A final warning to planet Earth

Writing in the scientific journal Bioscience, 15,364 scientists from 184 countries have issued a “warning to humanity” and present a radical agenda to protect planet Earth. We, the billions of people believing in human exceptionalism, categorically reject this agenda and issue in return a stark warning to planet Earth. No amount of facts showing that planet Earth is in a dire state will have us changing our mindset. We do not care about planet Earth. We care about our next devices and their latest cool features. We want more stuff.

The authors of this warning ignore the obvious facts that the era of poets marveling at the diversity of flower or insect species is over and that the real-world wildlife has now become obsolete. We simply take our smartphones to overlay customized virtual creatures on our surrounding environment and dispose them when new trends dictate. There is no longer a need to preserve filthy and dangerous wildlife that moreover lives in places where Amazon does not deliver. More iPhone are sold per day than there are lions, tigers, elephants and gorillas on the planet: this should alert the signatories to what really matters, were they not ideologically biased against human progress.

Those scientists argue that we are approaching many of the planet limits. We refuse to accept any kind of limits: growth must indefinitely prevail unrestricted. We officially summon planet Earth to abandon its intransigent attitude and accept the inevitable: an extension of its biological and physical limits. Should planet Earth stick with its hard line ideological stance, it needs to be aware that mankind will never compromise and that we will seek a second planet. The universe is like our ambition: limitless.

The new economy of nature, whereby ecosystem services such as pollination are monetarily valued, should not be understood as another dogmatic way of protecting planet Earth. It is instead an invitation to producers and shareholders to conquer new markets by outcompeting nature with better services at a cheaper price for consumers. Ecosystems must fight for their survival like any other business. Protecting nature even more would give it an undue competitive advantage against our industries. If our agricultural practices endanger bees pollinating crops, we do not need to change these practices. Instead we let bees disappear and replace them by AI powered micro drones – which do not sting and create many jobs.

Those scientists obvious ideological aim is to inspire discussions on broader questions relevant to overconsumption, overpopulation and how our institutions can meet the challenge of reducing human pressure on planet Earth. We find this unacceptable and call on the signatories of to join us on the side of winners against planet Earth, and hence to symbolically withdraw their signatures by not engaging in any of the research suggested in the warning to humanity. Fellow scientists, ask not what more you can do for planet Earth, ask what more planet Earth can do for you. Both left and right politicians are already united in this truly bipartisan issue that beautifully transcends the political divide: worshipping growth and denying that we depend on our environment.

We therefore strongly oppose the agenda accompanying the second warning to humanity and will not tolerate any obstacle against our way of life –be it tree-huggers or trees themselves. At the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the 41st U.S. President claimed “our way of life is not up for negotiation”. Today, speaking in the name of billions of people, we proudly claim to all be U.S. presidents. Planet Earth better be warned.

Guillaume Chapron¹,  Harold Levrel²,  Yves Meinard³ &  Franck Courchamp⁴

A (satirical) response to the “Warning of scientists to humanity” by Ripple et al., 2017 (here), published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (here). The French version is here.

 

¹ Grimsö Wildlife Research Station, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

² AgroParisTech, CNRS.

³ Université Paris-Dauphine.

⁴ CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay.

Dernier avertissement à la planète Terre

Dans la revue scientifique Bioscience, 15 364 scientifiques de 184 pays ont publié un « avertissement à l’humanité » et présentent un programme radical pour protéger la planète Terre. Nous, les milliards de personnes qui croyons en l’exceptionnalisme humain, rejetons catégoriquement ce programme et émettons en retour un avertissement sévère à la planète Terre. Aucun fait montrant que la planète Terre est dans un état désastreux ne nous fera changer d’état d’esprit. Nous ne nous soucions pas de la planète Terre. Nous nous soucions de nos prochains gadgets et de leurs toutes dernières fonctionnalités. Nous voulons consommer plus.

Les auteurs de cet avertissement à l’humanité ignorent que l’ère des poètes s’émerveillant de la diversité des espèces de fleurs ou d’insectes est terminée et que la faune du monde réel est maintenant devenue obsolète. Nous prenons simplement nos smartphones pour superposer des créatures virtuelles personnalisées sur notre environnement et les supprimons lorsque de nouvelles tendances l’exigent. Il n’y a plus besoin de préserver la faune hirsute et dangereuse qui vit par ailleurs dans des endroits où Amazon ne livre pas. Plus d’iPhone sont vendus par jour qu’il n’y a de lions, de tigres, d’éléphants et de gorilles sur la planète : cela devrait alerter les signataires sur ce qui compte vraiment, s’ils n’étaient pas idéologiquement biaisés contre le progrès humain.

Ces scientifiques affirment que nous approchons de nombreuses limites de la planète. Nous refusons toute sorte de limites : la croissance doit prévaloir indéfiniment sans restriction. Nous invitons officiellement la planète Terre à abandonner son attitude intransigeante et à accepter l’inévitable : une extension de ses limites biologiques et physiques. Si la planète Terre reste ancrée sur sa position dogmatique, elle doit être consciente que l’humanité ne fera jamais de compromis et que nous chercherons une seconde planète. L’univers est à l’image de notre ambition : sans limites.

