Ryan has just returned from a workshop on population dynamics and species diversity at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. The ten participants spent three days brainstorming new approaches to understanding how the dynamics of individual populations aggregate to determine properties of whole communities, including species diversity. As part of this, the participants spent time analysing a global dataset of community and population dynamics compiled from various sources by the workshop leaders, John Alroy and Drew Allen.

Image credit: mq.edu.au