One of the highlights of 2015 was the opportunity to spend a few days with students on National Geographic's student expedition to Costa Rica. I had so much fun - I think I learned more from the students than they did from me.

​​I am excited to be joining two trips to Ecuador again this summer as a guest expert. We'll be exploring the cloud forests near Mindo and the Páramo near Cotopaxi together and I am looking forward to it! 

The top podcasts in the science and medicine category on iTunes this week include Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk Radio and Jim Harold's The Paranormal Podcast. You can find almost every other possible subject in between. So what makes someone tune in to listen to a podcast about climate change?

I consider this question in a review of a fantastic podcast called The Adaptors. The review is published in this week's Books et al. section of Science. 

Thanks to J. Catanoso, B. Anderegg and P. Lopes for comments on the review. 

I had definitely not heard of phylomemetics before reading Nick Matzke's recent paper on the evolution of anti-evolution policies in Science. The concept is simple and incredibly clever: use tools developed for studying evolutionary relationships in biology to study the transmission of culture (i.e. the phylogenetics of memes).  In this case, Matzke explores the relationships among anti-evolution legislation in the decade since the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case. 

Matzke studied the text of more than 65 bills introduced to erode the teaching of evolution in classrooms. However, the most striking aspect of his results from my perspective are the implications for teaching students about global climate change. In essence, he finds that the introduction of a policy in Louisiana in 2006 is the origin of a much broader change in legislation, in that it now simultaneously targets evolution, human cloning and global warming. By including human cloning and global warming, the authors can deflect the idea that the reason to not teach evolution is founded solely on religious principles, which has been found to be unconstitutional. This should serve as a warning for science educators of all shapes and sizes. 

It is not surprising that the anti-evolution movement  continues to evolve. It is ironic that the tools developed to study evolution might contribute to the movement's undoing. 

Paper has its limits. For instance, a paper field guide: 

-Can only include so much information before it is no longer a field guide and instead a desk reference.

-Can only have the information organized in one way, with one or two indices at the rear to guide the user to the information they are looking for.

-Can only be updated when the author and publisher choose to release a new edition.

-Can only be published and distributed in one, or at most two, languages at a time.

This week in the Books et al. section of Science, I explore some of the incredible opportunities for re-imagining how we construct field guides made possible by the advent of mobile technology. I do so through the lens of the fantastic new field guide Map of Life, one of the most impressive efforts to provide on-demand access to biodiversity information. This is the first time that Science has reviewed a mobile application; there is no doubt in my mind that this will not be the last time.

The review is by no means exhaustive in exploring all of the important considerations that go into making these applications and I am looking forward to many interesting discussions as we push these ideas forward.

My thanks to Walter Jetz and Rob Guralnick for providing additional information on Map of Life and to a host of colleagues including Ken Feeley, Brian Enquist, Jens-Christian Svenning, and Chelsea Little for feedback on the review.

Goldsmith, G.R. 2015. The field guide, rebooted. Science 349: 594.

For the last two years, I have been fortunate to collaborate with Brian Enquist and the folks in the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) to try and bring their incredible database on plant species distributions to a broader audience by means of a mobile application, which has affectionately become known as Plant-O-Matic. The application matches your location with detailed information on plant species distributions in the Americas to provide you with a list of all the species expected to occur within 100 sq. km. You can access additional information on each species, as well as conditionally search, sort and filter the information. Plant-O-Matic can be downloaded for free from the Apple Store.  

For those of you interested in the finer details, there have been some delays in the review process (ironically, this relates to my previous post). Please find below an abstract of the manuscript currently in review and do not hesitate to contact me if you wish to have a complete copy.  

In the past 12 months, I have been asked by editors from 18 different journals to peer review 22 different manuscripts. This is clearly not sustainable. 

I recognize that I am not alone in this experience and I offer no great solutions; my approach has been to review a manuscript for every manuscript that I author or co-author.

However, beginning with the article we published last year in Ecosphere, I have adopted one new habit. I am writing and mailing a thank you note to every handling editor that I work with, regardless of their decision. If I receive 22 manuscripts a year, I can only imagine the thankless job of an editor. 

I am a co-author on a new paper that is in press at Global Change Biology. The paper explores how landscape level patterns in precipitation and soil drive differences in the carbon cycle of lowland Amazon forests. I'll write more on this soon, but in the interim, you can check out the layperson's abstract and access the full text through the link at the bottom: 

Understanding the relationship between photosynthesis, net primary productivity and growth in forest ecosystems is key to understanding how these ecosystems will respond to global anthropogenic change, yet the linkages among these components are rarely explored in detail. We provide the first comprehensive description of the productivity, respiration and carbon allocation of contrasting lowland Amazonian forests spanning gradients in seasonal water deficit and soil fertility. Using the largest dataset assembled to date, ten sites in three countries all studied with a standardized methodology, we find that (i) gross primary productivity (GPP) has a simple relationship with seasonal water deficit, but that (ii) site-to-site variations in GPP have little power in explaining site-to-site spatial variations in net primary productivity (NPP) or growth because of concomitant changes in carbon use efficiency (CUE), and conversely, the woody growth rate of a tropical forest is a very poor proxy for its productivity. Instead, (iii) spatial patterns of biomass are much more driven by patterns of residence times (i.e. tree mortality rates) than by spatial variation in productivity or tree growth. Current theory and models of tropical forest carbon cycling under projected scenarios of global atmospheric change can benefit from advancing beyond a focus on GPP. By improving our understanding of poorly understood processes such as CUE, NPP allocation and biomass turnover times, we can provide more complete and mechanistic approaches to linking climate and tropical forest carbon cycling.


Malhi, Y. C.E. Doughty, G.R. Goldsmith, D.B. Metcalfe, C.A.J. Girardin, T.R. Marthews, J. del Aguila-Pasquel, L.E.O.C. Aragão, A. Araujo-Murakami, P. Brando, A.C.L. da Costa, J.E. Silva-Espejo, F.F. Amézquita, D.R. Galbraith, C.A. Quesada, W. Rocha, N. Salinas-Revilla, D. Silvério, P. Meir & O.L. Phillips. 2015. The linkages between photosynthesis, productivity, growth and biomass in lowland Amazonian forests. Global Change Biology DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12859

Our recent article in Ecosphere, which considers how we evaluate and assess the efficacy of web-based educational outreach, is highlighted as an editor's choice in Science Magazine. As they note in the article, using our approaches to understanding website users and their behavior can help us to "better allocate resources....making online science education efforts more targeted and efficient." 

There is a growing movement towards using the web for educational outreach in the sciences. The unfortunate truth is that no one really knows whether or not it is working.

We have a new paper out this week  in the journal Ecosphere, the open access journal of the Ecological Society of America. I have contributed a guest post to their blog Ecotone, describing what we have done in greater detail. 

If you want to go straight to the source, you can access the paper from ESA here: 

Goldsmith, G.R., A.D. Fulton, C.D. Witherill, & J.F. Espeleta. 2014. Improving the efficacy of web-based educational outreach in ecology. Ecosphere 5: 131.

The core data underlying the paper is published in the Dryad Digital Data Repository, which is also open access and can be accessed here: Goldsmith, G.R., A.D. Fulton, C.D. Witherill, & J.F. Espeleta. 2014. Data from: Improving the efficacy of web-based educational outreach in ecology. Dryad Digital Data Repository.