The ‘River Lime’ Effect

The ‘River Lime’ Effect: detecting the signature of recreational use on a tropical river ecosystem Our latest paper, published this week in the journal Ecology and Evolution, describes how we detected the ‘signature’ of disturbance on tropical freshwater fish communities, using the streams of Trinidad’s Northern Range as a model system. “Liming” is a popular … Read more

ERC BioTIME video in Copenhagen

Anne has been attending the 2014 ESOF (Euroscience Open Forum) in Copenhagen. ESOF offers a platform where researchers, journalists, policy makers and the public at large can meet and debate cutting-edge research, research policy and global challenges. This video, shown at the conference, highlights the work of Anne’s group on the ERC BioTIME project.

Is it an eel? Is it a snake? No, it’s a zangee!

One of the weird and wonderful fish that we frequently encounter during BioTIME fieldwork is the eel-like ‘zangee’. Many Trinidadians are terrified of this mysterious creature which is referred to as a ‘water snake’ and rumoured to suck on your toes if you walk in the stream at night. We decided it was time to … Read more

Systematic biodiversity change, not loss

A recent paper by the Biodiversity and Behaviour Group sheds new light on the biodiversity crisis. It shows there has NOT been a consistent drop in numbers of species found locally around the world. Instead, our investigation of 100 communities and over 35,000 species in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats from the poles to the … Read more

Last Sampling Day

An especially cheerful BioTIME Trinidad fieldwork team having just completed the final survey of the session, at the beautiful Acono river. This session has coincided with the dry season, and water levels have been noticeably lower. Seasonal differences such as this can also affect patterns of biodiversity over time, which is the focus of the … Read more

Introducing the Guppy…

Introducing the Guppy… Amy Deacon Earlier this year, I was invited to give a lecture at the monthly meeting of the Trinidad and Tobago Field Naturalists’ Club. This excellent organisation was founded in 1891, and organises weekly hikes and specialist field trips for its members, who encompass a wide range of ages and backgrounds, united … Read more

‘Avatar’ Debate

Royal Society of Edinburgh ‘Avatar’ debate for school students in March 2011. ‘Should all living species be preserved’ Released in 2009, James Cameron’s fantasy narrative hinted at a great many environmental issues including the conservation of indigenous peoples and the planet’s biodiversity. Combined with the movie’s popularity amongst people of all ages, the film is … Read more

How communities vary through time

We are investigating temporal and spatial variation in the structure of communities (vertebrates, invertebrates and unicellular organisms) in rivers with Trinidad’s Northern Range.

Roadmap to Temporal Change in Biodiversity

The natural world is changing as never before as a consequence of human activities, and there is widespread concern about the rate at which biodiversity is being lost. One of the best ways to track changes in biodiversity through time is by the analysis of ecological time series. These time series provide information on the … Read more

International Biometric Conference 2012

Hideyasu presented his recent research results on ecological modelling at the XXVIth International Biometric Conference held in Kobe, Japan for 26 – 31 August 2012. His talks were “Accounting for sampling effects in biodiversity modelling” with Drs Scott D. Foster and Ross Darnell in CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics (Australia) and “Species abundance distributions and … Read more