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SORTEE member voices – Owen Petchey

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Owen Petchey.
 

Date: 19 July 2021.
 

Research and/or work interests: Ecological responses to environmental change.
   

How did you become interested in open research?
Some years ago I was particularly interested in a published research report that included the data. I wanted to know more about how the quantitative analyses were done. So I downloaded the data, and set about reproducing the analyses. From that grew further interest, and then a class during which I and the participants worked on several similar reproductions. We learned a lot about how to prepare research reports and data so that they could be readily reproduced (and what not to do!). Some of the reports are published here: http://opetchey.github.io/RREEBES/    

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SORTEE member voices – David Wilkinson

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: David Wilkinson.
 

Date: 18 July 2021.
 

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
 

Research and/or work interests: Joint species distribution modelling; occupancy modelling; computational reproducibility; version control; code/data sharing practices.
   

How did you become interested in open research?
It wasn’t really the “open research” concept directly that first interested me, but as a primarily methods-based quantitative ecologist it was code and data sharing that made my PhD research possible, and from there I got into other practices.    

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SORTEE member voices – William Gearty

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: William Gearty.
 

Date: 13 July 2021.
 

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
 

Research and/or work interests: The degree to which species diversify taxonomically and functionally varies dramatically across time, space, and the tree of life. This ultimately has resulted in the vast diversity and disparity that we see on Earth today. Numerous physiological, ecological, and environmental conditions have been implicated as the causes for this variation. I integrate tools and theory from paleontology, geology, ecology, and physiology to study how these components collectively drive and constrain diversity and disparity across time, space, and life. Beyond understanding how and why life diversified the way it did in the past, my research provides insights into how modern anthropogenic environmental shifts may ultimately influence the ecology and evolution of today’s biosphere.
   

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SORTEE member voices – Nicholas Grebe

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Nicholas Grebe.
 

Date: 13 July 2021.
 

Research and/or work interests: Behavioral ecology and endocrinology; evolution of social behavior.
   

How did you become interested in open research?
I come from a psychology background, and it was during graduate school that questions and controversy surrounding reproducibility became a full-blown ‘crisis’. I remember two things clearly about that time. First, the disorienting feeling of not knowing which findings in my field, many of which were considered ’textbook’ examples, were actually robust and trustworthy. And second, the energy and effort of a small group of reformers to change the way we produced and evaluated scientific findings. I really identified with this perspective – being critical-minded but not cynical – and so I’ve tried to do my small part to grow open science: first in psychology, and now in behavioral ecology.    

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SORTEE member voices – Tina Heger

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Tina Heger.
 

Date: 12 July 2021.
 

What’s an ‘ORT’ subject or practice that you think deserves more attention?
Discoverability. The more data and information are openly available, the harder it might become to find the things you are looking for. We need better methods for finding not only data and datasets, but also information of other kinds (theoretical knowledge, results of reviews, meta-analyses, conceptual frameworks etc). Smart ways of producing knowledge graphs on demand could be a solution.    

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SORTEE member voices – Signe White

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Signe White.
 

Date: 12 July 2021.
 

Position: Postdoctoral Researcher.
 

Research and/or work interests: My postdoctoral current work focuses on the beneficial effects of microbiomes of marine diatoms on adaptation to increasing ocean temperatures. My former work in graduate school was on how parasites evolved in response to host genetic heterogeneity. I’m also interested in biogeography and coevolution..
   

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