A drone with wings inspired by beetle elytra
Interesting take – The case against the concept of biodiversity
Why eye-catching graphics are vital for getting to grips with climate change
Graeme Lyons argues that English names of species should always be capitalised – I agree, do you?
Fantastic project – croplands up close – should be very useful for many fields (pun intended)
How ornithologists figured out how to preserve bird specimens
Is your forest fit for the future? Emily Fensom from the UK Forestry Commission introduces the Climate Matching Tool and suggests how this can be used to build resilient forests
Beavers are back: here’s what this might mean for the UK’s wild spaces
What is and what isn’t citizen science? I don’t fully agree with some of this but it is an interesting read.
In which the team from Dynamic Ecology announce their semi-retirement. They will still be keeping us inspired, entertained and stimulated but just not as often. I will miss them and judging by the huge number of comments, I am not the only one. Some fantastic and very well-deserved tributes.
Don't Forget the Roundabouts 
Great to read Graeme Lyons piece – thanks for the flag
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I can’t help feeling there is a certain amount of unhelpful clever-dickishness around the piece on the concept of biodiversity. It may be subject to varying definitions and it may sometimes be difficult to measure but the basic concept that we should seek to ensure the healthy survival of as much of the variety of living organisms as we can seems to me to be fundamental. Within this concept we can all perfectly easily understand that some habitats, such as tropical rainforest, are naturally more biodiverse than others, such as boreal forest. We can also understand that in any given type of environment, a human-driven reduction in the numbers of species naturally present is undesirable. Paul Ehrlich’s rivets in an airliner analogy is apt. We do not need to know exactly how an ecosystem functions and how all the species within it interact to understand that if we keep losing species at random from that system it will at some point collapse.
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Yes, I tend to agree – and I still use Paul Ehrlich’s rivets idea in my teaching
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