Marine Data Science for All, Regardless of Backbone!
Ecology in 2020?
Today’s issue of Nature rings in the New Decade with an interesting article on where Science needs to be in 2020. With respect to Ecology, Robert Holt makes the following observation:
A key task will be to predict and mitigate this loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem function. One step is to gauge the resilience of ecological networks such as food webs — in particular, their capacity to withstand disturbance and species loss. This will require insights from many disciplines. Stable isotope analysis and genetic bar-coding should provide a clearer picture of who eats whom in a community.
Um. I think that describes my research program. Except the whole isotope/bar-coding thing. Damn. Add that to the list of things I need to learn, as right now, figuring out who-eats-who can be a real show-stopper! But overall, I guess I’m on the right track. Ha!