This is The End
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
Earlier this week I completed my Twelve Days of 2019 Ecology Literature challenge. I read the last paper on my list, drained my mug of tea, and blew out the candle. I started my advent of reading because my To Read Folder felt out of control and it seemed like the year was slipping away from me. Just as the reading ritual of sweats, tea, candle forced me to slow down and sit with some wonderful, thought-provoking papers, creating an advent calendar gave me an excuse to sit with my best intentions — I had tagged all of these papers #ToReadPile at some point in the year — and sift through the ab ..read more
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Wrapped and Read: A Reading Advent Update
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
Spotify just told me that Superfruit was my artist of the year. “You discovered 265 new artists this year, but you really vibed with Superfruit,” Spotify Wrapped announced*. Google Scholar has not released a comparable look back at my year; there is no sleek graphic design of my year in citations. And Google Sheets is equally lagging on a social-media-sharable data visualization of my admittedly haphazard #365papers record keeping. I guess I will have to manually reflect on my reading the old-fashioned way — through blogging.   To kick off December, I created a list of twelve 2019 papers that ..read more
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She’s Making a List…
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
It occurred to me in November that my #ToReadPile was beyond overflowing. One of my friends* had recently published a very cool paper and it was receiving wonderful press, but between lesson planning, job applications, and shepherding my own manuscripts, I could not imagine carving out time or mental energy to read anything that wasn’t directly related to my own research. It seemed like so many amazing papers had come out in the second half of 2019, and I had barely had time to skim their authors’ twitter-ready one-liners, let alone their abstracts.   Friend of the blog Josh Drew has a Decembe ..read more
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Thanksgiving Reading List
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
Last November, Binghamton Unversity-SUNY’s WHRW station shared this message as part of their program ‘Broadcasting World Literature’: “Today, since it’s Thanksgiving week, I thought it would be good to start off with a reading or just do a reading of a native scholar’s take on giving thanks.” Daimys Garcia explains before she begins reading from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Brading Sweetgrass,“It’s important to remember that Thanksgiving has history that’s rooted in genocide, colonization, and oppression of native people’s on this land so I thought it’s be great to read a piece by a native scholar wh ..read more
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Reading & Listening to Cape Cod
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
Cape Cod does not appear on my CV. I study alpine plant ecology — my postdoc research is literally founded on carrying heavy things to high lakes — and the hooked peninsula of the Cape, curling into Nantucket Sound and pointing back towards Boston Harbor, is mostly beach and salt marsh and very light on high ground. When I’m on the Atlantic coast, I am in Acadia National Park. I grew up in central Massachusetts, where by law I think every baby shower must include a hardcover copy of Make Way For Ducklings and every childhood needs one bad sunburn from a Cape Cod beach (mine was Hyannis Port ..read more
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Writing and Publishing: Mentos, Manatees, and Sinkholes
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
I’ve been reflecting on my own writing. Today, I picked up three bound booklets from my local copy shop. These are the ‘after’ picture of my PhD dissertation — the pdfs of the peer-reviewed papers that grew out of my ‘before’ dissertation chapters. The volume is sleeker than my official hardcover ProQuest dissertation copy, the figures are more refined, and the writing inside is much better. I was so excited to share this news that I lost control of grammar and hit ‘send tweet’ with this: “Just picked up bound copies of my PhD’s final outputs for my and my mentors — the four peer-reviewed pap ..read more
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PLOS Stands with #ClimateStrike
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
Last Friday, PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt published a letter declaring that PLOS supports the Global Climate Strike on September 20, 2019. She wrote, “Their global call to action is meant to apply pressure on policymakers and drive change as world leaders gather on September 23rd at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. Thousands of scientists worldwide have signed letters endorsing the climate strikes, and we stand with them. We are giving all PLOS staff the opportunity to take the day and march to raise their voice for change.”   The Global Climate Strike is the latest outcome of Swedish teen ..read more
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A Drought By Any Other Name
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
4y ago
What is a drought? I know I don’t know — I live in the temperate northeastern United States and my field site is frequently wrapped in fog — but I get the feeling that I am not alone. According to a paper born from a Colorado State University graduate student seminar on ecology and drought, we should all be asking ourselves this question. Drought seems to have lost its meaning for ecologists, and not in the semantic satiation way, where if you say a word over and over again it become aural nonsense.   Ingrid J. Slette and her co-authors published ‘How ecologists define drought, and why we shou ..read more
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Top 12 Highly Anticipated Contributed Talks at ESA 2019
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
5y ago
Grab your reusable coffee mugs and your best pair of Chacos; pack your vintage tote bag and your most ecologically-on-point knitting project. The Ecological Society of America meeting is next week!   ESA is an overwhelming, exhausting, inspiring, coffee-fueled rush; your closest colleagues, mentors, and friends are all in one city, and yet you can’t find anyone who is free for lunch on the same day. “In the spirit of collaboration, inclusion and cross-disciplinary science, the Ecological Society of America will be holding its 104th Annual Meeting in partnership with the United States Society f ..read more
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Looking Closer at Look at Your Fish
PLOS Ecology Community | Researchers discuss latest ecology science
by Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie
5y ago
“In science, I concluded, even in fields as apparently apolitical as ichthyology and glaciology, the story always involves more than a fish in a tin pan or lines etched on bedrock. Culture, history, and beliefs about humans determine, now as in the nineteenth century, who exactly is invited into the science laboratory to “look and look again” at the fish in the pan, and who exactly has the leisure and means to take a trip to Maine.” — Marion K. McInnes, “Looking for Louis Agassiz: A Story of Rocks and Race in Maine”   Less than a week after I published a blog post that referenced Louis Agassiz ..read more
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