How to critically read ecological meta-analyses.

Lortie, Christopher J.; Stewart, Gavin; Rothstein, Hannah R.; Lau, Joseph

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.38

Cited by 13 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Research synthesis will provide the means to evaluate the evidence for alternative hypotheses and examine generalizations in any discipline including ecology if transparently described (Lortie et al . ). Meta‐analysis is one of the many tools available but also likely the most direct technique in many respects in summarizing evidence for a particular topic (Arnqvist & Wooster ; Nakagawa & Poulin ; Koricheva & Gurevitch ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…it must include effect sizes (Koricheva & Gurevitch ; Lortie et al . ). Conducting a meta‐analysis therefore involves a well‐defined number of steps and associated methods that have been summarized in the first handbook of meta‐analysis written specifically for ecologists and evolutionary biologists (Koricheva, Gurevitch & Mengersen ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Advancing plant ecology through meta‐analyses

Gómez‐Aparicio

Lortie

2014

Journal of Ecology

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Summary1. The inherent complexity of nature produces a diverse and varied set of outcomes for any given ecological process. However, the advance of ecology requires making generalizations that synthesize current knowledge and guide new basic research and practical applications. Among the synthesis tools available for this specific purpose, meta-analysis is one of the most accurate and powerful methods. 2. This Special Feature examines the use that meta-analysis has received in plant ecology over the last two decades and provides examples of synthesis applied to contemporary topics in different areas of plant ecology from populations to ecosystems. 3. The number of meta-analyses in plant ecology has been increasing rapidly in the last two decades. However, this increase has not been accompanied by a parallel increase in quality. The opening review paper in this Special Feature provides a checklist of quality criteria specific to ecological meta-analysis that will largely contribute to improvement of the methodological and reporting standards of meta-analyses. 4. The following five papers in the Special Feature demonstrate the advantages of application of meta-analysis compared with other techniques of research synthesis. Meta-analysis is applied here to demonstrate the consistency of ecological hypotheses across large spatial scales (e.g. Janzen-Connell hypothesis), understand sources of variation in the magnitude of ecological processes (e.g. herbivory effects on leaf life span, effects of intraspecific genetic diversity on communities and ecosystems), measure synergistic impacts of environmental change drivers (e.g. CO 2 , drought, land use) or assess research gaps within a certain sub-discipline of plant ecology (e.g. landscape fragmentation). 5. Synthesis. Meta-analysis can contribute to the advance of ecological theory by synthesizing the available evidence on specific topics and informing the scope of generalizations. However, plant ecologists can only take full advantage of this capacity if we improve our knowledge on how and when to conduct a proper meta-analysis, and by avoiding the frequent misuses that have characterized the use of this statistical tool in the ecological literature thus far.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Advancing plant ecology through meta‐analyses

Gómez‐Aparicio

Lortie

2014

Journal of Ecology

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“…When heterogeneity is present, we must recognize the tension between two opposing forces. First, the same exposure may have different effects based on context, and I agree that single summary estimates may not be sufficient (Lortie et al ., ). Simultaneously, we must exercise caution because we appear to impose subjective perceptions of patterns when they may not exist (Greenland, ), and subgroup analyses may lead to inappropriate inferences (Greenland, ; Hasford et al ., ; Smith et al ., ).…”

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confidence: 97%

“…Lortie et al . () provide a succinct tutorial of the necessary steps for systematic reviews and meta‐analyses, and the important reasons they have recently become more popular. In this editorial, I would like to highlight some nuances that may be underappreciated.…”

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confidence: 99%

How to critically read ecological meta-analyses

Shrier

2015

Res. Syn. Meth.