La nouvelle économie de la nature, par laquelle les services écosystémiques comme la pollinisation sont évalués sur le plan monétaire, ne doit pas être comprise comme un autre moyen idéologique de protéger la planète Terre. Il s’agit au contraire d’une invitation aux industriels et aux actionnaires à conquérir de nouveaux marchés en gagnant contre la nature avec de meilleurs services et à un prix moins élevé pour les consommateurs. Les écosystèmes doivent se battre pour leur survie comme toute autre entreprise. Protéger la nature encore plus lui donnerait un avantage concurrentiel indu contre nos industries. Si nos pratiques agricoles mettent en danger la pollinisation des cultures, nous n’avons pas besoin de changer ces pratiques. Laissons les abeilles disparaître et remplaçons-les par des micro-drones contrôlés par intelligence artificielle : eux ne piquent pas et créent des emplois.

L’objectif idéologique évident de ces scientifiques est d’inspirer des discussions sur des questions plus larges concernant la surconsommation, la surpopulation et la manière dont nos institutions peuvent relever le défi de réduire la pression humaine sur la planète Terre. Nous trouvons cela inacceptable et appelons les signataires à nous rejoindre du côté des gagnants contre la planète Terre, et à retirer symboliquement leurs signatures en ne s’engageant dans aucune des recherches suggérées dans cet avertissement à l’humanité. Chers collègues, ne demandez pas ce que vous pouvez faire de plus pour la planète Terre, demandez ce que la planète Terre peut faire de plus pour vous. Les politiciens de gauche et de droite sont déjà unis dans cette question vraiment bipartisane qui transcende magnifiquement la division politique : adorer la croissance et nier que nous dépendons de notre environnement.

Nous nous opposons donc fermement au programme idéologique accompagnant le deuxième avertissement à l’humanité et nous ne tolérerons aucun obstacle contre notre mode de vie. Lors du premier Sommet de la Terre à Rio de Janeiro en 1992, le 41^ème Président des Etats-Unis a déclaré que « notre mode de vie n’est pas ouvert à la négociation ». Aujourd’hui, au nom de milliards de personnes, nous revendiquons fièrement d’être tous des présidents des États-Unis. La planète Terre est avertie.

 

Guillaume Chapron¹,  Harold Levrel²,  Yves Meinard³ &  Franck Courchamp⁴

Une réponse (satyrique) au “Warning of scientists to humanity” par Ripple et al., 2017 (ici), publiée dans Trends in Ecology and Evolution (ici). The English version is here.

 

¹ Grimsö Wildlife Research Station, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

² AgroParisTech, CNRS.

³ Université Paris-Dauphine.

⁴ CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay.

100 papers every students should read

Ever wondered whether you had completely missed some of the most important papers in your discipline? Or whether you just read enough? Well, now you can’t stop wondering, since the answer is right here in this new post. About our latest paper, a paper that recommends to read recommended papers.

In ecology. Yeah, I know, the title doesn’t specify “in ecology”. And it should, since a list of ecology papers is going to be of no interest whatsoever for you guys in astrophysics or neurobiology. Plus, the Sheldon Coopers and Amy Farrah Fowlers among you are now probably going to smirk about our classics. My official excuse is that you should always try to have as short a title as possible, in order to be attractive (after all, we are living in an era of unsalvageable lazy millennials). But the real reason is that I wanted to give my blog a little boost, after months of abstinence, so that was on purpose. But instead of frowning with your judgmental scorn, please consider that I didn’t put sex, GoT or Trump in the title, be merciful, and go forward to all your friends.

Now that you’ve made a healthy re-acquaintance with my annoying habit to not-cut-to-the-chase, I should probably start. After all, rule#1 for a successful blog: short posts (see one of my first entries).

For a few years, I’ve been wondering whether I was missing the important papers, and more worryingly, if my students were. There are now so many papers to read, and so little time to do it, it’s easy to stay confined within a small niche of papers – your area of expertise – and miss the big picture, those papers that made your field, and from which the wise professors probably get part of their wisdom.

So, I have been thinking for quite some time of the best way to come up with such a list. It was not easy, because important papers are a very subjective thing to select, let alone rank. But I came up with a simple solution: ask the wise professors. Or more exactly, ask the 665 experts in the Editorial Board of the highest ranking, generalist journals in ecology, who probably are the best suited to evaluate the worth of papers regardless of their field. After receiving all their nominees, an internet vote and clever statistical analyses by my brilliant co-author and good friend Corey Bradshaw, at the time in sabbatical in my group, we came up with …

(hint: click on the image to get the list – I really must tell you everything…)

This came up with a few surprises, such as the discrepancy between the articles that experts recommend to students and those they have actually read themselves, the fact that the average scientist reads ~40 papers per month (if you thought that maybe you were lazy, now you know for sure), or the huge gender bias in authors of said articles, but, damned, I don’t have any space left (nor you any patience left) to discuss that. I really should learn to focus on the important stuff. Well, this said, for those you interested in the full story, it is now published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. As for the pdfs of those articles, I’m sure they somehow will be found on SciHub…

Ok, remember, you’re supposed to read at least 40 papers per month, so the 100 papers’ list is not going to be a huge additional load in your PhD. So, don’t blame us and go start reading your share. And no, this post doesn’t count as a reading.

