Putting applied ecology into practice - Newcastle University

Journal of Applied Ecology 2010, 47, 1–4 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01757.x
EDITORIAL
Putting applied ecology into practice
Jane Memmott 1 *, Marc Cadotte 2 , Philip E. Hulme 3 , Gill Kerby 4 , E.J. Milner-Gulland 5 and
Mark J. Whittingham 6
1 School of Biological Sciences, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 3PZ, UK; 2 Department of Biological Sciences, University
of Toronto – Scarborough and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, ON, Canada;
3 Bio-Protection Research Centre, PO Box 84, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand; 4 British Ecological
Society, Charles Darwin House, 12 Roger Street, London WC1N 2JU; 5 Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College
London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY; and 6 School of Biology, Ridley Building, Newcastle
University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
Introduction
In 2005, an editorial was published in the Journal that
addressed the changing emphasis and direction of applied ecology
(Freckleton et al. 2005). This editorial proposed that the
Journal should increasingly target papers that would have
direct relevance to ecological management and policy while
maintaining a strong link to basic ecological concepts and theories.
These core aspects are still true 5 years later, but with
expanding areas of research and new management challenges;
today more than ever the Journal must reach out and offer real
insight and options for management. The aims of this new editorialaretooutlinetoauthorsandreviewersthekeyattributes
that form the basis of the papers published in the Journal of
Applied Ecology and to announce new developments in line
with our strategic vision for the journal at the start of a new
decade.
The Journal’s critical role in influencing policy is emphasized
by the looming deadline of the Convention on Biological
Diversity which set the target of significantly reducing biodiversity
loss by 2010. A number of ecological audits assessing
biodiversity loss have taken place, for example, the Millenium
Ecosystem Assessment examined the consequences of ecosystem
change for human well-being and concluded that, worldwide,
60% of ecosystem services had been degraded. Other
assessments are in progress, for example, the National Ecosystem
Assessment will provide the first analysis of the UK’s natural
environment in terms of the benefits it provides to society.
These targets and audits are not environmental niceties; rather
as stated by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
in 2005 ‘Failure to conserve and use biological diversity in a
sustainable manner would result in degrading environments,
new and more rampant illnesses, deepening poverty and a continued
pattern of inequitable and untenable growth’. Put practically:
biodiversity matters, it matters to the rich and to the
poor, to the developed and to the developing world. Applied
*Correspondence author. E-mail: jane.memmott@bristol.ac.uk
Ó 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation Ó 2010 British Ecological Society
ecologists are a crucial part of a multi-disciplinary group
engaged in managing human use of the environment to prevent
Kofi Annan’s vision from materializing. Working proactively
with environmental managers, collaborating with colleagues in
the social and physical sciences, and holding two-way conversations
with policy makers and the public are all in the job
description of the modern applied ecologist.
The Journal of Applied Ecology is one of the most highly
ranked international journals in its field, with a reputation for
publishing papers that combine the highest standards of ecological
science with direct relevance to environmental management.
Our remit is extremely large. Thus, we publish research
on animal, microbial and plant taxa across a broad range of
habitats and ecosystems, and these papers span observational,
experimental and theoretical studies. With the dramatic
growth of applied ecological research in the last decade, the
Journal needs to refine its scope to ensure we retain our distinct
identity among ecology journals. To help potential authors
identify whether their paper is suitable for the journal, we have
described below the types of papers we accept for publication.
Our acceptance rate is challenging (14Æ5% in 2008) and authors
need to be confident that their study fits our remit before submission.
As examples of good practice, we use papers that
proved particularly influential or that were selected as the Editor’s
choice. Editor’s choice is a new initiative begun in 2008
and is used as a means of highlighting papers that are, especially
timely, particularly high quality and meet our key criteria
of ecological studies with management relevance.
