[Coral-List] push for more reliable research in ecology

Tue Jan 12 09:00:36 UTC 2021

Hi Dave,

No problem. Hopefully it might be useful to someone else on the list at some point too. 

No, I’m not based in Darwin. Like you, I’m based in Perth, Western Australia. 

Cheers,

Garnet

> On 12 Jan 2021, at 07:54, Garnet Hooper via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Dave,
> 
> The ANNABIM99 surveys did have field support from traditional owners, though I’m not sure how much input they may have had in the design/technical aspects. The report recommended further engagement, and hopefully with the changing social landscape, more input was sought in subsequent surveys.
> 
> You mentioned in one of your emails that you thought that starting an intertidal survey at the top of the shore and using a standardised survey interval sounded logical. Here’s why that’s not the case when comparing between shores for intertidal surveys:
> 
> - intertidal biota are generally dominated by marine species, with a transition to more tolerant and then terrestrial fauna as you move into the splash zone.
> - highest productivity is found on the lower shore
> - biota are primarily distributed based on their tolerance to emersion, with the hardier, more desiccation-tolerant species found in the upper shore
> - other factors, such as sediment composition (particle size, sorting), local
> tidal conditions/range, shoreline aspect/exposure and surficial water (pooling or freshwater runoff) are also important factors in zonation (among others)
> - the period of emersion is related to a combination of the tidal range (e.g. Mean Low Water Springs (MLWS), Mean Low Water Neaps (MLWN), Mean Tidal Level (MTL), Mean High Water Neaps (MHWN), and Mean High Water Springs (MHWS)) and the shoreline profile
> - this means that biological zones are much shorter on shores with a steep vertical profile and short intertidal zone (e.g. 100-200 m) than those on shallow-sloping shorelines with a long intertidal zone (which may be kms long)
> - using a standardised sample length will therefore result in sampling at disproportional relative distances down the shore. If the tidal zones (e.g. MLWS, MLWN, MTL, MHWN, MHWS) aren’t considered for your shores of study when determining your standardised distance(as in the case of the Eighty Mile Beach/Roebuck Bay studies) then you risk failing to adequately sample/identify different zones, and may even skip some
> - You also need to start you transects from the lower shore as you can then relate them to tidal height, which standardised your sampling between shores. The relative size of your zones will also likely be shorter on the lower shore, so you can make sure you can adequately capture them. If you start at the upper shore, how do you know exactly where you’re starting from (relative to tidal levels/inundated area)? Relating your transects to the terrestrial transition is not robustly comparable between shorelines - especially if you’re not considering tidal height or shore profile.
> - you should also aim to try and get sites surveyed during spring low water, but appreciate that this would be incredibly challenging for a large scale project on multiple shorelines, and considering risks to survey personnel (e.g. from hazardous biota and tidal ranges)
> - all shorelines to be surveyed should have either a profile measured, with the leading edge of the tide recorded at at least one position and related to a local tide gauge. Alternatively (e.g. for NW Australia) you could deploy current temperature depth (CTD) sensors along your profile to collect tidal information instead
> - you can set up standardised sampling distances for each shoreline, but making sure that the relative distance along the shore is comparable to the low water to high water range on each shoreline. This way you could potentially reduce sampling effort whilst simultaneously obtaining better data (work smarter not harder).
> 
> The above approach allows identification of zonation on shorelines, and direct comparison between shorelines.
> 
> And just a quick comment about H ratios/measures of expertise based on number of publications - there are a lot of very skilled and experienced people out there (including but not limited to traditional owners) who have potentially a lot to contribute. Such metrics are often used when recruiting for positions in academic and governmental organisations. Judging people’s expertise by the number of publications they have excludes a lot of expertise from outside of academia/governmental organisations - especially if a) publications aren’t a big part of their role and they have other drivers/Key Performance Indicators, or b) a lot of their work will not or cannot be published (e.g. confidentiality). This has also been raised in previous emails about academic publications of ‘new’ science that’s already well known. Surely ‘broadening the net’ provides opportunities for new ideas?
> 
> Let me know if you have any questions.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Garnet
> 
> 
> 
> On 3 Jan 2021, at 03:19, David Blakeway <fathom5marineresearch at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Garnet,
> Strikes me that, if we want to know who lives where on the mudflat, we should be asking the people who've lived there 2000 generations. Was that done?
> Dave
> 
> On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 9:03 PM Garnet Hooper via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>> wrote:
> I wanted to broaden this discussion somewhat, to highlight that issues in reliability aren’t just potentially limited to statistical robustness, or even to a single paper or study. There are examples where whole research programs, involving participation by multiple reputable academic and governmental organisations and volunteers, have resulted in outcomes that ‘muddy the waters’ of our understanding because the conclusions are just plain incorrect. In the example below (I appreciate it’s a non-coral example, but still worth raising), poor design of multiple facets of the survey was the culprit, and the likely reason was selection of non-technical (though academically-reputable) specialists to design the study.
> 
