Beyond Baby Beluga: Natural history themed kids' music for Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!  Our present to you: two suggestions of kids' music with the theme of natural history and science.  Our journal isn't officially promoting these artists or anything, we just think dads deserve to listen to some variety (Baby Beluga is fine ... the first hundred times).

1. ACORN: THE NATURE NUT
If you grew up in Canada and are now in your 30's, you probably remember The Nature Nut's kids' TV series.  John Acorn is an Alberta naturalist, a lecturer at the University of Alberta's Biology Dept., author of numerous wildlife guides, and a general nut about nature.  Insects are his main love.  I had the pleasure of seeing him perform some of his songs about butterflies at the International Butterfly Conference in Edmonton a few years ago - it was awesome.  You can buy his two CDs for $19.95 each.
http://www.acornthenaturenut.net/services.html

2. THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS: HERE COMES SCIENCE
Each track celebrates and explains different aspects of science (e.g., My Brother the Ape).  It's pretty awesome.  If you've never heard They Might Be Giants, they have a similar sound as Barenaked Ladies in my opinion.
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/id328074265?s=143455

Any other suggestions?  Leave them in the comments for the benefit of naturalist parents everywhere (including me - I'm craving a bit of music diversity right now).

New Jewel Beetle guide - FREE!

It seems too good to be true for us insect enthusiasts.  A new beetle field guide that is free.  No asterisks of any sort.  Just free heavenly insect goodness.

Double-helping of natural history!

BOOK:
Paiero, S.M, Jackson, M., Jewiss-Gaines, A., Kimoto, T., Gill, B.D. and S.A. Marshall. 2012. Field Guide to Jewel Beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) of Northeastern North America. Canadian Food Inspection Agency. 164 maps. 411p.  Available in English or French.

PUBLISHER:
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in conjunction with the University of Guelph, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Invasive Species Centre.

WHAT ARE JEWEL BEETLES?
The beetle family Buprestidae are known as jewel beetles for their beautiful irridescent colours. Their larvae burrow in plants, including the dastardly invasive Emerald Ash Borer (dunh-dunh-DUUUN).

WHAT DOES THE GUIDE LOOK LIKE?
I won't provide a full book review, but the picture below indicates some of the interesting doo-dads the book has for its species pages.

Silhouettes of the actual size of the species; ID focal points; buttons to indicate larval host plants; etc.  I like the layout.  Personally, I would like to see a "Natural history notes" section for each species with a brief note about the species' habits (like in co-author Stephen Marshall's incredible book on the insects of Eastern North America). However, I can understand the lack of such information since: a) such information is likely unknown for many of the species and b) the book is intended as an identification guide only.  Its identification keys, for example, are wonderful.

FREE, YOU SAY?
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency often makes it identification guide books freely available.  For a group with many pest species, such as the jewel beetles, it likely pays off to have ID guides in the hand of lots of Canadians.  This jewel beetle guide is free, as is its shipping, to people in Canada or anywhere else the USA.  Supplies are limited.  To place an order, call 1-800-442-2342.


INFO FROM PUBLISHER:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, in conjunction with the University of Guelph, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Invasive Species Centre, has recently published the “Field Guide to the Jewel Beetles of Northeastern North America”.

This 411 page field guide (6×9*) covers 164 jewel beetle species for northeastern North American (Manitoba and eastward) and includes 2 identification keys for the 23 genera in the region: one a technical key adapted from previously published works, and the other a “field key”, designed for use with a hand lens or digital camera and which uses characters that are more easily observed.  Each species is fully illustrated with high magnification colour photos of the dorsal & ventral views, head and male genitalia (plus additional colour morphs or variations when available).  A review of taxonomic synonyms, ESC & ESA approved common names, and all known larval host plants is provided in addition to thorough morphological diagnoses, characters useful for differentiating similar species, and notes on species abundance, habitat preference and economic importance. 

This guide is intended to assist municipal foresters, arborists, technicians, entomologists, woodlot owners and naturalists in recognizing specimens encountered in the field. 

This book is available in both English and French.  The cost of the book and shipping is free.  To place an order, please phone 1-800-442-2342.

Paiero, S.M, Jackson, M., Jewiss-Gaines, A., Kimoto, T., Gill, B.D. and S.A. Marshall. 2012. Field Guide to Jewel Beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) of Northeastern North America. Canadian Food Inspection Agency. 164 maps. 411p.

UPDATE (DEC 20 2013)

Good news & bad news for those of you wanting a copy of this guide.

Bad news: So many people wanted hardcopies of the guide that they've almost run out of them. There is not enough money to ship copies to people outside Canada and U.S.A.

Good news: pdf copies of the guide are available for free, in English or French. For pdf copies, and details about how in-demand the guide has been, see this blog post by co-author Morgan Jackson.

