An Afec-X Live! Journal
Below is the course flyer to this year’s Island Species-Led Action (ISLA) course to be held in Iligan City, Philippines in September. The course is organized by the International Training Center of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Kindly pass on to whoever might be interested. Thanks!
Dear Colleague,
11th Student Conference on Conservation Science: Cambridge UK, 23-25 March 2010
The conference series aims to bring together conservation scientists in the early stages of their research careers. SCCS also uses its location in Cambridge to build firm links between the new generation of conservation scientists and the many national and international conservation agencies based nearby.
The conference has an internship scheme, which is available for conference delegates from developing and eastern European countries. This scheme enables student delegates to spend up to one month after the conference with a UK-based NGO or university department carrying out a conservation-related project of mutual interest.
The closing date for applications for the conference and the internship scheme is 31 October 2009.
Further information about the Student Conference on Conservation Science and details of how to apply can be found on our website: www.sccs-cam.org
Best wishes,
Shireen
Shireen Green
Conference Administrator
Student Conference on Conservation Science
Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
Downing Street
Cambridge
CB2 3EJ
Tel: 00 44 (0)1223 762979
Student Conference on Conservation Science
www.sccs-cam.org
i recently spoke with my undergraduate thesis adviser. he wrote my recommendation for the course so when i got back from china, he was excited to hear about it. so i told him about the things we did, new subjects that i found interesting, the topic i chose for independent project, people i met, etc etc. i had so many exciting things to say, and he probably thought i needed more time (and a bigger audience!) for it. and so he suggested that i talk about the course in his ecology class which i took 2 years ago. so that’s what i did yesterday. i compiled pictures, and also looked through my notes. and on the first page, for chuck’s intro lecture, i wrote spread the word. maybe he mentioned it then. and i was like “hey, that’s what im doing!” i hope students from that class will apply next year. 
*i’d like to thank everyone who responded to my request for pictures on such a short notice. orr, nayana, jerpin, yen, nana, andes. i hope i didnt miss anyone. many thanks to you guys
so…a lot of people have posted their “so now i’m home” stories. i’m a little bit behind, because this is just about what happened on the way.
so, all the while I thought my flight from kunming to hongkong was at 2pm. i checked my ticket the night before i left banna, and then changed my story to 3:45pm. that’s why i went to the airport with Hua Xia, whose flight was at 4. it was only when we arrived at the airport that i looked at the paper again that i found out that my flight actually leaves 20minutes earlier than what i’ve been telling everyone! (*this is the kind of thing that irritates my parents. i can almost hear my mom saying “what were you thinking?!”) so, i wasnt late, but i was i was one of the last few people to check in. and when i got to the counter, the airline person didnt attend to me right away because…..(drumroll here) there were no more seats left!!! and all i could say was “how is that possible?” and no, i didnt have a tone, and i didnt have a look either. i want to say that im proud of how i didnt go “rawr” on her, that i was very composed and mature in handling the situation. but i really didnt handle it at all. i didnt even react to it. i think a lot, i worry about the small things, i even worry about nothing. so i was surprised at how non-reactive i was about the whole situation.
here i was, in a foreign country, i dont speak the local language, i might not get on this plane, i have a connecting flight that i might also miss, my phone didnt have any credit left (which wouldnt have mattered anyway because the battery is dead and the charger is buried somewhere in my luggage (*again, “what were you thinking?!”).
it was a good 5minutes before she finally spoke to me and told me that i was upgraded to business class. yahoo!!! i’ve never flown business before. i wasnt used to the “fanciness.” the attendant knew my name, and i wasnt using plastic utensils. haha.
the flight was delayed for more than an hour because of some H1N1 case, i suppose. they had to quarantine some people, and disinfect the plane before finally letting us in. but i didnt mind waiting. i slept through the entire thing. that dangerous card game we played the night before kept me up really late, so i welcomed the opportunity to rest, even in the cold uncomfortable seats of the airport.
that’s it. everything after was pretty much normal, nothing out of the ordinary that’s worth telling a story about. well there was my seatmate on the plane who contemplated on taking home the earphones. whaaaaaattt? but this is too long already.
welcome home everyone!!! til the next time we see each other.
im looking forward to hearing about “what’s next” in your lives
hi guys!
im writing this post on a computer at the hongkong airport.
i left kunming this afternoon, and will be leaving for manila in an hour. probably by the time you read this in the morning, i’m already catching up on sleep in my bed, in my room, in my country
i’ll write some more once i’ve settled down, visited family, distributed presents, caught up on gossip (haha), etc.
till next time! 