 

Oh, and if you find one or several such papers were utterly useless to you, don’t blame me for choosing them, I didn’t. Don’t even blame me for making you read them, I didn’t either…

 

The 100 selected articles:

1. Darwin, C.R.; Wallace, A.R. 1858. On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 3:45-62
2. Hardin, G. 1960. The competitive exclusion principle. Science 131:1292-1297
3. Paine, R.T. 1966. Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity. The American Naturalist 100:65-75

4. Hutchinson, G.E. 1961. The Paradox of the Plankton. The American Naturalist 95:137-145
5. Hutchinson, G.E. 1959. Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals? The American Naturalist 93:145
6. MacArthur, R.H.; Wilson, E.O. 1963. An Equilibrium Theory of Insular Zoogeography. Evolution 17:373-387

7. Hutchinson, G.E. 1957. Concluding Remarks. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 22:415-427
8. Hairston, N.G.; Smith, F.; Slobodkin, L. 1960. Community structure, population control, and competition. The American Naturalist 94:421-425

9. Connell, J.H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199:1302-1310
10. Janzen, D.H. 1970. Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests. The American Naturalist 104:501
11. May R.M. 1974. Biological populations with non-overlapping generations: stable points, stable cycles, and chaos. Science 186:645-647
12. Gause, G.F. 1934. Experimental Analysis of Vito Volterra’S Mathematical Theory of the Struggle for Existence. Science 79:16-17
13. Chesson, P. 2000. Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 31:343-366

