Species composition and abundance of mammalian communities

Thibault KM, Supp SR, Giffin M, White EP, Ernest SKM.  2011.  Species composition and abundance of mammalian communities. Ecology . 92:2316.

Mammalian Community Database now available at Ecological Archives!

Our mammalian community database contains data for 1000 mammalian communities (sorry, no bat data). For 940 of those communities, we have species-level abundance data (the remaining 60 contain only species lists). For each community, we even have location information (as best as we can determine from the original publication). Go check it out - better yet, go do something cool with it!

Glenda Yenni, M.S.!

Yesterday, Glenda Yenni successfully defended her M.S. in Statistics! Her thesis was titled: "Resource-driven energy changes in a Desert Rodent Community". In it, Glenda used her M.S. training to examine the Portal rodent data to show how using Bayesian Heirarchal modelling can contribute to our ability to understand complex interactions in ecological systems. Go, Glenda!!!

Multimodality in the individual size distributions of bird communities

Thibault KM, White EP, Hurlbert AH, Ernest SKM.  2011.  Multimodality in the individual size distributions of bird communities. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 20:145-153.

The Evolution of Maximum Body Size of Terrestrial Mammals

Smith FA, Boyer AG, Brown JH, Costa D, Dayan T, Ernest SKM, Evans A, Fortelius M, Gittleman J, Hamilton M et al..  2010.  The Evolution of Maximum Body Size of Terrestrial Mammals. Science. 330:1216-219.

The extinction of dinosaurs at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary was the seminal event that opened the door for the subsequent diversification of terrestrial mammals. Our compilation of maximum body size at the ordinal level by sub-epoch shows a near-exponential increase after the K/Pg. On each continent, the maximum size of mammals leveled off after 40 million years ago and thereafter remained approximately constant.

Measures of journal quality should separate reviews from original research

Supp SR, White EP.  2010.  Measures of journal quality should separate reviews from original research. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution. 3:16-19.

Integrating spatial and temporal approaches to understand biological diversity

White EP, Ernest SKM, Adler PB, Hurlbert AH, Lyons SK.  2010.  Integrating spatial and temporal approaches to understand biological diversity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 365:3633-3643.

Redundant or complementary? Impact of a colonizing species on community structure and function

Thibault KM, Ernest MSK, Brown JH.  2010.  Redundant or complementary? Impact of a colonizing species on community structure and function Oikos. 119:1719-1726.

Long-term insights into the influence of precipitation on community dynamics in desert rodents

Thibault KM, Ernest SKM, White EP, Brown JH, Goheen JR.  2010.  Long-term insights into the influence of precipitation on community dynamics in desert rodents. Journal of Mammalogy. 91:787-797.

The Scientist profiles Sarah Supp's upcoming Conservation Biology paper

There's a great piece out in The Scientist covering a paper on which our own Sarah Supp is a co-author. The paper, currently available on-line at Conservation Biology, by USU graduate students Ryan O'Donnell, Sarah Supp, and Stephanie Cobbold, examines reasons for publication delays in the field of conservation biology.