As it was in 1950 and 2014IN GENERAL, the longer an ecological study goes on for, the more valuable it becomes. This is usually done, funding agencies permitting, by extending it into the future. Extending it into the past is tricker. It is not, though, impossible—as Jonas Hentati-Sundberg and Olof Olsson of Stockholm University show in a paper published this week in Current Biology.
Dr Hentati-Sundberg and Dr Olsson borrowed an idea that historians of architecture are starting to use to track changes to buildings—looking at tourist photographs taken over the years. That works well for much-snapped edifices in holiday hotspots, but getting equivalent sets of pictures for parts of the natural environment means finding something specific that is equally photogenic. Fortunately, the two researchers think they have done so.
Their something is Stora Karlsö in the Baltic Sea. This island is well known to ornithologists as a nesting site for guillemots and razorbills. Crucially, it has been a...Continue reading
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