Half term and the inevitable failure to balance work with trying to be be a Dad. On a research front Aris is making rapid and impressive progress with the evolution of bird breeding phenology simulations. By the end of the week the first simulations had been run and results were coming in. Its all looking very interesting and should prove a good platform with which to build evolution into the bigger ecosystem models. The work I did myself was limited this week to getting to grips with the growth sub-model of SORTIE, so far I have worked through the allometry, light and population sub-models. Only mortality and recruitment left to go and while there are data that need collecting there is nothing so far that is unachievable. I also managed to work on the TREE article that is coming out from last September’s ESF meeting - this is challenging the ‘simple=general=good’ paradigm that pervades ecology and is jointly written by a group of philosophers and a group of ecologists.
