Detectability, threatened species and environmental impact assessments

This blog post is about an upcoming paper in Conservation Biology. It is now widely accepted that many species are not perfectly detectable during an ecological survey. This means that, sometimes, a species that is present at a site will not be detected by an observer (or observers) during a survey of that site. The…

Data, data, everywhere!

Ecologists are reluctant to make use of existing data and information when conducting analyses because of concerns regarding inconsistencies in data collection, analysis and sample sizes.  This means that ecologists often feel that they must collect all the data required for a study or, conversely, that there is insufficient data to conduct the study.  But…