Groom et al. arrives

I received an e-mail from Sinauer this afternoon saying that UPS had delivered replacement copies of Groom et al. to the bookstore. I presume copies will be on shelves shortly, if they're not already there.

Latest on the ivory-billed woodpecker

After last spring's announcement that the ivory-billed woodpecker had been re-discovered, three ornithologists were unconvinced. They prepared a paper describing why, and it was about to appear in PLoS Biology in late July when it was withdrawn after two of the authors heard audiotapes that convinced them that the initial report was reliable.

The audiotapes and a 4-second video were shown last week at the meetings of the American Ornithologists Union in Santa Barbara. (I don't know whether the video shown at the AOU meeting is the same as the one associated with the Science article. You'll need to have QuickTime installed to watch the video associated with that link.) Two of the three authors of the withdrawn PLoS Biology paper are convinced by the audio evidence, but at least one thinks the video is of a pileated woodpecker, and one accepts neither the audio nor the video evidence.

This morning's New York Times (free registration required) provides more details.

Updates to course schedule

I've deleted the lecture that I had tentatively scheduled for 9 September. That means there won't be any lectures next week. After Wednesday's lecture, we'll resume with a guest lecture from Dave Roberts on 12 September. I will do my best to condense two lectures into one (there was only one set of notes anyway).

I've also added announcements for the Teale Series Lectures to the course schedule. I won't be taking attendance, but I encourage you to attend if you can. The Teale Series is a joint effort of faculty from a variety of departments, and it brings scholars with a wide range of expertise and background to campus, focusing on the environment. This year's series looks pretty good. (Of course, I'm prejudiced. I am one of those who helps organize it.)

Notes updated

Notes for the first three lectures are now posted, and I've won the battle with automated HTML conversion. The HTML version of the notes now has all of the figures. They're not as pretty to look at as in the PDF, but if you're reading the notes on-line, they'll be good enough to let you see what points I'm making.

Links to readings associated with Dave Roberts' guest lecture on 12 September are also available.

Update on Groom, Meffe, and Carroll

If you've been to the Co-Op looking for Groom, Meffe, and Carroll, you've found that the shelves are empty. Sinauer asked them to pull it from the shelves after they discovered that pages in Chapter 9 are not in the proper order. (They're apparently all there, just in the wrong order.) They are re-manufacturing the book and expect to ship copies during the last week of August (i.e., next week) or the first few days in September.

If you purchased a copy, check the pages in chapter 9 and see if they're out of order. If they are, I suggest contacting Sinauer directly to ask about receiving a replacement.

Lecture notes for 8/31

I've posted the first set of lecture notes. I'm having trouble with my automated HTML conversion, so the HTML version of the notes doesn't include the figures -- just some gobbledegook that won't make a lot of sense where the figures ought to be. The PDF version looks fine.

If you plan to print these notes rather than reading them on-line, please don't print them until the copyright notice on the bottom of the first page reads 2001-2005. Ones with an earlier date haven't been revised yet.

Re-wilding North America

Josh Donlan and colleagues just published a provocative paper in Nature (436:913-914; 2005) arguing that we should “actively promote the restoration of large wild vertebrates into North America in preference to the ‘pests and weeds’ (rats and dandelions) that will otherwise come to dominate the landscape”. We'll discuss these ideas later in the semester when we talk about landscape-scale conservation and reserve design, but since this is “hot off the press”, I thought I'd point it out now.

Textbook

The 3rd edition of Groom, Meffee, & Carroll, Priniciples of Conservation Biology, has just been released. As described on the text page, there is no required textbook for the course. The readings will be drawn from the primary literature, and I will provide links to on-line copies of the reading from the links associated with each lecture.

But I've asked the UConn Co-Op to order 20 copies of Groom et al. If you want a one-volume reference to conservation biology, it's the one I would recommend. Although we won't be using it directly, you might find it a useful resource for additional examples and different perspectives from the one I present.

Notifications

If you'd like to receive an e-mail notification when I post new entries here, enter your e-mail address in the box to the side. Once the semester has started I will delete all existing e-mail addresses and substitute official UConn e-mail addresses. If you'd like to receive e-mail at a different account, you'll be responsible for arranging to have your e-mail forwarded.

Preliminary course schedule

I have now posted a version of the course schedule that should be relatively close to the final lecture schedule. There will undoubtedly be modifications as the semester progresses, but this will give you a good idea what we'll be covering. The notes linked to the first lecture have not yet been revised. Please take a look at them, but don't print a copy until I post a notice saying that they've been revised.

Please note that I have scheduled a make-up lecture on Friday, 9 September from 9:30-11:00am (not the usual 10:30-12:00 lecture period). I will be out of the country until late on 7 September, and I don't want to fall behind on lectures that early in the semester. We'll talk more about the rescheduling on the first day of class.