Increasing the reach of your biogeographical research is a key element of the modern publication process. The Journal of Biogeography established its presence on Twitter (@JBiogeography) about three years ago, during past-Editor-in-Chief Peter Linder’s tenure and rapidly became an important outlet for sharing announcements about new ‘early view’ publications. As of the writing of this article, the account now has 3,955 followers and has become, for us, an indispensible way to communicate with the community. Yet other formats are newly, or remain, popular for different purposes and other formats. As such, we are expanding our social media presence to better disseminate not only news about new articles, but also some of the beautiful imagery that represents our discipline (e.g. Instagram), longer and related community posts (e.g. Facebook), and features about research and researchers and the journal (this blog). We invite you to get involved with any or each of these, as their true value is in creating and supporting the biogeography community.
These social media resources will be supported by members of the journal’s editorial board, including the senior editorial team at the Journal of Biogeography. Key among the team, however, are the two new social media editors, who also are practicing biogeographers with keen interests in sharing breaking stories in and around the discipline. It’s my great pleasure to introduce them here …
Dr. Leanne Phelps – University of Edinburgh, Scotland; Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, Scotland
Leanne researches the ecological crossover between land use and land cover change on broad spatial and temporal scales. Her primary research interest is to improve our understanding of changing human-environment relationships, so that this can inform sustainable conservation and land management. Her current postdoc research through the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh focuses on the Holocene development of grassy biomes in Madagascar, and investigates the influence of human land use.
Dr. Joshua Thia – University of Queensland, Australia
Josh is an evolutionary biologist who’s primary interests lie in understanding how the ecological dimensions of space, time, and ontogeny affect the distribution of biological variation. Some major recent research themes include understanding: (1) how (or whether) adaptation occurs in the presence of high gene flow; and (2) how developmental constraints within individuals affect the distribution of phenotypes within and among populations. He is also known to dabble in R package creation. Josh has recently started a postdoc at the University of Melbourne where he will be studying the genetic basis of insecticide resistance.