14. Carpenter, S.R.; Kitchell, J.F.; Hodgson, J.R. 1985. Cascading trophic interactions and lake productivity. BioScience 35:634-639
15. Levin, S.A. 1992. The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: the Robert H. MacArthur Award lecture. Ecology 73:1943-1967
16. Hanski, I. 1998. Metapopulation dynamics. Nature 396:41-49
17. MacArthur, R.; Levins, R. 1967. The Limiting Similarity, Convergence, and Divergence of Coexisting Species. The American Naturalist 101:377-385
18. Tilman, D. 1977. Resource Competition Between Plankton Algae: An Experimental and Theoritical Approach. Ecology 58:338-348
19. Hamilton, W.D. 1964a. The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:42370
20. Charnov, E.L. 1976. Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem. Theoretical Population Biology 9:129-136
21. Tilman, D. 1996a. Biodiversity: Population versus ecosystem stability. Ecology 77:350-363
22. Rosenzweig, M. 1971. Paradox of enrichment: destabilization of exploitation ecosystems in ecological time. Science 171:385-387
23. Connell, J.H. 1961. The Influence of Interspecific Competition and Other Factors on the Distribution of the Barnacle Chthamalus Stellatus. Ecology 42:710-743
24. MacArthur, R.; Levins, R. 1964. Competition, habitat selection, and character displacement in a patchy environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 51:1207-1210
25. Hardin, G.J. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162:1243-1248
26. Levin, S.A. & Paine, R.T. 1974. Disturbance, patch formation, and community structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 71:2744-2747
27. Felsenstein, J. 1981. Skepticism towards Santa Rosalia, or why are there so few kinds of animals? Evolution 35:124-138
28. Tilman, D. 1994a. Competition and biodiversity in spatially structured habitats. Ecology 75:42401
29. Holling, C.S. 1973. Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:44927
30. Hurlbert, S.H. 1984. Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments. Ecological Monographs 54:187
31. Vitousek, P.M. et al. 1997b. Human Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems. Science 277:494-499
32. May R.M. 1972. Will a large complex system be stable? Nature 238:413-414
33. Pianka, E.R. 1970. On r- and K-selection. American Naturalist 104:592-597
34. Brown, J.H. et al. 2004. Toward a metabolic theory of ecology. Ecology 85:1771-1789
35. Ehrlich, P.R.; Raven, P.H. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586-608
36. MacArthur, R.H.; McArthur, J. 1961. On bird species diversity. Ecology 42:594-598
37. Simberloff, D.S. et al. 1969. Experimental Zoogeography of Islands: The Colonization of Empty Islands. Ecology 50:278-296
38. Grime, J.P. 1977. Evidence for the existence of three primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory. The American Naturalist 111:1169-1194
39. Brown, J.H. 1984. On the Relationship between Abundance and Distribution of Species. The American Naturalist 124:255
40. Connell, J.H. 1961a. Effects of competition, predation by Thais lapillus, and other factors on natural populations of the barnacle Balanus balanoides. Ecological Monographs 31:61-104
41. Holt, R.D. 1977. Predation, apparent competition, and the structure of prey communities. Theoretical Population Biology 12:197-229
42. Anderson, R.M; May, R.M. 1979. Population biology of infectious diseases: Part I. Nature 280:361-367
43. Huffaker, C.B. 1958. Experimental studies on predation: dispersion factors and predator-prey oscillations. Hilgardia 27:343-383
44. Clements, F.E. 1936. Nature and structure of the climax. Journal of Ecology 24:252-284
45. Pulliam, D.W. 1988. Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation. The American Naturalist 132:652-661
46. Lawton, J.H. 1999. Are there general laws in ecology? Oikos 84:177-192
47. Lindeman, R.L. 1942. The trophic-dynamic aspect of ecology. Ecology 23:399-418
48. Kimura, M. 1968. Evolutionary Rate at the Molecular Level. Nature 217:624-626
49. May R.M. 1976. Simple mathematical models with very complicated dynamics. Nature 261:459-467
50. Trivers, R.L. 1974 Parent-Offspring Conflict. American Zoologist 14:249-264
51. Paine, R.T. 1980. Food Webs: Linkage, Interaction Strength and Community Infrastructure. Journal of Animal Ecology 49:666-685
52. Tilman, D.; Wedin, D.; Knops, J. 1996. Productivity and sustainability influenced by biodiversity in grassland ecosystems. Nature 379:718-720
53. MacArthur, R.H. 1958. Population ecology of some warblers of northeastern coniferous forests. Ecology 39:599-619
54. May R.M. 1977. Thresholds and breakpoints in ecosystms with a multiplicity of stable states. Nature 260:471-477
55. Simberloff, D. 1976. Experimental Zoogeography of Islands : Effects of Island Size. Ecology 57:629-648
56. Schindler, D.W. 1977. Evolution of phosphorus limitation in lakes. Science 195:260-262
57. Kunin, W.E.; Gaston, K.J. 1993. The biology of rarity: Patterns, causes and consequences. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8:298-301
58. Vitousek, P. M.; Reiners W.A. 1975. Ecosystem succession and nutrient retention: a hypothesis. BioScience 25:376-381
59. Tilman, D. 1980. Resources: a Graphical-Mechanistic Approach To Competition and Predation. The American Naturalist 116:362-393
60. Lande, R. 1980. Sexual dimorphism, sexual selection, and adaptation in polygenic characters. Evolution 34:292-305
61. Tilman, D. et al. 1994. Habitat destruction and the extinction debt. Nature 371:65-66
62. Fretwell S.D. & Lucas H.L. 1970. On territorial behavior and others factors influencing habitat distribution in birds. I. Theoretical development. Acta Biothereotica 19:16-36
63. May R.M. 1973a. Qualitative stability in model ecosystems. Ecology 54:638-641
64. Redfield, A.C. 1958. The biological control of chemical factors in the environment. American Scientist 46:205-221
65. Tilman, D. et al. 1997. The Influence of Functional Diversity and Composition on Ecosystem Processes. Science 277:1300-1302
66. Hamilton, W.D. 1967. Extraordinary Sex Ratios. Science 156:477-488
67. Schluter, D. & McPhail, J.D. 1992. Ecological character displacement and speciation in sticklebacks. The American Naturalist 140:85-108
68. Hanski, I. 1994. A practical model of metapopulation dynamics. Journal of Animal Ecology. 63:151–162
69. Hamilton, W.D. 1964b. The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:17-52
70. Likens, G.E. et al. 1970. Effects of Forest Cutting and Herbicide Treatment on Nutrient Budgets in the Hubbard Brook Watershed-Ecosystem. Ecological Monographs 40:23-47
71. Odum, E.P. 1969. The strategy of ecosystem development. Science 164:262-270
72. Hubbell, S.P. 1979. Tree dispersion, abundance, and diversity in a tropical dry forest. Science 203:1299-1309
73. Grinnell, B.Y. 1917. The niche-relationships of the california thrasher. The Auk 34:427-433
74. MacArthur, R.H.; Pianka, E. R. 1966. On optimal use of a patchy environment. American Naturalist 100:603-609
75. Tilman, D.; Forest, I.; Cowles, J.M. 2014. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 45:471-493
76. May, R.M. & MacArthur, R.H. 1972a. Niche overlap as a function of environmental variability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 69:1109-1113
77. Leibold, M.A. et al. 2004. The metacommunity concept: a framework for multi-scale community ecology. Ecology Letters 7:601-613
78. Axelrod, R.; Hamilton, W. D. 1981. The Evolution of Cooperation. Science 211:1390-1396
79. Gleason, H.A. 1926. The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 53:46204
80. Grime, J.P. 1998. Benefits of plant diversity to ecosystems: immediate, filter and founder effects. Journal of Ecology 86:902-910
81. Gould S.J.; Lewontin R.C. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptionist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 205:581-5981017
82. Grant, P.R; Grant, B.R. 1995. The Founding of a New Population of Darwin’s Finches. Evolution 49:229-240
83. Stearns, S.C. 1976. Life-history tactics: a review of the ideas. The Quarterly Review of Biology 51:3
84. Vitousek, P.M. 1994. Beyond global warming: ecology and global change. Ecology 75:1861-1876
85. Janzen D.H. 1967. Why mountain passes are higher in the tropics. The American Naturalist 101:233
86. Carpenter, S.R. et al. 1987. Regulation of lake primary productivity by food web structure. Ecology 68:1863-1876
87. Stenseth, N.C. 1997. Population regulation in snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx: asymmetric food web configurations between hare and lynx. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 94:5147-5152
88. Anderson, R.M; May, R.M. 1978. Regulation and Stability of Host-Parasite Population Interactions. Journal of Animal Ecology 47:219-247
89. Krebs, C.J. et al. 1995. Impact of Food and Predation on the Snowshoe Hare Cycle. Science 269:1112-1115
90. Ginzburg, L.R.; Jensen, C.X.J. 2004. Rules of thumb for judging ecological theories. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19:121-126
91. Chave,J. 2013. The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: what have we learned in 20 years? Ecology Letters 16:42461
92. MacArthur, R. 1955. Fluctuations of Animal Populations and a Measure of Community Stability. Ecology 36:533
93. Ricklefs, R.E. 1987. Community diversity: relative roles of local and regional processes. Science 235:167-171
94. Levins, R. 1966. The strategy of model building in population biology. American Scientist 54:421-431
95. Anderson, R.M; May, R.M. 1981. The Population Dynamics of Microparasites and Their Invertebrate Hosts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 291:451-524.
96. Brown, W.L.; Wilson, E.O. 1986. Character displacement. Systematic Zoology 5:49-64
97. Lande, R. 1993. Risks of Population Extinction from Demographic and Environmental Stochasticity and Random Catastrophes. The American Naturalist 142:911-927
98. May R.M. & Anderson, R.M. 1979. Population biology of infectious diseases: Part II. Nature 280:455-461
99. Parmesan, C.; Yohe, G. 2003. A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature 421:37-42
100. Power, M.E. 1990. Effects of fish in river food webs. Science 250:811-81