This essay stems from the Webb paper on exploring the phylogenetic structure of a tree community in Borneo (2000). I chose the study because I was particularly interested in the idea of using phylogenetic approach in understanding ecological communities; that you can somehow trace ecological processes operating in a community (general; community perspective) by looking at the degree of relatedness of species within that community (specific; clade perspective). This novel approach is nothing less than brilliant, as it has even given birth to a new area of study. However, it does have some yet unresolved issues, some of which I discuss here.
Researchers have taken various approaches to this consolidation of phylogenetics and community ecology. Phylogenetics is used in the study of community assemblages and community niche structure. Looking at it from the flip side, a community context can be included to studies of trait evolution (Webb et al, 2002). The justification for such studies is the possibility that there is a direct link between the evolutionary relatedness of organisms in a community with the ecological processes that determine their distribution (Kraft, 2007).
As more and more studies are being conducted along these lines, Losos (2008) stressed the importance of not anchoring them on the assumption that closely related species are ecologically similar. Phylogenetic signals may or may not be detected, depending on the clades and the traits. And for some studies, signals are detected, but are negatively correlated with ecological similarity. A study on sunfish communities showed that opposite phylogenetic patterns (clustering and overdispersal) that simultaneously operate also tend to cancel each other out overall (Helmus et al, 2007). The differing results from the studies he reviewed led him to conclude that phylogenetic signals do occur, but are not ubiquitous. Another thing to consider is that ecological characters have low phylogenetic signal, lower than morphological and physiological traits.
Webb’s study on Bornean trees gave a clear indication that the community was not randomly structured, and that related species tend to co-occur. But work on the community of neotropical trees in Panama (Kembel&Hubbell, 2006) resulted in a close to random phylogenetic structure at all spatial scales. However, a closer examination of phylogenetic structure across different habitats did produce patterns of clustering and overdispersal. The varying patterns seen in this study thus highlight the importance of defining the community that you are studying, as the definition for a community is usually arbitrary. According to Webb et al (2002), phylogenetic and phenotypic attraction and repulsion are largely dependent on scale. Also, at the continental scale, biogeographic, not ecological, processes influence phylogenetic patterns.
Another important matter to consider is the conservativism of the traits that are being examined. The Webb review paper (2002) contains a table on the expected distribution of taxa on the phylogeny, given the community assembly process (habitat filtering or exclusion) and trait evolution (conserved or convergent). It showed that phylogenetic clustering or overdispersal is dependent not only on the type of assembly but also on trait evolution. For the phylogenetic clustering that Webb (2000) observed in Bornean trees, he assumed that ecological traits are conserved, and hence was able to conclude that habitat filtering structured that particular community. The situation is more complicated if the co-occurring species are distantly related. If the traits are conserved, their coexistence may be explained by competitive exclusion among the conspecifics/congeners. If they are convergent, habitat filtering can account for it (Kraft, 2007). Hence, generalizations on the processes that operated on the community (habitat partitioning, negative density dependence, etc) cannot readily be drawn from the generated phylogenetic structure without knowledge of the evolution of the traits. This is supported by a study conducted by Kraft et al (2007) where simulations with strongly conserved traits produced strong signals of phylogenetic community structure, and weaker signals for less conserved ones.
The construction of the phylogenetic tree also presents some limitations. Webb (2002) enumerated some of these, and presented a very simplistic solution that can pose some problems when used for species pairs, but can be corrected by increasing the sample size. It is along this line of creative thinking that I derive my confidence in this relatively new field of study. Researchers are aware of the limitations that the current methodologies present, and they are constantly looking at ways of futher reducing them.
