Introducing New Zealand Ecology Reviews

A few years back Alastair Robertson (Massey University) had the excellent idea of using the newsletter and website of the NZ Ecological Society to highlight important papers on New Zealand ecology that are published internationally. The project became known as HotScience and it invited members of the NZ Ecological Society to submit citations and summaries of the NZ ecology in such publications. It worked well for a while but submissions to the newsletter have dwindled recently and the society's overcommitted volunteer webmaster (me) got behind on updating the HotScience area of the society webpages (www.nzes.org.nz).

I am reviving the project with a new format and new optimism, as a web log ("blog"). A blog has two great advantages over our earlier system. It greatly streamlines the process of posting entries by allowing members to post their own summaries and/or reviews of NZ ecological science directly to the blog. It also allows members and other interested people to comment on these entries. Feel free to publicly disagree with what is posted. This is science, after all. Anyone can view the website and I have it currently set so that anyone can comment on posted articles. I will keep an eye on the posts and comments and only step in as moderator if necessary.

Because of the blog's ability to discuss and criticise papers as well as summarise them, I have renamed the project New Zealand Ecology Reviews. (The name Hotscience has also been subsequently adopted by a New Zealand website, www.hotscience.co.nz, which provides science resource for teachers.)

If you want to post a review or summary of a new article to New Zealand Ecology Reviews, you will need to be a member of this blog. This is free and easy but needs to be approved by a blog administrator (currently just me but easily expanded to others who wish to share the responsibility). Please contact me at webmaster [at] nzes.org.nz to request blog membership. Membership of the blog is restricted to NZ Ecological Society members. You can join the society at www.nzes.org.nz/join.html for a modest annual subscription.

I have posted all previous HotScience entries into New Zealand Ecology Reviews. I don't have a record of who sent these in so these are posted anonymously. If you originally sent a HotScience summary into the society newsletter and would like to be acknowledged in New Zealand Ecology Reviews for having done so, please contact me and I can make you the author of the post.