to time. However, if you’re already miserable then reading a whole load of negative comments can sometimes make you feel even worse. I think this is generally balanced by the other more positive aspects of Twitter but I do sometimes unfollow the most gloomy people! This leads me on to the unexpected benefits of Twitter.

Unexpected benefits I – Support

As I mentioned above, people often use Twitter to vent about the bad aspects of academia. The great thing is that when you do this there’s always a couple of people there to make you feel better, and like you’re not alone. Generally these people don’t know you personally, so it’s just a nice altruistic outpouring of support. On the flip side, when things go well people are also ready to congratulate you and encourage you. This is a wonderful and totally unexpected benefit of using Twitter! I’ve also had the great pleasure of meeting many of my Twitter friends in person recently. These are often people completely outside my area of research but they totally delightful human beings to hang out with (even if it’s extremely odd to talk to them rather than keeping it to 140 character messages).

Unexpected benefits II – Radically improved conference experiences

I enjoy conferences, but using Twitter has catapulted them into a whole new level of usefulness and enjoyment. Even just passively reading Twitter feeds during conferences I’m not attending is fascinating, and a great way to keep up with fields I’m interested in when I can’t attend the conference. When I’m at a conference, I find live tweeting really helpful for keeping myself alert and engaged in the talks, it’s an excellent way to keep notes and it allows you to interact with people who aren’t at the conference or to discuss talks with people at the conference even as the talk is being given. I also really enjoy meeting other Twitter-ers (is that a word?!) in person. This is particularly useful at conferences where I don’t know many people.

Unexpected benefits III – Resources

I already wrote a blog about the ways you can use Twitter to save time so I won’t repeat it here, but basically I’ve found links on Twitter to everything from newly published and relevant papers, statistical tests I need for my research, information on hot topics in academia, conferences, funding opportunities, resources for students etc. My students have also used it to get advice on their PhDs and side projects.

Unexpected benefits IV – Funny animals to ease the troubled mind.

Finally, if you’re ever down, avoid the gloom-mongers and look for people posting GIFs, videos or pictures of funny animals. There are few levels of gloom that cannot be alleviated by a video of animals using trampolines or my personal favourite, animals fitting into tiny spaces.

So in conclusion I think the benefits FAR outweigh the negatives of Twitter. If you haven’t tried it yet, have a go! If you have and I follow you, thank you, you’ve made my life a more interesting, engaging and hilarious animal-filled place.

Author

Natalie Cooper:ncooper[at]tcd.ie

@nhcooper123

Image source

www.binoyxj.com

25/10/201321/10/2013

A Raptor-ous Reception

Thanks to the DU ZooSoc, TCD staff and students were treated to an exhibition from Dublin Falconry last week. Set against the busy backdrop of joggers and Pav-frequenters, six beautiful birds of prey were the stars of their own lunch time show. Here’s a few pictures from the event, just a flavour of the stunning animals which we were privileged to see, touch (and hear!) up close. And for the full effect, have a look at Keith McMahon’s beautiful video.

Whooo's a pretty boy then? Barn Owl — Whooo’s a pretty boy then?
Barn Owl

Mmm, tasty finger Scandinavian morph of a barn owl — Mmm, tasty finger

Ready to take off... Peregrine falcon — Ready to take off…
Peregrine falcon

"I feel like chicken tonight..." Peregrine falcon — “I feel like chicken tonight…”

Juvenile Common buzzard - "If he looks like he's coming towards you then duck!" — Juvenile Common buzzard – “If he looks like he’s coming towards you then duck!”

What paint brushes? Bengal eagle owl — What paint brushes?
Bengal eagle owl

Author: Sive Finlay, sfinlay[at]tcd.ie, @SiveFinlay

Photo credits: Thomas Guillerme, guillert[at]tcd.ie, @TGuillerme

21/10/201308/10/2013

Night in the Research Museum

On Friday the 27^th of September, as part of the Discover Research Night we opened the doors of the department to the public. We decided that since we have a museum full of some really cool stuff, we could use it to demonstrate some of the research in the department.

Since the research night had a mix of students, families and the generally curious we introduced each tour with some of the j-awesome teeth (I make no apologies for puns) to demonstrate the basics of ecology and evolution. So, with the help of Baleen, shark jaws, elephant molars and the jaw-dropping narwhal tusk we whetted the audience’s appetite to see just what evolution can do to modify a few teeth in order to match a particular ecology (okay I apologise for some of the puns).