Characteristics of a Journal of Applied
Ecology paper
All Journal of Applied Ecology papers cover ecology with management
relevance, i.e. they present research that has direct relevance
to environmental management. However, papers
focused solely on the specifics of management in a particular
location, without taking into account ecological dynamics
and interactions or providing more general lessons, do not fit
the Journal’s mandate to advance scientific understanding of

2 Editorial
applied ecological problems. Conversely, ecological papers
that do not have a clear and direct relevance to the management
of ecosystems and ⁄ or biodiversity are outside our remit.
To highlight the applied importanceofeverythingthatwepublish,
we place a great deal of emphasis on the ‘Synthesis and
Applications’ point of the abstract, where the management
implications of the paper must be laid out clearly and convincingly.
An example of where research has truly integrated basic
ecological science with an applied problem is Kilpatrick, Gillin
& Daszak (2009) whose work on the risk of transmission of
Brucellosis from bison to cattle clearly demonstrates how good
science can inform practical management. They do this by
using a model that integrated epidemiological and ecological
data to determine the spatio-temporal relative risk of transmission
of Brucella from bison to cattle under different scenarios.
They then used their data to outline two strategies for managing
this risk of transmission and they discussed the consequences
of the current adaptive management plan.
A continuing weakness in applied ecology is the lack of
papers that have actually tested management recommendations
in the field. Thus, analysing a problem, offering a management
solution and then implementing that solution and
testing its efficacy in an adaptive management approach. The
vast majority of papers published in the peer-reviewed literature,
including our journal, fall short of this ideal, stopping at
the point of offering a management solution. Greater collaboration
with applied practitioners will provide the fastest and
most effective way to ensure that papers genuinely contribute
to management in the real world; a good example of this
approach is Carvell et al. (2007). Here, the co-authors form a
team of government scientists, a university academic and a
practitioner who runs a wildlife farming company, with the latter
training farmers to implement the management recommendations
made in the paper. This training is delivered via
collaboration with the government agencies that manage the
agri-environment schemes, as well as major industry partners
in the food and farming sectors (e.g. http://www.operation
bumblebee.co.uk). The papers coming out of academic : practitioner
collaborations will have solid, empirically validated
results of direct and broad relevance to both ecological science
and ecological practice.
Within the remit of an ecologically based paper with management
relevance, a typical Journal of Applied Ecology paper
falls into one of the three categories below:
1. A data or modelling paper that is the definitive one in its
area, or a pioneer in a new area. Specifically, these are highquality
data papers that significantly advance the field using a
sophisticated or substantial sampling protocol. These have
become the definitive paper in their subject area, for example
Hendrickx et al. (2007) ask how landscape, land use and habitat
diversity affect arthropod diversity in agricultural systems
by sampling bees, beetles, hoverflies, true bugs and spiders at
24 field sites across seven countries. Some data papers that
make significant contributions to the field may not necessarily
be as robust with regard to sampling protocols (often due to
major practical constraints), but nonetheless form the pioneering
contributions to a contentious or novel area.
2. The Journal welcomes Review papers. When submitting
these, authors need to consider whether they provide a synthesis
of ideas that includes new insights not evident in the
individual papers under consideration. Thus, a review paper
needs to be much more than a thorough compilation of the
literature.
3. Forum papers that succinctly challenge received wisdom
in environmental management and policy and ⁄ or raise issues
where new perspectives are required or where conflicts are
evident. These articles stimulate dialogue between ecologists
and managers or ecologists and policy makers, for example,
the recent forum on the management of raptor predation on
UK grouse moors (Redpath & Thirgood 2009; Sotherton,
Tapper & Smith 2009; Thompson et al. 2009). Some of our
most influential papers fall into the Forum category and
thereby help to set future research agendas. Other good
examples are Palmer et al. (2005) who propose criteria for
assessing the success of river restoration schemes, Sutherland
et al. (2006) who identify 100 questions of high policy relevance,
and Hulme et al. (2008) who propose a framework to
assist the comparative analysis and regulation of invasions by
a wide range of taxa. While somewhat of a niche market in
our submissions, publishing the BES lecture at the BES
Annual Meeting enables the journal to publicize the ideas of
some of the most influential thinkers in environmental policy.