> The Eighty Mile Beach and Roebuck Bay intertidal/infaunal surveys in Western Australia (e.g. ‘the long mud’) have been undertaken on several occasions and comprised multiple intertidal transects across beaches across a wide area. The aim was to understand zonation across the intertidal zone. But the problem was that the survey wasn’t designed by infaunal specialists, but shorebird specialists - and that’s important. Key issues with the design resulted from a lack of consideration of drivers of zonation for infauna (e.g. transects commenced at the top of the shore), used standardised sampling sub-units of a pre-determined size across all shorelines, and failed to consider differences in profiles of the different shorelines. The failures in the design meant that identification and mapping of different zones was not feasible in most cases. The conclusions therefore erroneously noted that there was no evidence of zonation at the sites surveyed. Several reports and papers of these findings have been peer reviewed and published.
> 
> To be fair, the most recent repeat survey (i.e. ANNROEBIM 2016) report has avoided some of the issues by re-framing the study to focus on mapping and identifying ecological value for potential listing of the site as a world heritage area. And at least the report recognised that some species preferred the mudflats at the top of the shore, and other species preferred the mudflats in the lower shore. However, the underlying issues in the survey design still exist, and therefore far more could be derived from the data if additions to the survey design were made to allow determination of patterns of zonation.
> 
> Season’s greetings and all the best for 2021,
> 
> Garnet
> 
>> On 27 Dec 2020, at 01:00, Nohora Galvis via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>> wrote:
>> 
>> I agree with the need to improve reliability in research to improve coral
>> reef conservation effectiveness. Most scientists visit coral reef areas to
>> sample 5-10 transects in 3 days and conclude about what is enough to save
>> coral reefs.
>> 
>> The role of Citizen Science involving local community is to detail
>> georeferenced informatión of what is happening in each site. Therefore,
>> case studies are useful to provide a reliable background about
>> anthropogenic factors and the respective ecological impact.
>> 
>> It is vital that researchers take into account local secondary information
>> as well to avoid jumping into conclusions or declaring a discovery that was
>> considered decades before.
>> 
>> Season's Greetings !!
>> 
>> El jue, dic 17, 2020 14:23, Rupert Ormond via Coral-List <
>> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov<mailto:coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>> escribió:
>> 
>>> Hi Doug, and coral-listers,
>>> 
>>> This is certainly an important issue. Human behaviour is highly variable
>>> and can shift in relation to numerous subtle factors. The ecology of
>>> many marine organisms can similarly be very variable with time and
>>> place. In both fields there has been a tendency for researchers to look
>>> for situations or locations likely to provide evidence that will support
>>> their fashionable theory - old or new - and then play down evidence
>>> pointing the other way.
>>> 
>>> As the papers you mention highlight, there is also a regular problem in
>>> ecology with sample size, so very often researchers or referees reject
>>> other ideas that conflict with the prevailing view, when often had
>>> larger sample sizes been possible, the data would have supported a more
>>> complex explanation.
>>> 
>>> The behaviour of a given species may also be adaptive and change. As an
>>> example, I remember very well decades ago running some experiments on
>>> the feeding behaviour of Crown-of-thorns with about 30 animals all kept
>>> in separate tanks. We had a very clear statistically significant if
>>> surprising result. To check, several months later we repeated the
>>> experiment and got exactly the opposite result, equally clearly. It
>>> turned out starfish show ingestive conditioning and can alter their
>>> feeding behaviour dramatically depending on past and recent experience.
>>> 
>>> Researchers and journals should both be less ready to reject papers with
>>> contrary results.
>>> 
>>> Rupert
>>> 
>>> *Prof. Rupert Ormond**
>>> *Co-Director, Marine Conservation International
>>> Hon. Professor, Centre for Marine Biodiversity & Biotechnology,
>>> Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
>>> 
>>> 
>>>>> On 14/12/2020 08:20, Douglas Fenner via Coral-List wrote:
>>>>> Psychology's replication crisis inspires ecologists to push for more
>>>>> reliable research
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/psychology-s-replication-crisis-inspires-ecologists-push-more-reliable-research
>>>> 
>>>> By the way, I believe the problem in psychology has been primarily in
>>>> social psychology experiments, a small part of psychology as a whole.
>>>> 
>>>> I think this fits with the need to do much better at documenting the
>>>> identification of species in our research (except in areas of low
>>> diversity
>>>> or easily identified groups, and in field surveys where it is
>>> impossible),
>>>> as pointed out for insects in the study I pointed to twice.
>>> Interestingly,
>>>> there wasn't a single comment online or offline to me about the
>>>> implications of the insect study for coral reef ecology.  Makes me wonder
>>>> if maybe people don't have an argument against it, but just prefer to
>>>> continue doing things the way we always have been, after all it would
>>>> involve some extra work.  But it goes directly to the question of
>>>> replicability, you can't replicate a study if the species identification
>>>> can't be verified and may well be wrong.
>>>> 
>>>> Survey results suggest that a lot of entomology research could be
>>>> impossible to replicate
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01541-0%20
>>>> 
>>>> Packer, L., Monckton, S. K., Onuferko, T. M. & Ferrari, R. R.
>>> Validating
>>>> taxonomic identifications in entomological research.  Insect Conservation
>>>> and Diversity 11, 1–12 (2018)
>>>> 
>>>> https://skmonckton.com/Packeretal._2018_Validating.pdf
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,  Doug
>>>> 
>>>> 
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