All toads are equal, but some are more equal than others

When conducting an eradication campaign, it seems obvious that you should go out and collect all the individuals you can find. But could collecting some individuals be more important than others? This question is especially important when it comes to animals with complex life-cycles where the larvae and adults inhabit different parts of the ecosystem. We asked this question of the Guttural toad eradication in Cape Town, and received some surprising answers. 

Guttural toads lay large numbers of eggs, and their tadpoles inhabit garden ponds in the low-density, high-income suburb of Constantia. Meanwhile, the adults cruise around the gardens looking for insects and snails to snack on. For the people charged with their control, they can either spend their time cruising in the shrubberies looking for adult toads, or go to the ponds with nets and scoop up tadpoles and strings of eggs. Or of course, they could do both. But what is the best strategy?

Giovanni Vimercati built a mathematical model of the Guttural toad population in Constantia to answer this problem (see also Vimercati et al. 2017a,b). Recently, Gio used this same model to answer the question of which life-history stage of these toads should be targeted by people trying to control the population. Because there is strong competition between tadpoles and metamorphs, Gio found that any attempts to remove these aquatic life-history stages resulted in an increased number of toads in the population. The counter-intuitive result is known as the ‘hydra effect’ - where cutting off some heads simply makes more grow. In the case of the Guttural toad, the removal of some of the aquatic stages increases the rate of survival and fitness of those that remain. 

The model has the advantage that it can be run forwards to see what happens to the population given different control regimes. The mathematical model results told us that to maximise the impact of time spent controlling toads, concentrate on collecting adults. Adult removal has a far greater impact on the total population. 

To read more:

Vimercati G, Davies SJ, Hui C, Measey J (2021) Cost-benefit evaluation of management strategies for an invasive amphibian with a stage-structured model. NeoBiota 70: 87–105.https://doi.org/10.3897/neobiota.70.72508 

Other publications on this model are:

Vimercati, G., Davies, S.J., Hui, C. & Measey, J. (2017) Does restricted access limit management of invasive urban frogs? Biological Invasions19: 3659-3674.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-17-1599-6

Vimercati, G., Davies, S.J., Hui, C. & Measey, J. (2017) Integrating age structured and landscape resistance models to disentangle invasion dynamics of a pond-breeding anuran. Ecological Modelling 356: 104–116https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2017.03.017 

Do you know what aninvasivespecies is?

As a part of her MSc studies, Nolwethu Jubase asked 262 people in small towns in South Africa's Western Cape province about invasive species. Participants in the survey were first asked “Do you know what an invasive alien species is [yes] [no] [unsure]?  " If they answered 'yes', they were then asked to explain what it meant. Nolwethu then showed them a series of photos of invasive species that occur in their area and asked whether they were recognised. Together with demographic details of the participants, Nolwethu was able to draw up a profile of the 25% of people who said that they knew what invasive species are. The best model fitting the data suggested that these people were male, had higher education levels and (interestingly) lived in areas with a higher density of invasive species density. 

Public awareness of invasive species is an important part of any programme that attempts to control them. Surveys such as this one by Nolwethu are needed in order to determine the level of knowledge present in communities. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nolwethu was never able to conduct the experimental part of this study. The plan was to give towns different information campaign treatments, and then see how knowledge of invasive species changed with different types of campaign. 

Nevertheless, Nolwethu was able to generate some fascinating insights into what different demographic factors are important concerning knowledge of invasive species. For me, it is particularly interesting that the density of the invasive species was part of the model that best fitted the data. This suggests that people are aware of the species in their immediate area, and that people in more highly invaded areas are aware of this fact. However, Nolwethu's work also showed that most of these same people also regard the invasive species as beneficial. 

This result can make an important difference when it comes to the approach of those involved in management programmes. When working in a highly invaded area, it is important to understand the context of the people who are living there. What do they think of the species that you are planning to manage? Will they be supportive of your programme? 

Read the full article here:

Jubase N, Shackleton RT, Measey J. Public Awareness and Perceptions of Invasive Alien Species in Small Towns. Biology. 2021; 10(12):1322. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology10121322

Why volunteer to be an editor of another journal?

I have just volunteered to be the journal editor of another journal; I am already academic or associate editor at four others (PeerJ;Salamandra;BioInvasions Records;Herpetological Conservation & Biology). The reason is because the new journal (or not a journal) has an ethical stance that I feel I should support. 

Peer Community In have been around for a while, and arethe closest that you can get to a perfect open publishing experience in the Biological Sciences. They drive a number of initiatives that are designed to meet those committed to open publishing, as well as those who want to test the waters.

Peer Community in Evolutionary Biology(PCI-Evol Biol) was launched in January 2017. It is a formal review system for preprints. Since 2020, there are now a suite of otherPCI communities in Biological Sciences, including PCI-Zool where I have signed up as a recommender. Hence, I will now talk about PCI-Zool, although the process is the same whichever PCI community you submit to. Preprints are submitted to PCI-Zool and handled in the traditional way by an editor - called a ‘recommender’. This means that they are sent out for review, and are reviewed and eventually (if they aren’t rejected), a recommendation is given (hence ‘recommender’). This recommendation is where PCI-Zool differs from a normal journal, where this would be the point at which the manuscript is ‘accepted’. Once a preprint is recommended at PCI-Zool, the author has the choice of taking the recommendation to another journal, or (since 2021) agreeing to publish it in the newly formed journal:Peer Community Journal.

