Who the #$%* is Robert Whittaker?

As I was flipping through the September issue of Ecology, I came across something rather interesting. There were two articles that addressed the importance of using multiple approaches to answer research questions. Ironically, both articles were written to address criticism from a man named Robert Whittaker. This man has his strong opinions about using multiple approaches in science.  After reading both Whittaker’s criticism and the author’s responses, I really started to dislike this Whittaker character. Not only is he not a fan of multiple approaches, he discounts hundreds of studies several times throughout both papers, and the basis for his arguments are weak to say the least. Who the #$%* is this guy?

What if a random herd of cows eats my entire project?

I don't want to look like this next September.

I feel like a huge hypocrite right now. I have spent countless hours researching, reading and blogging about natural experiments and droning on and on about how important and valuable they are. Now, as it seems, my M.Sc. research project is going to be a massive manipulation study. As much as I and my supervisor don’t like manipulation studies it seems like it has to be done. It’s the obvious next step following my undergrad thesis.

This whole situation has brought me to thinking about why I don’t like manipulation studies and experimental set-ups to begin with. The truth is I don’t hate them. In fact, most of the popular and innovative science of both the past and today has come from these manipulations. So why am I so hesitant to design and implement a vegetation manipulation study? I think it’s mostly fear. I am afraid that things just won’t work out.

Watch out trees, it's a twister!

The other night I watched the movie Twister. I have always hated that movie—it scares the crap out of me. Today I came across a study in the September issue of the Journal of Plant Ecology about just that—tornadoes! So in the spirit of the now almost 15 year old film twister here is a great, natural study about how tornadoes affect re-sprouting and special heterogeneity in the Cross Timbers ecotone.

The transition zones between different ecosystems are known as ecotones. The most studied ecotones are ones that involve transitions between woody and non-woody vegetation. You would find these in alpine tree lines, coastal dunes and grasslands. Ecotones can be caused my both abiotic and biotic factors for example maintenance of positive carbon balance and competition, respectively. Myster and Malahy designed a study that was focused on the Cross Timbers ecotone in Oklahoma—the boundary between the eastern deciduous forest and the Great Plains grasslands.

Spare me some land or just go organic!

In my third year of Undergrad I took a course on the global struggle for food and food security and have since been really interested in organic vs. Conventional farming. We studied that topic alone for about 6 lectures and even had guest lectures from some local organic farmers. When I saw a study that compared organic farming and land sparing with respect to optimal yields and butterflies I couldn’t resist blogging about it. I mean, come on, who doesn’t love butterflies. And ... it’s a natural field study to boot!

As biology students I am sure we all know about the advantages and disadvantages to organic and conventional farming. Organic farming often yields fewer products but is generally better for the environment and uses no fertilizers or pesticides. Conventional farming uses large amounts of these pesticides but has yields that can realistically address the global struggle for food--something organic farming cannot do.

There actually is some value in reading what's on your coffee table

It seems surprising to me that as you glance over the current issues of the most popular science journals, very little is done about plants in general, let alone plant ecology. Of course, I look through the Journal of Plant Ecology and that’s all it is. But, very few of those experiments are natural experiments. There is such a heavy focus on manipulations and complex experimental designs the natural experiments seem to get lost in them.

For about 8 months, there have been three issues of Bioscience sitting on the coffee table in our lab. I was feeling very “blog-uninspired” today and thought –what the heck, I might as well flip through these and see if there is anything I could use. The first article I came across had to do with Biodiversity losses and ecosystem function in freshwaters. My first thought was- nope and I turned the page. But what I found right in the middle of this article was a beautiful chart that outlined my whole entire idea for starting a blog about natural experiments. Needless to say I read this paper, and have some interesting things to report!

Wtf! That is so NOT fitness!

For several weeks now I have been doing in depth literature searches on different topics. Today I began my literature search on plant body size and fitness, and I’m having some issues with how people define “fitness”. Let’s look at how some common sources define fitness. In fact, let’s do a simple google search for “define: fitness”- take a look below. The image is a bit small so google this yourself and follow along with my red marks.

Figure 1: Google search for "define:fitness"

It’s getting hot in here... let’s compensate!

Natural experiments are great because they tell us what is happening in real life. We aren’t manipulating anything to see what could, should or would have been there. This experiment done by Doak and Morris is a long-term natural experiment that without manipulations tells us what is there, what was there, and what might be there in the future. 

It seems that most climate change researchers today agree that as the Earth’s climate warms that species will shift their ranges to compensate for that warming. Typically they will move either towards the poles or to higher elevations. However, as Doak and Morris note in their paper, anywhere from one half to one quarter of species show no net range shift in response to climate change. So, why do some species move to cooler areas and why do some species stay? I doubt the species that stay are investing in A/C and fans to keep them cool...so why is this happening?