However numerous, valid, and important all these unresolved matters concerning phylogenetic ecology are, the good things outweigh the bad. As always. The field of phylogenetics, by itself, is complex, and its application to something as complicated as community dynamics makes it doubly difficult. A phylogenetic tree is in itself a hypothesis, and its use in studies on ecological communities is predicated on assumptions that may be justified, but they are assumptions nonetheless. However, a significant contribution that these studies have brought is the added dimension of phylogenetic relatedness of species in examining community diversity and species coexistence (Webb et al, 2002). There are even more advantages this field presents, and clearly, it doesn’t stop here. As more studies will be conducted in this field, the lesser the assumptions will be, the more definite the concepts become, and the better we understand the dynamics of ecological communities.
Assigned Reading:
Webb, C. O. Exploring the phylogenetic structure of ecological communities: an example for rain forest trees. 2000. The American Naturalist 156:145-155.
References:
Helmus, M. R., K. Savage, M. W. Diebel, J. T. Maxted and A. R. Ives. 2007. Separating the determinants of phylogenetic community structure. Ecological Letters 10:917-925.
Kraft, N. J. B., W. K. Cornwell, C. O. Webb, and D. D. Ackerley. 2007. Trait evolution, community assembly, and the phylogenetic structure of ecological communities. The American Naturalist 170:271-283.
Kembel, S. W. and S. P. Hubbell. 2006. The phylogenetic structure of a neotropical forest tree community. Ecology, 87(7) Supplement:S86-S99.
Losos, J. B. 2008. Phylogenetic niche conservativism, phylogenetic signal and the relationship between phylogenetic relatedness and ecological similarity among species. Ecology Letters 11:995-1007.
Webb, C. O., D. D. Ackerley, M. A. McPeek, and M. J. Donoghue. 2002. Phylogenies and community ecology. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 33: 475-505.
you’re on the right track nature lovers! TIME came out with this article on how psychologists are now prescribing the great outdoors as part of patient care.
Eco-therapists, as they are called, believe that we are hard-wired to interact with nature, but the industrial revolution, and all the technological advances that came after it, have steadily removed us from our natural environment. And that depression is just a manifestation of our longing to reconnect with mother nature.
I may be misquoting the article, so it would be best if you read it for yourself. click HERE
*tiars, thanks for the link
Because all we ever talk about now is our independent projects (well not really, but something like that), if you ask about how our project is going, THAT is what it’s doing now.
In English, it means “giving birth.”
The good thing about our project now is that it’s going quite well (at least the field part. we’ll see how the numbers will “behave” when we get to data entry&analysis). So, we’re getting things done. Which means we have more time for other things, should we choose to do other things.
So tomorrow, we’re doing one more thing. Not that we CHOSE to do it. Well, we did, kinda, but would you ever say no to your PI? :-) Today was supposed to be our last field day but we’re going to to km55 tomorrow. I’ve only been there once, so I cant really remember much about it. Just that it’s far. And oh yeah, there are wasps. THAT, i can remember quite well.
So we’re hoping to finish with that site tomorrow. And also hoping that this project will not give birth to more forest types, or more samples, or more etc, in the coming days…
Hello philippines!
First up, im still alive! Just that things have been pretty hectic lately, hence the silence.
I think I’m gonna need more than 1 post for everything I want to say. I have one-liners in my “notebook of random thoughts ” and probably 3 blog entries in my head, but they’ll all remain there for now. I’ll slowly work on these backlogs in the coming days (I wish!).