Natural history interpretations of NHL series: Penguins vs Bruins

From a natural history perspective, nobody should be surprised the Boston Bruins won this series.

Yes, you ought to publish your natural history research

Alex is an ecologist (he's not just a hypothetical guy - he's a post-doc at the University of Saskatchewan and has published some bird egg work in our journal). Alex likes natural history and appreciates its importance as the foundation for biology. But, he notes, natural history research is not as valued as it ought to be by many hiring committees. Alex wants a job. Given how many tasks academic biologists have on their "to-do" list (has anyone ever actually finished their to-do list?), biologists have to triage and invest their time in tasks that will have the greatest likelihood of achieving their main goals (getting a job, saving the world, etc.). Because natural history articles are often not highly valued by academic employers, writing natural history articles gets pushed down biologists' to-do lists, and valuable natural history research sits in computer file folders rather than being published.

Alex notes on his blog that while many biological journals no longer regularly publish natural history research, there are several natural history journals that publish nothing but the stuff. He singles out The Canadian Field-Naturalist with praise for our recent rejuvenation including catching up on our publication lag (it's not fully caught up yet, but that should happen this summer), our journal website, and our well-received Twitter stream. Thanks for the praise (your cheque is in the mail!*)

*by cheque I mean lint, and my mail I mean your pocket. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Alex has decided to devote every Friday afternoon to producing natural history products, including manuscripts, to get his accumulated research out there and used by fellow biologists and naturalists.  Good idea!  One of the keys to write a lot of research articles, according to a book on the subject by psychologist Dr. Paul Silva, is to devote timeslots to writing. Make those timeslots as non-negotiable as timeslots in which you're teaching or booked for meetings. Devoting a chunk of time, even a very small chunk, can do wonders for productivity. I anticipate a productive year for Alex's natural history research!

I would add two points to Alex's about the benefits of writing natural history research, with the benefit of seeing things from the journal's perspective.

1. Not only do natural history journals exist, but we are actively looking for submissions.  In contrast to many of the bigshot journals published by mega-profit corporations, we don't inflate our Impact Factor by rejecting solid articles just because they're not on a sufficiently sexy topic. Those journals have a "problem" of too many submissions. We sometimes don't have enough submissions (especially when we're publishing issues rapid-fire as we catch up our publication schedule). If you have solid natural history research (good data, well-written, etc.), and the topic is a species whose range includes Canada, CFN will publish it regardless of whether it is sexy or not ... or even downright parthenogenic! Our editors go beyond simple accept/reject decisions to actually work with authors to get their manuscripts to publishable quality, so long as the core of the manuscript (i.e., the data / observations) are valuable. This cooperative approach to working with authors also works well for graduate students new to publishing, to help them learn the ropes and be encouraged rather than having their confidence torn to shreds like editors at some other journals can do.
Take-home message for authors: we have a high acceptance rate because we don't care about sexiness (except in its most literal sense - we publish research on sexual ornamentation!), editors who are there to help you, and work hard to maximize the dissemination and impact of your published articles.

2. Changes in publication metrics will result in higher valuation of natural history articles.  Like Wile E. Coyote finding himself standing on nothing, the mighty Impact Factor is falling.

Long known to be biased and easily gamed by journals, it was still used as a proxy for article quality because it was about the only metric available. Now there are myriad metrics available to evaluate the impact of articles. Not just citations by other academic journals, but also web links, Twitter popularity, pdf downloads, and more. Such changes will benefit natural history journals because natural history articles are relevant (and cited) far longer than those in trendy journals. The Impact Factor only considers citations to articles over the past two years of issues in a journal, thus incetivizing research on sexy topics. An analysis of articles in fellow natural history journal The American Midland Naturalist revealed that most of their articles are barely cited in their first two years after publication, but relatively highly cited 6-38 years after publication (McIntosh 2009). Similarly, Krell (2002) argued that impact factors don't work for taxonomy articles (related to natural history) for several reasons, including how little of taxonomy papers' long citation window is encapsulated by the impact factor's two year snapshot. The impact factor biases against journals that publish research with staying power, such as our own journal. As we previously wrote in Nature, we won't reject valid research just to increase a silly impact factor rating (Fitzsimmons & Skevington 2010). Better metrics will reveal the true impact of natural history articles.

So write those natural history manuscripts, know that there are good homes for them (yes please!), and know that hiring committees will value them more and more as metrics improve.

REFERENCES:
Fitzsimmons, J. M. and J. H. Skevington. 2010. Metrics: don't dismiss journals with a low impact factor. Nature 466:179.
Krell, F.-T. 2002. Why impact factors don't work for taxonomy. Nature 415:957.
McIntosh, R. P. 2009. The American Midland Naturalist: the life history of a journal. American Midland Naturalist 161:13-44.