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Lortie et al. (2014) provide a succinct tutorial of the necessary steps for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and the important reasons they have recently become more popular. In this editorial, I would like to highlight some nuances that may be underappreciated.The terms systematic reviews and meta-analyses are often interpreted to mean an absence of bias. Good science requires transparent reporting of systematic methods and clarity of results so others can replicate the study and search for errors. A systematic review simply follows the same principles for summarizing data from previous studies. Because a nonsystematic review is not systematic, it is simply more difficult to evaluate for bias. A meta-analysis is just a statistical method for obtaining a global estimate by averaging results from a number of studies into one overall summary effect measure (which can be conducted on a systematic or nonsystematic review). The methods of systematic reviews (with or without meta-analyses) should always be critically examined to ensure they are appropriate and that bias is indeed minimized.

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“…Chris Lortie and colleagues (Lortie et al . ) provide a cross‐disciplinary explanation of the issues, with a commentary by Ian Shrier (Shrier ) providing an additional perspective on the need for saturation. The high heterogeneity intrinsic to ecological questions provides dual challenges for tradeoffs of potential problems related to causation and inconsistency and in assessing the robustness of methods used to explore heterogeneity.…”

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confidence: 99%

Lessons from meta-analysis in ecology and evolution: the need for trans-disciplinary evidence synthesis methodologies

Stewart

Schmid

2015

Res. Syn. Meth.

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Lessons from meta-analysis in ecology and evolution: the need for trans-disciplinary evidence synthesis methodologies Evidence synthesis in ecology and evolution has a long and distinguished history dating back to the seminal works of Jessica Gurevitch and Larry Hedges (Gurevitch and Hedges, 1993;Gurevitch and Hedges, 1999), which popularised methods originally developed in social science and medicine. Currently, the field is seeing increasing numbers of meta-analyses, publication of methods textbooks such as the Handbook of Meta-analysis in Ecology and Evolution (Koricheva et al. 2013) and the further extension of evidence-based methods to other environmental fields such as food and chemical safety. Whilst acknowledging that the methodologies of evidence-based disciplines are generic and transferable, it must also be recognised that different fields of application hold different methodological challenges. This special issue focuses on three of the problematic areas for evidence synthesis in ecology, namely, acquisition of information, assessing strength of evidence and supporting decision-making in complex and uncertain systems. Searching for ecological literature is challenging for three reasons. First, the scope of ecological questions is usually very broad -encompassing multiple species, habitats and outcomes. Adopting the reductionist rationale of clinical medicine makes little sense because the primary reason for synthesis is generally understanding heterogeneity rather than increasing power. Whilst the need to explore heterogeneity is recognised in medicine (Lau et al. 1998), questions tend to focus on a restricted and specific population, set of comparators, outcomes and study design in comparison to ecology (Stewart 2010). Second, with the exception of evidence-based conservation, interventions are usually absent; instead, questions focus on impact or relationships and are thus more akin to medical reviews of adverse events or prognostic studies. Given the dearth of robust guidance on searching prognostic literature, the medical community may have as much to learn from ecologists (and social scientists) in this regard as vice versa. Third, the search infra-structure available to researchers out with health disciplines is woefully inadequate for the task of efficiently identifying pertinent information. Whilst accepting that the integrated MeSH headings of PubMed would be challenging to develop and apply to the wider science domain, the failure of publishers to utilise machine learning algorithms and sophisticated classification architectures to a greater extent is a major impediment to robust rapid evidence synthesis. The article by Bayliss & Beyer (Bayliss and Beyer, 2015) provides ecologists with pragmatic guidance on searching literature. It augments Chapter 4 of the Handbook of Meta-analysis in Ecology and Evolution (Côté et al. 2013). Much guidance will be familiar to information scientists in other free-text domains such as public health and social science, but searching across phylogenies offers n...

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How to critically read ecological meta-analyses.

Cited by 13 publications

References 33 publications

Advancing plant ecology through meta‐analyses

Advancing plant ecology through meta‐analyses

How to critically read ecological meta-analyses

Lessons from meta-analysis in ecology and evolution: the need for trans-disciplinary evidence synthesis methodologies

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