If the authors choose to go to another journal, both recommendation and reviews are all open access and available on the PCI-Zool website. There is a growinglist of journalswhose editors will accept recommendations from PCI-Zool, and may use the reviews or augment them as the editor of that journal sees appropriate. However, it’s also worth noting that there are a small number of journals that will not accept preprints recommended by PCI-Zool. The PCI-site publishes the recommendation from the recommender, the peer review history, as well as pointing to the archived preprint. 

Alternatively, the authors can choose to publish in thePeer Community Journal. This is very close to the ‘arXivOverlay Journal’, except that PCI host the final formatted version of the manuscript, for which there is no charge. This means that thePeer Community Journalis a newDiamond Open Accessjournal that publishes articles that have undergone PCI reviewing and recommendation. Technically, thePeer Community Journalclaim that they are not an Overlay Journal as the journal hosts the final pdfVersion of Recordleaving authors free to use any preprint server (seehere). This means that the site relies onsponsorshipto maintain the servers and archive content. Aside from this,Peer Community Journalachieves my highest accolade in being bothtransparentandDiamond Open Access.They also have a laudable set of great ethical guidelines for reviewers andrecommenders. This then being the reason that it gets my full support.

 

Diamond Open Access is a big deal. It means that there is no paywall for readers, and that there is also no barrier for authors. MosthybridorGold OAmodels that we are used to require the payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC), and these range from around €500 to €4900. Given that most publishers claim to need to charge ~€2000 per article, how much sponsorship would be needed to run the PCI system (includingPeer Community Journal)? You should not be too shocked to find out that it the functioning costs of the PCI project are only €5,500 per year (less that the cost of 3 papers published in mosthybridorGold OAmodels), because the human capital costs are paid by the academic community, and there are no profits 

Published today

What started right here as a series of blog posts is published today as a book from CRC Press.

As you should know by now, this book is available to read free online at http://www.howtowriteaphd.org/

Of course, you can still access the blog posts which are curated together on a page here. But don't be surprised if the book is quite a bit different. This time last year, I had completed a first draft of this book - and actually the next one on publishing. After signing the deal with CRC Press and getting a manuscript due date on 30 April 2021, I found that I needed to rewrite the book from start to finish. This was, in part, because the original book I had written needed to be split into two, and because it turns out that a first draft is just that. 

I received the copy edits and then proofs in July and August 2021. I was quite surprised at how much work was still needed on the copy edits. I had submitted the book in LaTex, and had quite a few formatting points that hadn't worked out well. By that time I had also signed another contract to submit the second book in August: How to publish in Biological Sciences. As you can imagine, August was a busy month. At this point though, I could make sure that the second book did not have the same problems as the first (and indeed I have already returned the copy edits on that and it was all good).

So, it turned out to be quite a bit more work to get the blog posts into the form of a book. The Bookdown (online) version is already growing and having chapters added. That's the really nice aspect of this guide book, that it can continue to evolve online. Please do take a look and see what you think. All contributions are welcome. If you can't find a section that you are looking for, let me know.

The book itself contains a long list of acknowledgements, but I feel that it is necessary to name some of those people here too. Firstly to my brother, Richard, who maintains this website and has rescued it from hackers and systems crashes over the years. My wife, Thalassa, has had to read (and correct) a lot of this book as blog posts, and also when I was rewriting it. All of the MeaseyLab folk who have been the source of great inspiration for many of the chapters, but for also discussing a lot of the topics in lab meetings and contributing so much to my understanding of the writing process. Lastly, to all the support I had from the CIB over the last 8 years, especially Christy who has been absolutely fantastic.

Curious to see what the book looks like?

You can see a preview of the book on Google Books. Just click this link

Measey J (2021) How to publish in Biological Sciences: a guide for the uninitiated. CRC Press, Boca Raton.  ISBN: 9781032116419      

Great to see this in hard copy!

Centre for Invasion Biology - Annual Research Meeting - online again

By May 2021 it seemed that we could have started planning for an in-person Annual Research Meeting (ARM) for the Centre for Invasion Biology (CIB), but decided to err on the side of caution and keep it online only. That turned out to be the best plan as the third wave of COVID hit us in July and still hadn't entirely left by September. 

We managed to fit all CIB students into 4 pods led by all remaining post-docs, and had some great presentations from all members of the MeaseyLab. Below you will find images of everyone giving their talks. 

Sam Peta, M.Sc. An army marches on its stomach: diet composition and prey preference of guttural toad (Sclerophrys gutturalis) populations along a native-invasive and natural-urban gradient. 

John Measey How to write a PhD in Biological Sciences - book launch

SESSION 03: Distribution, spreading and impacts of invasive species Introduced and chaired by
Dr Andrea Melotto

Dan Van Blerk, M.Sc. Impacts of invasive fish on amphibians in lentic and lotic systems: a meta-analysis 

Laurie Araspin, Ph.D. Temperature dependence of locomotor performance across an altitudinal gradient in an invasive frog, Xenopus laevis. 

Of course, you can watch the full meeting (only 7.5 hours) on YouTube (below) if you want!