Even our regular readers often don’t read the comments on our posts. But if you don’t read the comments, you’re really missing out. Not just on insightful discussions of the posts, but also on interesting side conversations, funny jokes, and more. Our commenters are the best! So, to encourage you to read the comments, here’s the first of an occasional series of posts linking to some highlights from our recent comment threads.
harisridhar points us to the fascinating story of Carel Ten Cate’s replication of Niko Tinbergen’s classic animal behavior experiments.
Bethann Garramon Merkle (‘CommNatural’) shares tools to help you say ‘no’, so you don’t just reflexively say ‘yes’ to everything someone asks you to do.
Stephen Heard reveals that the genus Magnolia is named after a person. Betcha didn’t know that!
Andre de Roos has some spicy opinions on population ecology.
cmacmac shares one person’s experience as a remote postdoc.
Bri Ollre on the personal factors that shape students’ choices of whether to go to graduate school, and what to study there.
Jeff Clements shares some data suggesting that maybe the best way to spur future research on topic X is to…undermine previous research on topic X.
Angela Moles on the reasons for the decline of big ideas in ecology–and also a reason to question whether it’s a real decline.
Jeff Ollerton and Stephen Heard identify some great (and steamy!) novels by ecologists.
Carl Boettiger and Derek Jones both push back (in different ways) against my claim that, as a researcher, you should emulate Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.