 

 

PS: if you want the pdf of the 545 nominated articles – including the 100 – you may find them here.

 

 

you want to do a PhD?

yes, ok, I know, you’re from the new generation, you like infographics. Or you’re simply plain lazy and you can’t read a whole page (let alone several posts) even though it’s about your carrier, your future, and probably the most important thing in your life: your future PhD Thesis. But who am I to judge, I’m lazy too. Unable to make the effort to do that much-needed infographics.

And now, thanks to my colleague and friend Fernando Mateos-González (his blog is here), who is both clever and hard-working (and good at this kind of things), most of the tips I’ve given in my posts are gathered in a flashy and powerful infographics, that you can see below.

Enjoy. Perhaps not all in one go, read only half and keep the rest for another day, we don’t want to exhaust you…

Y si hablas español, pero no inglés, aquí puedes leer la versión en español (¡aunque deberías aprender inglés rápido, si quieres hacer un doctorado!)

The Ivory Tower

I’ve heard so many times the saying that curiosity killed the cat. In French we say that quality is a naughty defect (generally to kids, in order to discourage it). That’s utter-bullshit, pardon my English. Curiosity saved men. It’s because we’re curious that we founds ways to compensate our tiny constitution, our ridiculous speed, our feeble health and so on. And it’s because we’re curious that we invented a special job: researcher. People devoted for the sole purpose of satisfying the curiosity of the society, and/or their own.

In return, the very minimum that these researchers can do, it tell the results of their investigations. Otherwise, that’s a bit unfair, no? It’s called staying in the Ivory Tower, the tower where intellectuals selfishly do their work, while staying disconnected from the society. We get paid by the society to find stuff, and we don’t tell what we find? Apart from fueling the lunatic nature of conspiracy theorists, who think every researcher in the world participate covertly to global machinations, this is just failing to do the full spectrum of our very responsibility as researchers. Every researcher should do popularization work, be it public conferences, press interviews, books or documentaries or just press release and let the journalists communicate for them. That’s the fair thing to do, and that’s also a very good exercise to be able to explain complicated concepts, and ultimately also to get more people interested in our discipline.

With that in mind, I’ve been popularizing quite a lot, since my very early carrier. I’ve written a piece about my thesis research during my first year of PhD, against the advice not to do so of my supervisor, who thought – like almost everybody else at the time – that popularization was the realm of bad scientists: those who where not sufficiently strong in research to stay with their peers went to shine with the public, pretending to be smarter than their colleagues knew them to be. Now I’ve written more, from articles to books, initiated several documentaries, participated in several others, given conferences in front of many different audiences, including about every age of school children, and interviews to radio, tv channels and written press. And apart from one or two exceptions, every single one has been a great experience.

