In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article entitled “Vegans and the Quest for Purity”, Harold Fromm attempts to paint veganism as an inconsistent, unnecessary, and downright annoying movement. As a long-time vegan and trained ecologist, I feel the need to respond to some of his strange claims. I became a vegetarian in 1989 and Read More
Ecology, Sustainability, VegetarianismThis year’s Ecological Society of America (ESA) annual meeting was a success for me, and its siting in Pittsburgh was an added bonus. Based on the scope and focus of the meeting, ESA seems to be an organization poised to move beyond its traditional role as the central home of ecological research. The extension into Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyThis year’s ESA has included a lot more sessions and symposia on the work being done by ecologists to preserve ecosystem services and work within the communities that benefit by these services. Ana Elisa Pérez-Quintero’s talk, “Healthy ecosystems, healthy people: Popularizing ecology from the local to the global, the example of GAIA in Puerto Rico”, Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyAllison “Sunny” Power, last year’s ESA president, presented the first talk (“Global warming and agricultural intensification”) of a special session entitled “Global Warming, Smallholder Agriculture And Environmental Justice: Making Critical Connections”. She spoke about the effects of agricultural intensification through the use of increased fertilizer and pesticide use and the effect this intensification has on Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyJ. Nathaniel Holland gave one of the most thought-provoking talks (“Integrating mutualism into food webs through consumer-resource and network theory”) of this fourth day of the ESA meeting. Although I need to do some more reading and thinking on his ideas to fully understand them, Holland seems to be suggesting that the Lotka-Volterra models of Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyI started off this day by attending a session on green roofs organized by Colleen Butler. J. Scott MacIvor presented a talk entitled “Reconciliation ecology opportunities reach new heights: Insect species composition and diversity on green roofs and adjacent ground-level habitat patches in an urban area” that presented the results of a small-scale comparison of Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyThe second day of the ESA Meeting began with a morning plenary. Catherine McCarter, executive director of ESA, provided an introduction. She described the Lawrence Center, pointing out that it is the world’s largest LEED-gold-certified convention center. She also announced the launching of ESA’s newest journal, Ecosphere, which is the first online-only open-access journal published Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyI began the 2010 ESA annual meeting with a Sunday field trip. In the past these field trips seemed like a luxury due to their expense in terms of money and time, but with my wife Teresa accompanying me to the meeting I figured that we should give the field trip concept a chance. Far Read More
Conferences, Ecological Society of America, EcologyThis month’s Scientific American contains a great article (“Arctic Plants Feel the Heat“) on how scientists are documenting climate change in the Arctic. Focusing on the two dominant biomes of this region, the tundra and the taiga, author Matthew Sturm explains how three sources of data are allowing us to see recent changes linked to Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Climate Change, Data Limitation, Long Term Ecological Research, MSCI-270, Ecology, Phenotypic Plasticity, Taiga (Boreal Forest), TundraThis month’s National Geographic features a really beautiful article on carnivorous plants written by Carl Zimmer. The article presents the numerous independently-evolved adaptations possessed by a diversity of plants which live in nitrogen-poor soil. These adaptations are a great example of coarse-scal evolutionary convergence, as a variety of plants have all come up with the Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Bogs & Wetlands, Convergence, Evolution, MSCI-260, Evolution, Predation