Department of Entomology

Title: Data-driven discovery in working landscapes: Asking big questions with other people’s data

Abstract: Ecology and environmental management are increasingly data-intensive sciences. As we adopt new technologies, collect more data, and share our work more, data scarcity is no longer an issue in a wide variety of systems- instead, our challenge is to pull meaningful information out of a data deluge. Traditional approaches to discovery provide sound tests for hypotheses emerging from theory, but strict adherence to this paradigm fails to capitalize on the opportunities presented by inductive approaches to inference. Data science embraces this inductive paradigm, focussing on pattern finding and hypothesis generation (rather than testing) from vast, disparate, and opportunistic data sources. In this talk, I will explore the application of these principles to several case studies in entomology and landscape management, and relate our approaches to these problems to the evolving culture of science.