In some countries, like my own, the public tends to think that researchers are at best immature society parasites who work on useless questions just because they can. In others, like the USA, they tend to have a better reputation, sometimes up to selfless saviors of the society. Regardless of the general view of our profession, communicating with the public is profitable for the public, is profitable for us and is profitable for our profession.

Of course, when  I say communicate to the public, don’t go telling them all everything. We want to keep all our global conspiracies safely concealed, otherwise our secret plot to take over all the governments of Earth might be delayed…

The ants wars

yes, better than Starwars and World of Warcraft together, the wars of ants. Last year in our lab, we set up wars between different species, among the most aggressive in the world.

I’m sure you can imagine. Monstrous armies of millions of Unsullied warriors, impervious to danger, dedicated to the death, working together with the efficacy given by millions of years of evolution, all entirely bent to one single purpose, destroying the other armies. I’m certain to are picturing this. Well, you are picturing it wrong, you immature brutes. So, what did we do and why did we do it?

It was a time when a Ph D student (Cleo Bertelsmeier) was studying the effect of climate change on invasive ants. I’ve told you already why we study invasive ants. If you’ve missed it, you can read it here. The first part of the PhD thesis was to build up species distribution models to try and predict where invasive ants would find favorable regions with climate change (ants are very sensitive to climate, and milder winters may mean higher probability of establishment). And the result was that some of the most problematic invasive ant species were predicted to arrive at the same place in several regions. And because the most obvious characteristics of all these invasive ants is that they are extremely efficient at removing other arthropods, starting with local ant species, we naturally wondered what would happen if two of such Hun armies were to clash in newly invaded territories. Or in other words, is there among these tiny berserk beasts one that would take over all the others (and the rest of the world with it).

So we set up colonies of four of the worst of the worst. These were the invasive garden ant Lasius neglectus, the Argentine ant Linepithema humile, the big-headed ant Pheidole megacephala and the electric ant Wasmannia auropunctata. The experiment set up by Cleo was not really the wars you pictured, but they were enough for our purposes: boxes with colonies of 300 workers and one queen, put into contact by a tiny tube, and days of counting the dead and the survivors. And these taught us a lot. First, that the experiments of one worker versus another in a Petri dish – often set up to establish dominance hierarchies among ant species – are not well suited, because some ants species need other workers to kill others. Some ants hold the enemy while it is being cut into pieces, and you can’t do that when you’re alone, and you’ll systematically lose in duels but not necessarily a battle. It also mean that classical experiments of 10 vs 10 workers in a Petri dish are also problematic, because the lack of natural conditions can bias the results. These ants are very stressed, more or less forced to fight, and with no territory, nest or queen to defend (which was not the case in our experiment). Last, it taught us that ants adapt their strategies according to their opponents. Some species that are very aggressive and kill everything were less so when confronted to potentially stronger adversaries. Some even escaped or feigned death. And some raided the other colonies D-Day style improved with chemical weaponry, with many losses but an eventual conquest while some others remained in their strongholds and privileged defense. And eventually it taught us that when you increase complexity, for example by putting all four species together, you increase… well complexity. Here, the species that systematically lost against any of the three others won half the time when all four were fighting simultaneously.

Now I’m sure you’d like to know who was the meanest of the four. The tiny electric ant, so named for its terribly painful sting? Or the scary big-headed ants, which soldiers can cut in two any of the other species? Well, I guess that to know that you’ll have to read the paper (and perhaps that one too about their strategies)… Yes, I know, I’m mean. That’s what the ants say too.

Of course, the best fighter of all remains the Ant-man

The first rule of Breakfast Club is…

When I was a PhD student, a researcher that I admired once told me that half the research in labs is done in corridors and coffee rooms. Of course he didn’t mean that the dire restrictions of lab and office spaces faced by academia nowadays force half of us to install their benches or computers there. Even in France. What he meant was that in academia the social aspect is very important, and that social gatherings, such as coffee breaks, are not to be neglected because they are not just breaks from work and coffee loading. They are more than that. They are crucial because that’s where scientists chat. They of course sometimes chat about mundane topics, such as whether Schrödinger’s cat is male or female or both, or why 42 and not 43, or 41. But they most of the time talk about their work. Yes, most of us are in the latest stage of nerdiness and can’t be saved anymore.

And chatting about studies is really important for two things. Well, three, because it also gives you information about what the guy on the desk next to you is spending his days on (beside Facebook), which can be interesting, if not utterly fascinating (sometimes). But regarding your own research progress it’s important because it forces you to synthesize and to structure your thoughts about your work (the whole of it, or a more specific problem). This effort alone can benefit you a lot. Sometimes it will help you to get unstuck or to spot a weak link in your reasoning; sometimes it will just help you see more clearly your problem and go forward more easily. The second reason is that you can get feedback that can in many times be useful, be it from someone close to your topic or on the contrary rather remote.