We then used some of the more mobile museum specimens (although the pilot whale skull we brought up from the basement would argue against that) to set up a game of “guess that longevity” to help explain some up and coming NERD club research.

This worked really well and I think people became really engaged with the idea that there is so much variation in how long animals live, especially the sturgeon that can live over 150 years. It’s then an easy sell to explain the basis of our new paper which shows that species with lower external mortality (those that can avoid danger such as by flying) live longer than expected for their size (stay posted for more info on that soon!).

I'm really just a fuzzy bird when it comes to my age — I’m really just a fuzzy bird when it comes to my age

We finished up the tour by displaying some of our individual research such as some upcoming T.rex modelling (with added Jurassic Park music), a possible new bird species (and some spot the difference) and some obligatory lasers (one guy even came to ask if he could use the scanner for his golf clubs!?). It was also a great excuse to roll out those conference posters that are often treated like an Irish convertible that only gets a spin out once a summer!

In the context of trying to engage the public with research I found it to be in complete contrast to my previous experiences as although we managed to get nearly 200 people into the department we really got the chance to explain face to face why what we do is interesting and cool (an easy task when holding a stuffed platypus) but then also explain some of the possible applications that might not be obvious (such as medical or ecological). It also allowed us to talk about the things that are interesting to the public themselves instead of continually telling them what they should be interested in.

All and all the night went great and I think everyone, including some of the specimens enjoyed the night!

Author and Photo Credits:

Kevin Healy: healyke[at]tcd.ie, @healyke

18/10/201318/10/2013

The Placental mammal saga; special summer double episode

As I wrote in a previous post last winter, O’Leary et al. added their oar into the Placental Mammal origins debate. For anyone who missed that episode, they argued, with the backing of masses of morphological data, that placental mammal orders appeared right after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs (also known as the explosive model). This was in opposition to two other views based on DNA data which argue that placentals appeared way before (long-fuse model) or slightly before (short-fuse model) the Mexican dinosaurs had to deal with some meteorite… Again, have a look at this previous post criticizing O’Leary et al.’s paper and how they “forgot” to use (ignored?) state-of-the-art phylogenetic inference methods.

While I was away feeding mosquitoes in Finland – and wondering whether the lack of fishes for dinner was due to my poor fishing skills or the absence of fishes in the river – Science published two new episodes of the placental saga. Of the two, Springer et al. took the decision to properly criticize the methods of O’Leary et al.’s work. Amongst their detailed methods review, they particularly underlined the inaccuracy of O’Leary et al.’s explosive model; such a hypothesis would imply that the early placental mammals had a rate of molecular change similar to that of retroviruses. For over ten years it has been widely accepted that molecular rates (i.e. the number of DNA changes that are transmitted to descendants) vary among lineages through time. Knowing that, one can estimate these rates (or call it speed if you’re more comfortable with that) of evolution by calibrating phylogenetic trees with fossils. So, in this case, the amount of evolution needed to evolve from the late Cretaceous (~65 myr) non-placental mammals to the first placental mammals (~58 myr) has to be as high as evolutionary rates more characteristic of retroviruses to realistically explain this evolution.

Herein lies the eternal debate between palaeontologists and molecular biologists. The former base their estimations on the morphological changes they can see in the fossil record (even though some, as O’Leary et al. also include molecular data) while the latter calculate their evolutionary rate estimations on the molecular changes that they infer from living species’ DNA. Fundamentally, each method is valid but they are describing slightly different things ; palaeontologists infer the rates of changes between morphospecies (i.e. species that are separated based on their morphology) while molecular biologists study the rates of changes between surviving genetic pools (i.e. the populations leading to living species). My guess is that the true evolutionary history (i.e. the morphological and molecular changes of all the populations –fossils and living– through time) is to be found somewhere between these two approaches.

And that’s what I think O’Leary et al. demonstrated in their response to Springer et al.’s comments. Through a kind of a dodgy answer in reply to the technical points that Springer et al. underlined as the “retrovirusesomorph” rates, O’Leary’s team reran the analysis and found that yes, maybe the explosive model is not very realistic regarding the molecular data but neither is the long-fuse model regarding the palaeontological data. So which one should we choose? Hmmm, why not just go for the middle way with the short-fuse model? OK let’s do that – without calling it a short-fuse model though (they called it an “explosive model” in figure 2-B but to my mind at least, it’s getting closer to the short-fuse one).