These include the papers by Beringer (2000) and Gray (2004)
on genetic modification, King (2005) on climate change, Lawton
(2007) tackling the challenges at the policy:science interface,
and Dasgupta (2007) addressing environmental
economics.
With the launch of the new BES journal, Methods in Ecology
and Evolution (MEE; see http://www.methodsinecologyand
evolution.org), purely methodological papers that do not
significantly advance applied or conservation science, will
bereturnedwitharecommendationtosubmittoMEE.
Although the Journal requires papers to be relevant to the
discipline of ecology, we welcome interdisciplinary contributions,
given that the management of natural systems will not
succeed without contributions from a range of disciplines. For
example, applied management and policy considerations may
rely as much on decision-theory or economics as ecological
processes. A case in point is the threat of biological invasions
wherethereareclearlinksbetweeneconomicdevelopment,
national income and trade and the numbers of invasive species
in a particular region (Hulme 2009). We are a forward thinking
journal and areas where we would like to see more papers
include: the linked ecological and economic dynamics of ecosystem
services, combating emerging infectious diseases, the
costs and benefits of intense management activities to combat
the effects of global change, and approaches to decision-making
about the management of natural systems. Authors need
to consider carefully whether their work really does represent a
major advance. In particular, papers on agri-environmental
schemes, road impacts and population models for rare species
in particular locations need to represent a particularly large
stepforwardwhencomparedwithpreviouspapersinthese
fields. Finally, we are no longer looking for papers assessing
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the value of grasslands for livestock production, forests for
timber yield or the role of management on soil nutrient fluxes
unless they address ecological processes of relevance to biodiversity
and conservation.
Given that the solution to many environmental problems
will involve numerous parties, applied ecologists need to
engage as wide an audience as possible with their research. We
do this in a range of ways, including dissemination in the traditional
media, as well as workshops, conferences and the papers
we publish (particularly Forum articles). We are increasingly
using our online resources to engage the wider public, such as
RSS, twitter, and online commentaries such as Editor’s
choice.
While publishing a paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology
places the work in the international research arena, the journal
also gets excellent coverage from the media, possibly the best
of any ecological journal. Considering just the last 2 years,
four papers have attracted a significant amount of media attention.
These are: Bergstrom et al. (2009) on the trophic cascade
which followed the removal of cats from Macquarie Island;
Devereux, Denny & Whittingham (2008) on the impact of turbine
location on the distribution of four functional groups of
wintering farmland birds; Epstein et al. (2009) working on the
fruit bat, Pteropus vampyrus, who demonstrated that current
hunting rates are unsustainable; and Dawson & Efford (2009)
using a new acoustic method to census cryptic species. Engaging
the public, policy makers and politicians in any aspect of
applied ecology is key to solving many environmental problems.
When an article is accepted for publication in the Journal
of Applied Ecology we encourage authors to engage with the
media and we can provide advice and support on that process.
Strategic objectives
As a journal, we have both long and short-term strategic objectives
which we meet using a variety of approaches. A key strategic
aim of the Journal is to increase both the authorship and
readership of the journal from Asia, and we are working proactively
to achieve this. For example, to coincide with two
major scientific meetings in China (the annual meeting of the
Society for Conservation Biology in Beijing and the International
Congress on Biological Invasions in Fuzhou), we published
two online virtual issues giving free access to the best of
our papers over the last 5 years relevant to each meeting. We
also compiled a Special Profile on conservation in China in the
June 2009 issue of the journal to coincide with these meetings,
and we distributed information and contents lists in Chinese,
both via email campaigns and directly to delegates. We are
actively seeking to recruit leading applied ecologists in Asia to
our team of Associate Editors.
