On this page, we will host opportunities to collaborate between members and beyond. For example, there may be opportunities to meet up at conferences, either through an officially hosted session, or through side meetings. Alternatively, if you are starting up a project or fieldwork campaign and need expertise or help, let the network know here as a free advert.
We’ll also post relevant funding calls, ideas for collaborating on review or meta-analysis papers, or any other opportunities.
If you have any such opportunities you would like to share, email Mark here, or email the entire member list and we’ll also post it here.
As part of the NeAT Restart campaign, we have an idea for a paper that the entire network can contribute to.
In the Arctic, we lack long-term standardised datasets of species occurrences to assess trends in diversity. However, on GBIF, there are over 600,000 records of over 17,000 species dating back to 1965 (and more beyond). These records could, in theory, be used in rarefaction style analysis to assess diversity change while accounting for sampling effort differences. For example, such an analysis was used to assess pollinator richness trends in the UK and Netherlands.
Using these approaches, Mark Gillespie has conducted a similar assessment for arthropod richness within the AMAP boundary. Preliminary results suggest high increases in species richness in recent decades, even when accounting for sampling effort. This could be an artifact of increased knowledge of arthropods over the last 20 years. But it could also point to northern range shifts in many common species.
In order to understand more about these results, Mark is looking for contributors to analyse lists of species to determine their likely role in the changes. He has produced lists of species that are apparently “new” to the Arctic or have increased in prevalence. He now needs help to wade through the lists and establish whether they were likely always in the Arctic, or are indeed invaders.
The lists can be tailored to region and expertise. For example, if you are a Canadian spider expert, you can receive a list of Canadian spiders to review. Full instructions can be given if you’d like to participate. In return, if your contribution is significant, you can be included as a co-author on the resulting paper. And the paper will celebrate the return of the NeAT network to the fore!
For more information or to volunteer, write to Mark here.
It is probably too late to organise a session at any of the upcoming conferences in the summer/autumn. However, if you are intending to go to any of those below and would like a NeAT meet-up on the side, let us know either by writing to Mark here or the entire member list.