So all that for what? Nobody can either deny O’Leary et al.’s amazing work nor claim that the long-fuse model is realistic; the consensual short-fuse model remains pretty well supported among both moderate palaeontologists and molecular biologists. However, I still cherish this paper because it shows how I think good science should always work; find the two extreme scenarios and then study the median one…

Author

Thomas Guillerme: guillert[at]tcd.ie

@TGuillerme

Photo credit

Wikimedia commons

14/10/201330/09/2013

Sulawesi Bird Expedition 2013

Ah the summer, how I miss it! In mid-June I departed (on the horrendously long journey) to the beautifully sunny, tropical islands off the south-eastern coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. No, I wasn’t on holidays; I am fortunate enough to call this part of the world my study site. During the six week visit, I aimed to gain further behavioural and ecological data on a number of bird species as part of my current PhD project – for more specifics on that see here. I am even more fortunate to be able to carry out this research with the financial and logistical support of Operation Wallacea, an internationally renowned conservation charity that works with researchers from all over the globe, from a variety of different disciplines. As part of this support, I work with students and volunteers in the field, helping them to design effective dissertation projects and field methods. This year I was joined by five students (as opposed to two last year) from a variety of universities in Ireland and the UK.

From the first day it was back to the usual diet (mostly consisting of rice) and routine: up at 4.30am for breakfast and out surveying by 6am. These surveys consisted of walking 1km transects through scrub, farmland and/or forest edge collecting data on my target species’ diets, competitors (via agonistic interactions), social habitats, courtship and breeding, as well as their foraging and flocking behaviours. In the evening we would establish new transects and then get stuck into data entry at night. This routine makes for days that are long and tiring but hugely rewarding. Watching birds so closely allows you to gain intimate insight into their lives and observe some fantastic interactions, such as family groups of Lemon-bellied White-eyes preening each other and pairs reinforcing bonds with gifts of food. You also see how tirelessly and (sometimes) viciously males will fight off other males in order to retain their mates and, therefore, mating privileges, as we saw in the beautifully adorned Olive-backed Sunbird. Spending so much time in the field, you come across a great variety of other wildlife including troops of macaques, the strange bear cuscus, giant monitor lizards, pythons, huge fruit bats and hairy and multicoloured caterpillars that you never touch, to pick out but a few.

An adult Lemon-bellied White-eye returning with food for its chicks

A beautiful fruit bat relaxing in a banana tree

I’m delighted to say that data collection went exceedingly well for the students and myself – that is, when the weather was on our side (we had a week of non-stop rain while Ireland and the UK were experiencing a heat-wave; typical!). We surveyed five islands in total and got some superb behavioural data on each of our five target species. While managing a large group like this was difficult and tiring at times, it was a great experience and the students were a great bunch really. In the company of the assistants and students on the project, as well as the many other members of staff, students and volunteers from other projects, with their combined wealth of experience and knowledge, it was fantastic to share ideas, brainstorm and discuss current/potential future projects.

The biggest highlight for me was catching up with the elusive ‘Wangi-wangi’ White-eye, a bird we know very little about. It was touch and go for a while, and I was getting quite worried to be honest, but eventually we got excellent data on their flocking and feeding behaviour and who they compete with, directly and indirectly. Between us, the group racked up a number of new bird records for the islands and saw some spectacular species such as the Great-billed Kingfisher, Rainbow Bee-eater, Yellow-eyed Imperial Pigeon, Great-billed Parrot, Yellow-billed Malkoha and Red-knobbed Hornbill. Phwoar!

The stunning Yellow-billed Malkoha, a Sulawesi endemic

Sadly, this summer was the last of my field trips to Indonesia as part of my PhD project. I enjoyed it immensely and, for certain, I will be back. I am grateful to Operation Wallacea for allowing me to be involved in such a programme and I hope that they will continue to expand into more areas of this highly unique and understudied part of the world that is full of discoveries yet to be made.

Author and Photo credits:

Seán Kelly: kellys17[at]tcd.ie, @seankelly999