With this in mind, we have set up three types of regular meetings in our group (in addition to the boring ones). The first one is the SemiBeer. We’ve talk about it here. But in a nutshell, it’s a Journal Club with two twists: 1/ we treat unconventional papers, such as funny ones, articles about controversies or papers about carrier and 2/ we drink beer (or other stuff, with peanuts and crackers, what we call apéro in France, a key cultural tradition that every other country on Earth should copy).

The second type of socio-scientific meeting is the Teameeting. That’s where we discuss problems encountered by a team member. We just gather around a table with a computer and sheets of paper and someone presents where (s)he’s stuck in her/his topic and others try to give suggestions. A brainstorming session set up at teatime, so with homemade cookies and similar goodies, hence the super pun I’m so proud of: Tea-meeting / Team-eating. Oh God, am I good when it comes to food…

The last type of meetings that we have is the Breakfast Club. As you may have guessed (I hope for you), this one is in the morning, very very early (9 am) and we discuss about carrier. Students ask a question, such as how to best find a supervisor for a PhD or how to balance work and personal life, and the postdocs and PIs give them their famed wisdom. And we eat croissants and other morning delights with tea and coffee and good ambiance.

So if I count well, we’ve been very serious scientifically, because we’ve covered breakfast, tea time and apéro. And of course everyday we all have lunch together at the canteen of the university. Now I just need to do something about Elevenses, and we’d be one step closer to the Hobbits.

Yes, that’s my lab and yes I told them not to eat while doing experiments

 

We are not afraid

Today, we wondered: why here? Why Paris?
It’s because you, the moron hidden thousands of kilometers away, well concealed while you send empty heads blow themselves up in your place, you know that here, we are everything you hate.
You know that within a few minutes, all doors will open in Paris for everyone to find refuge.
You know that firemen, police officers, soldiers, nurses and doctors will rush in to save lives while risking their own.
You know that, the next day, everyone will mass in hospitals to give their blood.
You know that the very evening, candles will be lit by the thousands at our windows.
You know that we will continue to welcome the refugees that you abuse in your own country.
You know that Virginie will explain as much as she can that you are not a believer but just a despicable ignorant.
You know that Miko will draw to show that you do not understand anything about the Koran and that you‘re its greatest traitor.
You know that the Place de la République will be filled the following day by people who will express their support, in spite of the repeated requests of the authorities not to remain there.
You know that gatherings, forbidden now, will happen spontaneously despite everything.
You know that the highlight of the day will be a musician and his piano, playing a song about peace.
You know all this.
And you can’t stand it.

So, you write us that we should be afraid of you, that it is only the beginning, that you are the strongest. While being well hidden, safe and far from all this…

But I will tell you a something, bastard: you lost.
Before even starting, you had lost.
We are better than you.
You may well hit us like a madman, send your clueless minions to blow themselves up in the midst of our parties, we will prevail.
You may well write to us, tell us that we must be afraid, follow your orders, we will prevail.
You may well take away friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, we will prevail.
Even sad and stunned by all these victims, we will prevail.
We are not afraid of you.
We are millions not afraid.

Jean-Claude, Francine, Christine and Alain have never been afraid of you.
Us, we are not afraid of you.
And Chloé, Clément, Pierre, Guillaume, Léo, Noa and Yoann will never be afraid of you.
And that also, you know.
And that is why you hit here.
France is your worst enemy.
Count on us: this will not change.

Vincent Hulin, Paris, 14/11/15. Free translation.

How I manage my time

A previous postdoc of mine just asked me to post a blog article on how I manage my time. I chose to think that this was meant to be for an advice, rather than for things to avoid.  So there it is: how do I do everything I do in research, while also spending considerable amount of time having a family, running long-distance and playing World of Warcraft, all four of which being notoriously time-consuming.
Researchers are now expected to spend time for (and be good at) a large number of various tasks, often requiring totally different skills, including doing research, writing articles about it (well, and a lot), speaking at scientific congresses but also for at public conferences, popularizing in various formats (written, interviews, etc), networking with colleagues, communicating with journalists and stakeholders, finding, securing and managing grants, acting as an editorial member and a reviewer for several scientific journals, evaluating colleagues, students and grants in juries and committees, teaching various classes, supervising internships, mentoring graduate students and directing postdocs (which is quite different), and sometimes heading a group of research. And if time allows, going to pee every other day.

