Figuring out how to teach well as a professor at a research university is largely a self-study affair. For me the keys to productive self-study are good information and self-reflection. Without good information you’re not learning the right things and without self-reflection you don’t know if you are actually succeeding at implementing what you’ve learned.

There are a number of great datasets available for doing macroecology and community ecology at broad spatial scales. These include data on birds (Breeding Bird Survey, Christmas Bird Count), plants (Forest Inventory &

UPDATE: If you’re looking for the information for 2014, checkout the DEBrief post for links. UPDATE: If you’re looking for the information for 2013, here’s an updated post.

I logged into one of my reviewer accounts at a Wiley journal this morning and was greeted by a redirect that took me to a page with the following message: Asking someone who is already working for you for free if it’s OK to also try to sell them stuff while they’re doing it seems like a pretty good definition of classless to me.

Recently, NSF has changed the process for proposal submission for the core panels in the Directorate for Biological Sciences. Wondering if this might be important to you? Please answer the following questions: do you study some aspect of biology (defined as anything from the molecular to ecosystem levels)?, do you intend to submit a proposal to NSF someday?

The Department of Zoology and Physiology at the University of Wyoming is advertising some postdoctoral fellowships (details below). There are a number of stellar people out there (including friend of Weecology, Jake Goheen, who sent us the ad), so we strongly recommend checking out the opportunity if you’re looking for a postdoc or know someone who is: Berry Postdoctoral Fellowships Berry Postdoctoral Fellowships are

There is an exciting postdoc opportunity for folks interested in quantitative approaches to studying evolution in Michael Gilchrist’s lab at the University of Tennessee. I knew Mike when we were both in New Mexico. He’s really sharp, a nice guy, and a very patient teacher. He taught me all about likelihood and numerical maximization and opened my mind to a whole new way of modeling biological systems.

George Monbiot has just published a piece in The Telegraph berating for-profit academic publishers that will surely be castigated by some as over the top hyperbole and praised by others as a trenchant criticism of the state of academic publishing*. Starting off with the, perhaps, ever so slightly, contentious title of Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist Monbiot proceeds to fire zingers like and backs up his position

As some of you may have heard, the BIO directorate at NSF has implemented some sweeping changes to the proposal process. Some of you youngsters may be unaware what the ‘old’ system was, but it involved two submission deadlines per year.

If folks are interested in seeing what Weecology has been up to lately we have a bunch of posters and talks at ESA this year. In order of appearance: Tuesday at 2:30 pm in Room 9AB our new postdoctoral researcher Dan McGlinn will be giving a talk on looking at community assembly using patterns of with- and between-species spatial variation.

In the comments of my post on the Ecological Data Wiki Jarrett Byrnes asked an excellent question: As I started to answer it I realized that my thoughts on the matter were better served by a full post, both because they are a bit lengthy and because I don’t actually know much about DataONE and would love to have some of their folks come by, correct my mistaken impressions, and just chat about this stuff in general.