The thing that has kept me busy in the past days is our independent project. We’re in the second phase of the course now, where there are less lectures, and more time for our own projects. The professors had this initial list of potential projects that we can choose from. I naturally gravitated towards research topics on plants, and to people who also like working on plants. I got the topic, which is on wood density measurements, but not all of the groupmates. Andes , Navendu and I kinda formed a group, but I ended up with Andes and Jiajia. This may not be exactly how I envisioned things to be, but on hindsight, I realize that it was actually a good call on Kari’s part to group me with the people I’m working with now. We’re a pretty solid team (yahoo!). And the naturally irritating Navendu has this new goal of annoying me and driving me crazy by opposing everything I say, so Kari, I have you to thank for my sanity
So yeah, we had proposal presentations and that went quite well. I was a bit nervous about it because speaking in front of people always makes me nervous, and because my memories of project presentations are…traumatic. I dont think I’ve done proposal presentation before. We usually just go straight to final presentation. And the problem with this is that you have NO way on knowing if you’re doing the right thing so you could be doing it wrong all along so by the time you present your results and discussion, they kill you with their questions. haha.
But things went fine. There were some suggestions so we made minor revisions. I wasnt very confident with our written proposal because I thought it was very simplistic, and my English was very elementary, etc (I think too much, I know). But simple is good. Here, they call it straight-forward And there were very few comments on those revisions (yey!), so we went ahead with fieldwork. We started yesterday, and finished with one site by the end of the day, so I’m pretty confident that we can finish this, if all goes well. My groupmates are great. We worked in the pouring rain, and no one complained. Andes collected the wood cores, which is NOT an easy job. And Jiajia collected voucher specimens, which is also not easy. And I did all the writing, and taking GPS readings, and bossing around (not really. of course not!).
So…1 site, ~3 days, and 100 more cores to go, and we’ll be done with fieldwork! There’s still labwork, and plant ID to deal with, and data analysis (which we have yet to figure out), and report writing, and final presentation, and…the end. I think these next days will fly by so fast and before I know it, I’ll be sitting on a plane bound for home. I miss speaking in Bisaya and Tagalog, and eating century tuna, but I’m pretty sure i’ll miss the garden too, and the people. But I’m not dwelling on that yet. For now, there’s barbecue night to look forward to. I’m hungry!!!!
yesterday:
Lunch yesterday was pretty interesting. We had 4 different kinds of greens. One sabaw (soup), and then 3 others that were blanched and then sauteed with different things like garlic, tomatoes, etc. And oh, there were breaded flowers (yep, flowers). They looked like kalachuchi. And then we had fish (which for me, isnt really fake meat, but it’s not “alpha-meat” either). And then there were fishballs (which, like the ones back home, are just mainly flour). They must have sensed that I’ve been eating too much meat already. And I ate the fish with chopsticks. The first time for me to do such. I think I’m more adept with them now, what with practice 3x a day. I’ve never seen a fork since I got off the plane. Three more weeks to go and I’d be an expert at this
We went frogging last night. Before that, we had a lecture on frog breeding ecology, the one lecture in this entire course that I’ve been dreading about since I read it on the preliminary schedule. Because I don’t really like frogs** (see related story below). But it was ok! Im still alive, I survived it, and it was actually…I never thought I’d say this…fun! We went out in groups to 3 different places (rubber plantation, bamboo garden, then the rainforest). On each site we had to turn off our lights and listen to frog calls for 5 minutes and try to determine how many species there were. And then we did a 10-minute search of the area and looked for as many frogs as we can find. It was not an easy thing to do becayse most of them area really small, and they’re brown, or green, which is pretty much the same colors as everything else.
I liked listening more than searching because I never found anything. I saw some things, but other people found them first. Listening is also much more exciting because it was so dark, but the night was very much alive! Im used to the typical “kokak” frog call, but when you take the time to listen really closely, some chirp like a bird, and some others grunt (we called them the unhappy, uncomfortable ones).
**sidebar: I kinda mentioned to Loren over lunch that I’m not exactly a big fan of frogs. That was my way of sugar coating it. I could’ve said I absolutely abhor them but that would not be a good thing to say in front of this company. :-D and he asked why, and i said I just dont like how they look. and he said “so that’s it? you just take offense at their appearance?” and i kinda hesistated and said….”yeah?” but when we went out that night, they were ok. im ok with how they look. and i realized then that i never really have any reason for not liking them. i just dont.
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