 

So how do I fit all this into my days? Come to think of it, I don’t have a carefully designed strategy, but over the years I have naturally developed a way of working that allows me to cram in quite a lot.  Here are a few things that I do that help me manage.
First of all, I manage my tasks; I set up priorities. Everyday I have a list of things I have to finish by the end of the day, and while being realistic (otherwise it’s useless), I try to have an ambitious list, and to finish it every day (otherwise it’s useless). So I put in this lists the urgent tasks, those that can’t be further pushed away, plus the important ones that still can fit.
Then, I play Tetris with my priorities: I try to tightly fit various tasks into time holes of the corresponding time and concentration need. If I just spent four hours focusing on a manuscript, I’ll respond to some emails that don’t require a sharp brain, or I’ll browse the Internet for some fitting illustrations for an upcoming talk. If I just have half an hour left before leaving, I’ll find a task that takes me 40 min, and do it more efficiently. Or two tasks of 15-20 min, but I’ll try not to let gaps, unless purposely. And that’s the second point.
Staying efficient. I’m lazy, and I don’t want to spend more time than necessary on things, so I do them as efficiently as I can (because I’m also perfectionist and I don’t want to make them bad). And of course, being efficient is tiring, if you give yourself 100%, then you burn energy, even sitting at your desk. So in addition to managing my tasks and my time, I manage my energy and my motivation. Because without one or the other, you’ll achieve nothing, or at least nothing efficiently. And in the long term, you’ll get a burnout (see my post here about that).
Managing your energy is crucial. The more and the harder you work, the less effective you become, and the more you need to take breaks – either during the days or during the week (or the year). So this may seem like GrandMa’s advices, but you need to sleep well (there are many studies on the effect of one more hour of sleep on work efficiency), to eat well and to rest (your brain) well. That is one of the reasons why I take my whole group to the staff restaurant every lunch so that we can all have a large break at mid day. Plus the food is good there (and remembers, that’s France: while humans eat to live, we live to eat).
When asked to present the distribution of his different research activities, I remember a colleague and friend of mine giving percentages of various tasks, and when I mentioned that the sum was over 100%, he simply answered that he worked longer than 100% of a normal day. That can work, but I think a more efficient (and pleasant) way is to know when you get tired and less sharp, and stop to rest. It’s way better to work 8 hours fully (with breaks) than 6 hours fully without, followed by 3 hours at 50% speed and 3 hours at 25% speed. You’ll achieve less in the end, and will have spent more time, be less rested or entertained and in the end, you’ll like your work less. Rest a lot so that when you work, you can work at 100%. You must remain driven, never dragging.
When I say rest between tasks during the day, you can do like most of my San Diego lab pals when I was in postdoc, play ball in the yard (or go surfing, but that’s not easy here in Paris); you can do like my grand father, who in his time got the world record of criminal case solving by taking a 5 minutes nap twice a day; you can goof off on Facebook, clean up the coffee room, go hunt a roller blader, you can do whatever you find most resting, provided it works for you (and it’s not illegal (or you don’t get caught)).
And last bit of advice: manage your motivation as well. If you have a task that is boring you or that you don’t like, procrastinate a bit. Push it back if you can and do things that are more motivating until either you can’t push it back further, or you have enough motivation/energy to do it.

 

A happy researcher must have three things full at all time: daily planning, energy level, motivation level. Too often they also have a full bladder, but that’s just bad managing. Now I’ve spent a good hour writing this page; remember I told you to alternate hard work and rest/fun. Time for a quick run then…

For God’s sake!

Since biblical times, I’ve thought that one of the only things that perhaps could tip the balance in favor of the environment would be to have religious people on our side. When you think of it, they are numerous, they are organized and when they have divine directive, they take it rather seriously.

It seems that God, in Its great wisdom, has led the first men to believe that Nature was theirs to do whatever they wanted with, and that the only role of animals on Earth was to be at the disposal of Men, and that Men had to fight and win over Nature and this type of bullshit. Or so they wrote in the Bible. No wonder then that Christians don’t give a damn about the environment. Or at least, not enough to matter.

I don’t know enough of the other mainstream religions, but I doubt they also preach biodiversity and ecosystem conservation as one of their main messages (anyways, I’m not an expert but I reckon the main message of all three major religions is « don’t kill your neighbor » and their followers still seem to be struggling with it, so never mind the « don’t mess up your planet »).

And there I was thinking all this, quite pessimistically, and it seems God heard me and thought « Oh Franck, you may be a bit megalomaniac, but you gave Me a good idea, I’ll talk to some of My representatives ». Because next thing I knew, Pope Francis spoke (and wrote) a very clear and very explicit message about protecting biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and stuff in his Encyclal Letter: Laudato Si’. You can find it here. As explained in a nice analysis here, this makes him a powerful ally for conservation. And God knows we need all the allies we can find.

Its seems that the Dalai Lama also said things that go in this direction (but he also said some very sexist things recently, so he’s not my best buddy anymore; yet, Buddhists should listen to that environment thing), which means that we can expect some other major leaders of some other major religions to express themselves on the same lines, since God just asked them (or reminded them, because, hey, if God wanted to kill the planet, He’d just order a downpour and be done with it). And I’m pretty sure God doesn’t want us to mess up with His creation, even if He spent only 7 days doing it and has been a couch potato ever since. .

So now, if you ever were in doubt about how to spend your zealous energy, making converts, making money, or protecting biodiversity, now you know. God wants you to protect biodiversity. And so do I. He’s on my side. You don’t stand a chance. Obey and pray that our divine wrath is curtate and our clemency all-encompassing.