Another strategic aim is that we intend to be more than a
high-impact journal that acts as a repository for quality ecological
papers with management relevance. Rather, we also aim to
facilitate the channels of communication between applied
ecologists, from academic to practitioner and vice versa. An
editorial in Nature in 2007 (Anonymous 2007) discussed the
‘yawning implementation gap’ between academic conservation
Editorial 3
biologists and conservation practitioners. The editorial
described how the practitioners who actually carry out conservation
work have no access to the applied ecology journals
where conservation academics publish their research. Moreover,
these papers are written in such a style as to render them
unintelligible to people other than fellow conservation academics.
The advice from the editorial was for the two groups to ‘get
out of their respective ruts, open up paths of communication,
share information and seek ever more efficient means to a common
end’. The Journal has started three new ventures to meet
this challenge.
We held the first of what we hope will be a series of related
conference workshops at the Society of Conservation Biology’s
2009 annual meeting in Beijing, where a large number of
academics and conservation practitioners gather, entitled
‘Improving the conservation impact of scientific publishing’.
Given our strategic focus on Asia, this was a particularly useful
venue to hold the workshop, which was extremely well
attended and positively received. Acknowledging that the
implementation gap is an issue that concerns all the journals in
the field of conservation and applied ecology, and their publishers,
the panellists included representatives from several
leading journals and online resources, as well as from
Wiley-Blackwell. The workshop was co-organized by one of
our Editors and the Editor of Oryx, and more details about the
subjects discussed and the next steps we intend to take as a
group to address the problem are in Milner-Gulland et al.
(2010). Future areas where we hope to target such efforts
include the management of biological invasions where, even in
this relatively new discipline, the disparity between science output
and practical implementation has long been recognized
(Hulme 2003).
We have also initiated a series of conferences in the UK
that use a ‘Think Global, Act Local’ approach. Rather than
using the traditional conference approach of inviting eminent
ecological academics from around the world, our underlying
rationale is to get local conservation academics talking to
local conservation practitioners with the aim of forging collaborative
projects. Academics are often on the lookout for
field sites and field interventions for use by their research
group; also many funding bodies need a practical partner on
board. Moreover, academics can find out what individuals in
charge of implementing management consider the key
threats to the integrity of ecosystems and what they consider
to be the most effective management solutions. These may
be different to the opinions of academic conservation practitioners.
Practitioners gain by having a collaborator who can
bring them up to date with the latest scientific developments
and translate the scientific jargon into everyday language.
While these conferences started in the UK, the plan is to run
them internationally.
Another new initiative starts this year and consists of a series
of papers called ‘Practitioners’ Perspectives’. Here, key practitioners
are invited to contribute their viewpoints on species
conservation, ecosystem restoration, pest management and the
mitigation of environmental threats to biodiversity. These
short articles will act as a platform for individuals involved in
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4 Editorial
hands-on management of ecological resources, be they species,
ecosystems or landscapes, to present their personal views on
the direction of applied ecological research. The articles will
usually be commissioned by invitation from the Editorial
board, but if authors are interested in submitting this type of
manuscript, please contact the editorial office.
Finally, one of our key aims and one that mirrors a strategic
aim of the British Ecological Society, is to build ecological
capacity around the world. With an eye on investing in the
future, we offer an annual prize for young authors – The
Southwood Prize – with recent recipients from the USA, UK,
Mexico, South Africa and Spain.
Conclusion
Increasingly, scientific publishing is becoming influenced by
citation metrics with authors selecting journals for publishing
their best work on the basis of impact factors. While the Journal
certainly holds its own in these respects, as scientists we
must not forget that our research should have a wider and
long-lasting impact. Moreover, research assessment bodies
are increasingly becoming cognisant of ‘impact’ and the initiatives
posed above are likely to make the Journal a world leader
in bridging the gap between academic science and delivery
where new knowledge is needed. The editorial team is committed
to ensuring the work we publish can contribute to a
change for the better in the natural environment. While we
manage rising numbers of papers submitted to the journal,
our roles extend beyond the management of manuscripts and
referees to take the research to a wider audience. We hope we
can encourage you to contribute to this mission as authors,
referees, editors and ⁄ or readers and together we will make a
difference.
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