It’s Friday and that means that it’s time for our Friday link dump, where we highlight some recent papers (and other stuff) that we found interesting but didn’t have the time to write an entire post about. If you think there’s something we missed, or have something to say, please share in the comments section!

Science just released its annual list with the top 10 scientific achievements of  the year.

A new study led by Anthony R. Rafferty, shows that online supplementary material may acts as a “citation black role”, as these citations are invisible to search engines. The authors estimated that about 6% of all citations are only included in online supplementary material and therefore, are not considered in citation counts.

Andrew E. Noble and William F. Fagan propose a new framework to combine effects of selection, drift, speciation and dispersal on community dynamics, in their new paper “A niche remedy for the dynamical problems of neutral theory“.

Marco A. R. Mello and colleagues explored the ecological features of keystone species in seed dispersal networks across the Neotropics, in their paper ”Keystone species in seed dispersal networks are mainly determined by dietary specialization“. They evaluated the role of different  species traits, such as dietary specialization, body size and geographic range, and found that dietary specialization seems to be the main feature that makes a species a keystone.

At last, here is a plea for basic science: “Fundamental ecology is fundamental”

– Vinicius Bastazini

Millions of citizen scientists contribute time and money to biodiversity research, but are their data reaching a scientific audience? You can find out in the most recent issue of Biological Conservation. (And congrats to co-author and fellow blogger Hillary!)

– Kylla Benes

Better kick the habit now, in this month’s Climatic Chance issue researchers claim that climate change will adversely affect the global supply of coffee beans. The authors of “A bitter cup: climate change profile of global production of Arabica and Robusta coffee” utilized modeling to determine that the number of sites suitable for the growth of coffee beans could be cut in half by 2050.

Check out these wonderful close-ups from this year’s BioScapes competition!

– Nate Johnson

December 19, 2014