BU at the 2019 Ecological Society of America Meeting

Posted by Lucy Zipf

This August I traveled to Louisville, KY to attend this year’s Ecological Society of America meeting. This conference provides attendees a great opportunity to interact with a large community of ecologists and learn about new exciting research. I presented my work on Tree Swallow response to global change to an engaged audience.

Presenting my talk using very animated facial expressions

Many current and past members of the BU Biogeosciences Program presented talks and posters through the week. I was also able to see talks from former Primack Lab members Dr. Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie and Dr. Amanda Gallinat, who both presented work from their post docs. 

In addition to hearing about my peers’ work, I enjoyed attending the diversity of talks on urban ecology; including Dr. Diane Pataki’s plenary talk on the ecology of cultivated landscapes and the symposium on segregation as an ecological factor lead by Dr. Steward Pickett.

BU Biogeoscientists at ESA. 

Let to Right: Nick Ray giving a talk about oyster mediated nitrogen fluxes; Jamie Harrison showing off the title slide for her talk on winter climate change; Erin Pierce presenting her urban ecology poster

On the last night of the conference the BU Biogeoscience members organized a meet up to attend a minor league baseball game. Unfortunately, the Louisville Bats did not win, but we had a great time at the game and the conference!

Can We Escape the Urban Noise?

By Carina Terry

“Only in their saner moments do men hear the  crickets. It is a balm to the philosopher. 

It tempers his thoughts.”  Henry David Thoreau in his Journal. 

While often considered an issue primarily affecting people in cities, noise pollution also spreads into urban parks, national parks and other natural areas, bringing with it negative impacts such as the disruption of wildlife communication and community structure

To investigate the extent of noise pollution into natural areas near Boston, we are using smart phones with the SPLnFFT app to measure sound levels at the Hall’s Pond Sanctuary in Brookline, the Hammond Woods in Newton, and other Boston parks. We will use this data to map the soundscape across these protected areas and analyze the sources of high sound levels.

Are women ecologists joining the race?

By Tara Miller

“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”

—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 16 November 1857

In 1997, Richard Primack and Elizabeth Stacey published an article entitled “Women ecologists catching up in scientific productivity, but only when they join the race.”

They studied the publication record of tropical ecologists (328 men and 328 women) at various stages in their careers. One main result was that women have lower rates of publication than men, in both younger and older ecologists. Women published, on average, only 60% of the number of articles that men published.

(From Primack & Stacey, 1997)

In the group, nine men had consistently high rates of publication, but none of the women did.  A number of women were late bloomers with increasing rates of publication later in their careers, perhaps caused by lack of time due to family responsibilities.

The silver lining in this 22-year-old study is that women are starting to catch up to men in terms of mean number of publications and citations in the younger groups. Perhaps the factors holding women back professionally were starting to improve at that time.

Publication rates by age and gender.

(Adapted from Table 1 of Primack & Stacey, 1997)

The article: Primack, Richard B., and Elizabeth A. Stacey. 1997. “Women ecologists catching up in scientific productivity, but only when they join the race.” BioScience 47(3): 169-174.