Tools of Curiosity or Collections of Ideas...
Technology, Freeware, Code
* ImageJ - Nifty tool that can be used to do things like measure leaf surface area from a digital photograph.
* Mendeley - Useful bibliography program. Free!
* Mesquite - Map traits on phylogenetic trees, reconstruct ancestral states, analyze comparative data about organisms.
* Phylocom, Phylomatic and Picante -Fun with mega-phylo trees. Definitely changes the way you look at how communites are assembled.
* R and RStudio - Essential for your scientific analysis toolkit.
* SMATR - Useful R package for bivariate line fitting. Includes script for Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Standardized Major Axis (SMA).
* Tableau Software -Visually play with your data.
* Taxonomic Name Resolution Services - Seriously, can you even imagine how long it would take to manually check the names of >25,000 species? Presto-chango ala kazam! Done.
Where in the World...
* Global Biodiversity Information Facility - Linking worldwide herbarium records. Includes the ability to export info into Google Earth or summary tables.
* Google Earth - Basic geospatial tools & aerial photos.
* WorldClim - Free global climate data for ecological modeling and GIS. Quite useful!
Sharing Knowledge or Stories
* Biodiversity Library - Scanned copies of historic text. Includes free pdf's of hard to find botanical books like Flora Malesiana!
* LibreVox - "Call me Ishmael..." aka what to do when you have an inkling to chase a giant whale (or want to listen to classic books on tape).
* Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Webcasts - Webcasts of seminars and symposiums on tropical ecology.
* Story time with This American Life and Radiolab -Great way to pass the time when grinding a monster stack of leaves or entering values into a grande sized database
* Blogs I enjoy include Dynamic Ecology, Jabberwocky Ecology, Theoretical Ecology, and Nothing in Biology Makes Sense.
Maintaining a Sense of Humor
* The Oatmeal Comics - Where else can you find comics on proper grammar, the life cycle of parasites and Nikola Tesla?
* PhD Comics - Add a little humor to academia...
* ImageJ - Nifty tool that can be used to do things like measure leaf surface area from a digital photograph.
* Mendeley - Useful bibliography program. Free!
* Mesquite - Map traits on phylogenetic trees, reconstruct ancestral states, analyze comparative data about organisms.
* Phylocom, Phylomatic and Picante -Fun with mega-phylo trees. Definitely changes the way you look at how communites are assembled.
* R and RStudio - Essential for your scientific analysis toolkit.
* SMATR - Useful R package for bivariate line fitting. Includes script for Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Standardized Major Axis (SMA).
* Tableau Software -Visually play with your data.
* Taxonomic Name Resolution Services - Seriously, can you even imagine how long it would take to manually check the names of >25,000 species? Presto-chango ala kazam! Done.
Where in the World...
* Global Biodiversity Information Facility - Linking worldwide herbarium records. Includes the ability to export info into Google Earth or summary tables.
* Google Earth - Basic geospatial tools & aerial photos.
* WorldClim - Free global climate data for ecological modeling and GIS. Quite useful!
Sharing Knowledge or Stories
* Biodiversity Library - Scanned copies of historic text. Includes free pdf's of hard to find botanical books like Flora Malesiana!
* LibreVox - "Call me Ishmael..." aka what to do when you have an inkling to chase a giant whale (or want to listen to classic books on tape).
* Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Webcasts - Webcasts of seminars and symposiums on tropical ecology.
* Story time with This American Life and Radiolab -Great way to pass the time when grinding a monster stack of leaves or entering values into a grande sized database
* Blogs I enjoy include Dynamic Ecology, Jabberwocky Ecology, Theoretical Ecology, and Nothing in Biology Makes Sense.
Maintaining a Sense of Humor
* The Oatmeal Comics - Where else can you find comics on proper grammar, the life cycle of parasites and Nikola Tesla?
* PhD Comics - Add a little humor to academia...
Photo used under Creative Commons from El Bibliomata
