*This is a guest post by Dan McGlinn, a weecology postdoc (@DanMcGlinn on Twitter). It is a Research Summary of: McGlinn, D.J., X. Xiao, and E.P. White. 2013. An empirical evaluation of four variants of a universal species–area relationship. PeerJ 1:e212 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.212.

This is a guest post by Dan McGlinn, a weecology postdoc (@DanMcGlinn on Twitter). It is a Research Summary of: McGlinn, D.J., X. Xiao, and E.P. White. 2013. An empirical evaluation of four variants of a universal species–area relationship. PeerJ 1:e212 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.212.

Doing science in academia involves a lot of rejection and negative feedback.

Sam Scheiner published a piece recently on ecology’s lack of engagement with theory. Frankly, the title pretty much tells you his conclusion “The ecological literature: an idea free distribution”, but if you want to know more, either read the original piece (it’s short) or EEB &

I have to admit I’m a superhero movie junkie. In particular, we watch the Avengers movie a lot in our household. I mean… a lot. Sometimes I really wish I was Natasha Romanoff (aka the Black Widow) from the Avengers. That would be rad.

Academic publishing is in a dynamic state these days with large numbers of new journals popping up on a regular basis. Some of these new journals are actively experimenting with changing traditional approaches to publication and peer review in potentially important ways.

It’s job season. It’s that time of year again when our young scientists pour over a wide variety of job ads and ask themselves that critically important question: do I apply? In some ways, this is the most critical step in the entire job application process. Yes, your job packet is important.

If you follow Ethan (@ethanwhite) or I (@skmorgane) on twitter, you are probably aware that we are on sabbatical right now out at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (go, tarheels!) along with our pre-school aged daughter. Anyway a tweet of mine recently elicited a post request: https://twitter.com/caseybergman/status/375975919019888640   @caseybergman @skmorgane seconded!

EcoBloggers is a relatively new blog aggregator started by the awesome International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists (INNGE). Blog aggregators pull together posts from a number of related blogs to provide a one stop shop for folks interested in that topic. The most famous example of a blog aggregator in science is probably Research Blogging.

UPDATE: Both Ecology Letters and the British Ecological Society journals now allow preprints. Thanks to both groups for listening to the community and supporting the rapid and open exchange of scientific ideas.

A friend of mine once joked that doing ecological informatics meant working with data that was big enough that you couldn’t open it in an Excel spreadsheet.