Abstract

Ecology is now in the age of syntheses. Every week we see a number of studies covering “the entire globe” and/or hundreds of species. In those studies there is almost always one common issue that is either mentioned briefly or not discussed at all intentionally – gaps in the availability of data. The message from this talk is simple: this issue warrants more focus. Information gaps are a problem found in multiple dimensions of ecological studies, over space, time, taxa and data types, and thus potentially have serious consequences for inferences derived. In this talk I will first show how we can tackle information gaps, by providing a framework consisting of four components; understanding gaps, increasing available information, making the best use of existing information and uncovering hidden information. For each of the four components, I will then introduce some of my recent works using global ecological data as examples. The talk is essentially the same as the one I gave at the Cambridge Conservation Seminar Series last November, and bears the application of ecological studies to conservation in mind. But I believe most of the topics to be covered are applicable to ecology in general, particularly to broad-scale studies.

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